MacBook Air Performance (May 2014)

Earlier this week Apple announced a minor refresh to its MacBook Air lineup. The only change (besides a $100 price cut) is the base model now comes with a 1.4 GHz processor instead of a 1.3 GHz processor.

How does the new MacBook Air model perform compared to previous models? To find out, I've collected Geekbench 3 results for several models and charted the scores below:

The results for the 2013 and the 2014 models aren't surprising. Both models use Intel Haswell processors, so there are no major changes in processor technology. The 5-7% increase in performance is what I would expect from the 7% increase in processor frequency.

However, comparing the results for the 2011 and the 2012 models is much more interesting. For example, base model single-core performance has improved by almost 45% since 2011, and by almost 20% since 2012. Anyone considering an upgrade from these models will certainly notice (and appreciate!) an improvement this large.


 
John Poole is the founder of Primate Labs and lives in Toronto, Ontario with his wife Deborah. You can find John on Twitter or .