Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz (2.13GHz optional)ĢGB DDR3-1066 soldered on-board (4GB optional)Ĭombine the two upgrades and you’ve got a fairly expensive MacBook Air ($1399 if you’re keeping score). Anything below that is tough to feel in real world use, but anything at or above that 10% mark usually feels quicker. The magic number for feeling a performance increase is 10%. In applications that are CPU bound, you may see close to that percentage in improved performance.
However, 200MHz is a 14% increase in clock speed compared to the base model. Normally 200MHz isn’t much to write home about, especially not for $300 more than the standard 11. You get a 128GB SSD (up from 64GB) as well as the option to pay $100 for a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo. The base 11-inch MacBook Air can’t be upgraded aside from memory.
Macbook 11 inch gold upgrade#
The next upgrade is a bit harder to swallow. And many Apple stores actually stock the upgraded 4GB model. If you’re planning on keeping your system for a while, the 4GB upgrade makes a lot of sense. Light web browsing and writing don’t need more than 2GB, but start editing videos, photos or open way too many apps at once and you’ll quickly want more memory. For $100 more than its $999 starting price, you can outfit the 11 with 4GB of memory instead of 2GB. My typical workflow was simply too slow on the 1.4GHz 11-inch system.Īpple offers two potentially important upgrades for the 11-inch MacBook Air that could alleviate some of my concerns. I liked carrying the 11-inch MBA, but I liked working on the 13-inch. The 13-inch was more of a regular, get-your-work done notebook - just in a very thin and very light chassis. I concluded the 11-inch was the pinnacle of portability, delivering the weight and form factor of a netbook but without the drive-you-crazy performance of an Atom. Last month we looked at Apple’s new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Airs.