Not sure about screen. Should I get a Macbook Air?

kissenger

kissenger

kissenger

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I am this close to pulling the trigger on one of the new Haswell Macbook Airs.

Everything looks great but I'm just not sure about the screen. The fact it's a TN panel and that the resolution isn't full 1080p is a bit of a worry. Any of you lot had much experience with it? Is it better than it looks on paper?

The other laptop I'm looking at is the Sony Vaio Pro 13, which has a 1080p IPS screen. The big upside of the Air though is better WiFi, generally just better build quality, and the much longer battery life (which is a direct result of the lower resolution I suppose).
 
The battery life increase has little to do with the display resolution. The majority of it is to do with the battery sizes (4740mAH vs 7150mAH).

The Sony display is rather lovely during general use, however the black levels and backlighting evenness were poor on the Vaio Duo I played with (I'm pretty sure they they're essentially the same machine in different shells - rather interestingly, I noticed this while attempting to fix the Wi-Fi). I've noticed that while the Apple displays aren't always the best on paper, QC seems to be pretty good (I've not seen any extremely bad iPhones, MacBooks, etc, though this could be down to my own experiences only).

The Wi-Fi problems are terrible. Range is poor, drop-outs are frequent, and signal strength is low. A good reason to avoid IMO. The Acer S7 is considered to be one of the best ultrabooks out there ATM, but apparently that has the same wireless adaptor, which could mean the same issues unfortunately. Would be another one to consider.

The Vaio Pro's chassis is made from carbon fibre, which means that it is strong but does flex quite a bit, including when typing from what I noticed. Again, may be an issue for you, may not.

My advice would be to go and have a play and see which you prefer.
 
Display resolution has more than a little too do with battery life, on the basis that a higher resolution display requires more power to run which means a battery will be drained quicker.
 
I was worried too, in the end i bought an 11" (wanted portability) and i have been very happy with in every aspect...
 
Wife had a MacBook Pro Retina for Xmas and the mother in law had a 13" Air. The screen is miles better on the Pro than the Air, the size difference between them is pretty negligable. If I was you is just get the Pro and be done with it.
 
spoffle said:
Display resolution has more than a little too do with battery life, on the basis that a higher resolution display requires more power to run which means a battery will be drained quicker.
Click to expand...

Sorry, should have made myself clearer, it was very late. My point was that the biggest factor in this case was the battery capacity. However, the higher resolution and different display tech will have higher power consumption (though I doubt the increased load on the GPU will be a major factor for normal use).
 
Surely it comes down to whether you want a Mac, or a windows machine? If you want a Mac, get the air and don't worry about it.

Best thing to do is have a look at one in real life, if you like it, buy it. You won't ever be comparing the two models side by side, so you won't be aware of the differences between the screens anyway.
 
we had the same dillema, seeing both in the flesh we went for the larger screen as we were surprised how much stuff you loose when even simply looking at internet pages, which means more scrolling etc (not a problem in itself)

I would suggest you go see both side by side
 
If you're looking at a 13" Air then go for the 13" Pro with retina display. It's £150 more for the Pro but the screen is so much nicer and the battery life is still epic. I get 9 hours out of my 13" Pro easily. It's not much heavier than the Air and not much thicker either.
 
I'd suggest trying both.

I really enjoy using my Air. I got mine just as the 2013 refresh was released, and have had zero problems with it. The WiFi range has been brilliant, using it is effortless, very snappy to use - office is open in an instant. Runs completely silent for normal use with office, internet browsing and iTunes. I see nothing wrong with the screen and I was sceptical about the resolution before I bought it, but it's fine for its size, and I won't exactly be sitting with it 6 inches from my face. I do use a slightly modified colour profile, but now the colours look very nice indeed.

But as I say, try both and see which you prefer. For what I paid I could have got the retina Pro spec with the 256GB SSD, but not in July :p
 
Rilot said:
If you're looking at a 13" Air then go for the 13" Pro with retina display. It's £150 more for the Pro but the screen is so much nicer and the battery life is still epic. I get 9 hours out of my 13" Pro easily. It's not much heavier than the Air and not much thicker either.
Click to expand...

This is the way I'm leaning now, mainly because of the portability and because I can always use 1920x1200 scaled if I don't like the lower resolution of 'retina' mode.

Apparently the 1200p scaling is quite good because the size of the pixels is so small it minimises the blurring effect you usually get with scaling.
 
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