Buying a MBA 13inch . need to clarify a few things .

Hey guys , I'm planning to buy a 2014 MBA 13inch . I was using a Alienware M17x R3 , though a a great laptop was heavy so decided to built a good Desktop to do all my work ( Im a Visual Effects Artist) .Now im in need of a light laptop to do some general computing mostly youtube , web browsing , netflix and python programming nothing professional. So here are my questions , please do let me know .

1 ) I know that MBA has low res screen . any mba owners can you guys comment on the quality of the display . Is it like really low res and bad or something?

2) Im planning to buy the config with 4gb ram and 128gb ssd . is this going to be a limiting factor the work i will be doing ? how good will the OS X run on it ? i use a imac at home and love how fluid everything is , can i except a similar performance ?

and no i cannot upgrade to 8gb's as apple doesnt provide it in india and i also considered the MBPR 13inch but didnt feel going for it as the 8gig version is priced twice that of the MBA 13 in india.

thanks a lot guys and pardon my grammar.

 

It's a 16:10 1440x900 (900p) display. It still maintains pretty good pixel density at this display and it is significantly improved over a 720p display, which is considered HD. It is an excellent display IMO, 16:10 is a great aspect ratio for computers as it remains widescreen but provides additional vertical pixels which are important for document viewing. It won't push HD video in "true HD" (aka 1080p) but you're still going to have high definition video.

OS X runs fine on 4 GB of RAM. I mean, it's not ideal as 4 GB is relatively low end now but for the tasks you cite, 4 GB will be adequate unless you try running lots of programs at once.

 

I saw the 2014 model 13.3inch MBA in the shop once, it actually looked really good for a TN? screen with 1440x900 resolution. Much better than my W110er 11.6inch machine with 1366x768 (which technically has a higher PPI). You can sort of see the pixels if you squint hard enough but the brightness was good and the color accuracy was pretty decent.

4GB is on the really really low side. I don't know how efficient Safari is but Chrome eats RAM for breakfast, I've lost 3 Gb with a modest 12 Tabs already. The reason I bring this up is that the MBA RAM is soldered to the motherboard. You cannot upgrade in the future if you ever run in to issues, thats why its wiser to try and get the 8Gb variant. People on the Windows side are already beginning to shift to 16Gb.

For general purpose light usage, the MBA should be really nice since it was known to have amazing battery life. I think Anandtech found it to have something like 20hrs on idle and about 12 hrs normal usage. It should also be really smooth due to OSX optimizations + the SSD similar to your iMac minus the processing power for work.

 

Thanks for the reply ....my main concern was the display . I think the 4gb should be fine as I don't for see running any heavy software I will save those for the desktop . It will mostly be used just to browse the web and some programming . The other reason I'm going for the Mba is I want to use to for a year and then upgrade to the new MacBook pro next year .

 

I would normally recommend going with 8 GB of RAM regardless, but since availability of such a model is an issue for you, the 4 GB MBA will be fine. If you need to hit the swap file because you're low on RAM, the Air's PCI-Express storage is very fast, so it won't have a terrible impact on performance.

As far as the screen goes, the panel is what I would call "semi-glossy" - not matte but not as glossy/reflective as other notebooks. Its resolution is decent, too and should prove more than adequate for your usage.

 

Thank you ...yeah I think I pretty much made up my mind about going with with air ..Will use it for an year or so and upgrade it to a pro if I feel I need the extra power.

 

Once you start using retina screen, you cant go back to old 720p screens, everything looks so blurry

 

The MBA uses a higher quality TN panel, it still gets decent viewing angles. I've seen two panel makes, LG and Samsung.. Samsung is the one I preferred.. Much better contrast and colors in my opinion out of the box.. LG looks more washed out. Although I heard if you calibrate either one they are pretty close to being the same.

After being in front of a Retina for so long, the MBA looks pixely to me but it doesn't ruin the experience of being an amazing and still in my opinion the best Ultrabook you can buy. I just wish they did Retina by now in them!

 

Once you go 1080p, let alone anything higher, you can't go back to low-res garbage.

 

My only input is about the ram. I bought my MacBook with 8gb ram, and that quickly turned out to not be enough. I doubled it up to 16gb and after that I havent had any issues. With 4gb ram I think it would blow up trying to have more than 10 windows open in safari, let alone anything more demanding.

 

Agreed, save up a bit and go for the 13 retina!