Haswell-Based MacBook Airs See Minor Speed Boosts Alongside Battery Life Focus

With the introduction of its new Haswell-based MacBook Air models yesterday, Apple revealed a strong emphasis on battery life, pushing the rated operating time from five hours to nine hours on the 11-inch model and from seven hours to 12 hours on the 13-inch model.

Even with the focus on battery life, Apple was also able to bring some minor performance improvements, as seen in Geekbench 2 benchmarking results highlighted by Primate Labs. Overall, the new MacBook Air models performed 3-8% better than their previous-generation counterparts.

With Haswell, Intel's focus was on reducing power usage. Rather than improve performance by 25%, Intel improved performance by 10% while consuming 25% less power.

Apple then went a step further. Apple reduced power usage even more by selecting processors with lower frequencies. In the low-end Air, the frequency has been reduced to 1.3 GHz from 1.7 GHz, while in the high-end Air, the frequency has been reduced to 1.7 GHz from 2.0 GHz.

The new MacBook Air is available now through Apple's online store, although the company recommends waiting until tomorrow before trying to obtain one at any of its retail stores. Pricing begins at $999 for the 11-inch models, with the 13-inch models starting at $1099.