Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro vs. MacBook Air

 The 13-inch MacBook Pro was recently updated by Apple, and the $1,299 base model remains a popular alternative to the $999 MacBook Air. Read our comparison of the notebooks below to assist with your purchasing decision.



With each notebook having some unique characteristics, the differences between the base 13-inch MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air are quite nuanced.

What's the Same

  • 13-inch Retina display with 227 pixels per inch and True Tone support
  • Magic Keyboard with reliable scissor switch design
  • Force Touch trackpad
  • 2 × Thunderbolt 3 ports
  • 3.5mm headphone jack
  • 256GB of SSD storage standard, configurable up to 2TB
  • Touch ID
  • T2 security chip
  • 720p webcam
  • 802.11ac Wi-Fi, also known as Wi-Fi 5
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • Three-microphone array with directional beamforming
  • Dolby Atmos surround sound

Advantages of Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro

  • The display supports the P3 wide color gamut for more vibrant and lifelike colors
  • The display is brighter at up to 500 nits vs. 400 nits on MacBook Air
  • Touch Bar
  • Slightly better sounding speakers

Advantages of MacBook Air

  • Up to 11 hours of battery life vs. 10 hours on base 13-inch MacBook Pro
  • Weighs slightly less at 2.8 pounds vs. 3.1 pounds for base 13-inch MacBook Pro
  • Faster RAM: 3733MHz LPDDR4X vs. 2133MHz LPDDR3 for base 13-inch MacBook Pro
  • 6K display support vs. 5K on base 13-inch MacBook Pro

Unlike the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air also has a gold color option.

Performance

Generally speaking, the MacBook Air remains best suited for day-to-day lightweight tasks such as web browsing and spreadsheet creation, whereas the MacBook Pro is better prepared to handle more intensive tasks such as large video file rendering. This is not only because there are faster processors on the MacBook Pro than the Air, but also because it has a more sophisticated thermal design within the device to dissipate heat.

The base 13-inch MacBook Pro continues to use older 8th-generation processors, while the MacBook Air has been upgraded with Intel's newest 10th-generation processors. The Air, however, uses lower-wattage Y-series chips with lower clock speeds, so, as verified by benchmarks, the Pro still has faster overall performance.

Geekbench 5 scores for the latest 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air configurations:

  • MacBook Air / 1.1GHz dual-core Core i3: 1,002 single-core and 1,998 multi-core
  • MacBook Air / 1.1GHz quad-core Core i5: 1,055 single-core and 2,645 multi-core
  • MacBook Air / 1.2GHz quad-core Core i7: 1,102 single-core and 2,843 multi-core
  • MacBook Pro / 1.4GHz quad-core Core i5: 927 single-core and 3,822 multi-core
  • MacBook Pro / 1.7GHz quad-core Core i7: 1,036 single-core and 3,909 multi-core

Take aways:

  • The base model 13-inch MacBook Pro for $1,299 has up to 91 percent faster multi-core performance than the base model MacBook Air for $999
  • If you consider the MacBook Air, it is well worth the extra $100 to upgrade to the quad-core Core i5 option, as it is up to 32 percent faster than the base model and more closely rivals the base 13-inch MacBook Pro
Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against an Intel Core i3-8100 baseline score of 1,000, which is the score. Higher scores are better, with twice the score meaning twice the production. Compare it here with other Mac benchmarks.

Bottom Line

The MacBook Air is relatively good value if you value portability and up to an extra hour of battery life, and are willing to sacrifice some performance. As the $999 base model is fitted with a particularly slow dual-core processor, just remember to consider spending an additional $100 on the quad-core Core i5 processor option.

For more intense tasks, the faster processors and more advanced thermal design of the 13-inch MacBook Pro will allow you to push the limits more without the fans running obnoxiously. You can also get the Touch Bar, a brighter and more colourful monitor, and high dynamic range speakers that sound slightly better.


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