MacBook Pros, Hit the Bench: The Air Is Gaining Muscle

If you bought a MacBook Pro last year, tough beans: It just got outflanked by its slimmer, smaller cousin, the MacBook Air.

According to benchmark tests, the 2011 MacBook Air outperforms every 2010 MacBook Pro.

Laptop magazine reports that the 13-inch Air had a performance boost of 100 percent over last year’s Air, scoring 5,860 on the Geekbench test. It boots in 17 seconds, and has a 6.25-hour battery life. The 11-inch Air jumped 149 percent, for a Geekbench score of 5,040, compared to 2,024 for last year’s model. It took 19 seconds to boot up, and its battery lasted a little longer than 4.75 hours.

As a direct comparison, the 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro scored 5,423 on its benchmark test — so the new 13-inch Mac Book Air is more powerful than the 17-inch Pro, and the 11-inch Air is on par with it. Kind of mind blowing.

The MacBook Pro line, particularly the 2010 MacBook Pros, have been a big target audience for Apple. Available in 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch sizes, they featured the most powerful processors in Apple’s line of portables (the 15- and 17-inchers came standard with a 2.6-GHz Intel Core i5 Chip).