Macworld received its first baseline MacBook Air earlier this morning, and has posted initial benchmarks using its in-house Speedmark test suite courtesy of the lab.
The results are not mind-blowing as expected, slower than all other current model Mac’s in the open market. Including the MacBook Pro and the MacBook.
For this first set of tests, we used a default-configuration MacBook Air powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 4200 rpm, 1.8-inch 80GB parallel ATA hard drive.
I do feel the hard-drive is one of the major bottlenecks of the MacBook Air. When set against laptops using 5400 and 7400 RPM drives, the difference is noticeable to say the least. I’m looking forward to seeing some benchmarks with the 64GD SSD option installed in the machine.
When set against a 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air encodes music in iTunes almost 50% slower than the Pro counterpart, and around 40% slower in the Handbrake encoding test.
Speaking of Speedmark, the MacBook Air’s score of 123 is the lowest score we’ve recorded for any Intel-based Mac laptop, but it does handily beat our PowerPC laptop reference system, the 1.67Ghz 15-inch PowerBook G4.
The 1.67Ghz 15-inch PowerBook G4 crossed the finishing line with a Speedmark overall score of 92 compared to the MacBook Air’s score of 123. The 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro led the chase at 185, just over double the score of the PowerBook.
Check out the full piece complete with initial performance views.