
It wasn't too long ago that the 15-inch MacBook Pro only had a 50Wh battery so this new 13-inch MacBook Air should be a good upgrade for users of older MacBook Pros even from a battery life standpoint. The new Air models retain the same battery capacities as their predecessors: 35Wh for the 11 and 50Wh for the 13. On top of that there's also power gating and architectural efficiencies to take into account. The CPU and GPU are both on 32nm compared to 45/40nm for the previous generation. The 2011 Air gets the benefits of integration. The Core 2 is a very mature architecture that uses very little power under load. Last year's MacBook Air used a 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo CPU paired with an NVIDIA chipset.



We've already established that the new MacBook Air lineup is significantly faster than its predecessor, but what does that do to battery life? Interestingly enough with a couple exceptions, not too much.
