Apple MacBook Air flies thanks to the quad-core Core i5: up to 76% more powerful than the previous model

The new MacBook Air 2020 it is an upgrade at first sight marginal, but in reality rather full-bodied compared to the model it replaces: in particular the new processors and the keyboard with scissor mechanism stand out, finally distancing themselves from the butterfly switches that many headaches have created for society in past years. But here we talk about benchmarks, and therefore we focus on how the new processors are compared to the old models.

The decision to also include processors 10th Generation Intel Core i5 represents a noticeable performance improvement, given that the MB Air of 2018 and 2019 offered only the eighth-generation Core i5s with half the cores in the CPU (2 against 4).

The first benchmarks on GeekBench confirm this: colleagues from MacRumors they averaged over 10 tests performed on the platform in the past few hours (in all probability it is the demonstration units sent to the press and various YouTubers) and scores came out equal to 1,047 in single core and 2,658 in multi. The 2018 MacBook Air, by contrast, arrived just at 790 and 1.628.

To begin with, we can say that the new MB Air (always with Core i5, of course) has up to 76% more power than the previous generation. Furthermore, from the graph below, it is interesting to note that in fact this generation represents the greatest increase, even in single-core, since the time of Air 2013 (which, to be honest, is here represented by the most powerful version with Core i7).

Interesting then to spend a few words on the model with entry-level CPU, that is a Core i3, always tenth generation, but dual core. For obvious reasons, it is therefore reasonable to expect much more modest improvements: for now the benchmarks are not many, so the preliminary data may not be too precise; the fact is that we are talking about 849 and 1,685 points. That means: + 10% maximum compared to the previous generation Air.

The MacBook Air 2020 with Core i3 starts from 1,229 euros; the upgrade to Core i5 quad-core requires 300 euros (official Italian list prices). It's a nice figure, but the improvement in performance is clear.