Apple's new MacBook Airs were benchmarked

The table above reveals new benchmarks for Apple Macbooks and iPad compiled by Geekbench developer Primate Labs so that customers could compare which device is the best to buy.

As you see, though the newest 13.3-inch MacBook Air has a 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, it is 80% as good as the latest 13.3-inch MacBook Pros with its 2.66 GHz and 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPUs. But the 11.6-inch MacBook Air (which has a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo chip) is only capable of 60% of the performance of the same MacBook Pro with 2.4GHz chip. This raises doubts whether the 11.6-inch MacBook Air will be a good decision for a primary machine.

John Poole, who is an author of Geekbench, compares new Airs to the iPad:

"There are two ways you can look at the new 11-inch MacBook Air; it's either a much smaller but slower MacBook Pro, or a much faster but larger iPad. The 11-inch MacBook Air is small enough that I'd consider bringing it instead of an iPad, but I'd worry it's not fast enough (or have enough screen space) to be my primary laptop."

By the way, note that the benchmarks do not include those MacBook Airs, which have optionally improved CPUs.