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On A Road Trip With The New MacBook Air, I Met Its Nemesis: Google Chrome

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The Retina MacBook Air has a problem with Google Chrome. That's the most salient issue after spending a long time with the redesigned MBA.

[What follows is a brief review of 2018-2019 Retina MacBook Air centered on performance issues.]

There are two parts to the problem. The MacBook Air half of the problem is rooted in the macOS combined with the "Amber Lake" Intel dual-core i5-8210Y processor. The issue becomes most apparent when running multiple tabs in browsers, like Google Chrome.

Amber Lake, released widely to vendors in the first quarter of 2019 (but obviously available to Apple before that), is an ultra-low-power 7 watt processor that is good at sipping power and extending battery life but sputters when the system is taxed* on heavy workloads on macOS.

That's been my experience over the long haul — I've been using the late-2018 MBA (which has the same Intel processor as the little-changed 2019 model) since January.

The hitch as I see it: the dual-core Amber Lake processor on macOS is suitable for the now-discontinued ultra-compact 2-pound 12-inch MacBook (which used the same ultra-low-power Intel processors) but not the bigger 2.75-pound Retina MacBook Air. The latter deserves either a variant of the more standard 15-watt processor or something along the lines of a quad-core version of the just-announced ultra-low-power Intel 10th-generation "Comet Lake" processors.

My Retina MacBook Air:

  • Intel dual-core "Amber Lake" i5-8210Y, 1.60 GHz with Turbo Boost to 3.60 GHz
  • 8GB of RAM
  • 256GB storage
  • macOS Mojave

The Chrome browser is also a culprit

The performance problems didn't begin to become chronic* until the summer when I went on a long road trip with the MBA. That's when lots of multi-tasking came pretty close to bringing the system to its knees in some cases.

How I used the MBA changed on the road trip. Because I was relying on one system (not the several systems that I typically use simultaneously) I had more tabs open in Safari and Chrome. That included streaming cable TV news and other cable shows (one at a time) in the background.

In some cases when the load was heavier than usual, the system slowed to a crawl and tabs sometimes became unresponsive. If I had more than a dozen tabs open and needed to frequently switch between tabs, my workflow slowed down enough to make me wish I had another laptop handy.

The problem will typically show up quickly but sometimes it won't manifest itself until after extended use. Roughly 30 minutes.

I exchanged emails with an Apple spokesperson about the issues. The Google Chrome browser is an often-cited culprit as a processor "hog." More specifically, the Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) often consumes a disproportionate amount of processor resources. And indeed when I took a look at the Mac Activity Monitor, Google Chrome was often using more CPU resources than any single app and sometimes as much as 50 percent of the processor resources.

But Safari isn’t really that efficient either

I prefer Chrome over Safari so I would like to stick with Chrome (like most of the planet's laptop users). With a lot of tabs open, Safari exhibits the same memory usage problems (as does Firefox). System performance will slow down when I have more than a few tabs open and simultaneously have tabs open in Chrome. So much so that I get warnings at the top of Safari about it using too much memory.

Chrome browser issue not specific to MacBook Air but the MBA struggles more than other laptops

Of course, this Chrome browser thing isn't specific to the MacBook Air but is there in any system I use. The problem is, it can make the MacBook Air unresponsive in some cases.

I queried Google about the problem and they sent me to this page.

I'm guessing that one reaction to this review will be that it's not a MacBook Air problem but a Google Chrome issue. My point is, with most of the laptop users on the planet using the Chrome browser, laptops have to be up to the task of handling Chrome, for better or worse.

Slow-down not as severe on other systems: a future MacBook Air could mitigate the issue

Upgrading to 16GB of RAM isn't the solution. That may help but the MBA is marketed as a low-cost MacBook capable of handling everyday productivity tasks and standard format video streaming. And buying an MBA with 16GB of RAM ($1,500) isn't worth it. It's more practical to opt for the MacBook Pro when you get into that price range.

Besides, I have other systems with 8GB of RAM that don't get taxed like the MacBook Air, which makes me believe it's a combination of the processor and macOS.

I also use a Google Pixelbook (2.4 pounds) and Pixel Slate (1.6 pounds) — both come with 8GB of ram and ultra-low-power Intel Y series processors similar to the processors used in the MacBook Air. Those two Chromebooks don't have the same performance issues as the MBA when running many tabs. I'm guessing that one of the reasons for that is, the Google Chrome browser running on Google's Chrome OS is more efficient.

And I use an HP Spectre 13 with 8GB of RAM and a 15-watt quad-core processor. It's only 2.4 pounds and even thinner than the MacBook Air. It does not slow down noticeably with lots of tabs and background processes — though its battery life does fall well short of the MacBook Air.

I should add that I have a Dell XPS 13 9380 (early 2019). While I can't make a direct comparison because it has 16GB of RAM and a faster quad-core processor, its weight (2.7 pounds) and size is very close to the MBA. And it definitely does not suffer from the same problems as the MacBook Air Retina.

Needless to say, more powerful MacBook Pros don't have this problem in my experience. I've used a 15-inch MBP day in and day out for years and never had the problem manifest itself like it does on the MacBook Air.

As a final thought, it is interesting to note that on Geekbench 4 benchmarks, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (late 2018) is faster than the MacBook Air. Roughly 25 percent faster in single core and more than 133 percent faster on multi-core. And I don't experience the kind of system slowdowns described above on the iPad Pro.

I hope Apple addresses this on the coming processor refresh of the MacBook Air. I don't have much hope for Google addressing the Chrome issue since it's been around for eons.

—-

Notes:

*In my initial review of the MacBook Air I did not note these performance issues.

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