Broadwell 13" Macbook Pro and Air reviewed: good specs for price and size, marginal difference in speed, display on Air is inferior to similarly priced laptops
13-inch Broadwell MacBook showdown: Should you go Pro or get an Air? — Review: The 2015 Broadwell refreshes are similar, but not identical.
Context & Ripple Effects
This review lands mid-cycle in Apple's 2015 portable lineup: the 13-inch Pro and Air have both just moved to Broadwell silicon, and Ars Technica finds the refresh barely separates them on speed — leaving display quality and chassis as the actual buying criteria, where the Air's panel falls behind similarly priced rivals.
The verdict sets up the tension the following coverage keeps probing: a month later the new 12-inch MacBook wins praise for display and trackpad while stepping backward on performance and forcing a one-port compromise, and later reviews show the same question still open — the 2020 MacBook Pro 13-inch pairing a lovely screen with heat and high prices for Intel models, and the 2023 15-inch MacBook Air finally delivering a big, well-reviewed screen in the thin-and-light chassis the 2015 Air never managed.
First-order effects
- Broadwell gives shoppers no meaningful speed tiebreaker between the two 13-inch models, so the purchase decision collapses onto display and size — dimensions where the Air measurably loses to comparably priced laptops.
- The Air's inferior panel hands competing Windows laptops a concrete, checkable advantage at the same price point rather than a vague brand premium.
Second-order effects
- Apple's own 12-inch MacBook, reviewed weeks after this piece, cannibalizes the Air's selling points — better display and trackpad — at the cost of performance behind these Broadwell machines and a single port, fragmenting the company's own value ladder.
- As long as the good display lives only in the Pro, reviewers' default recommendation for mainstream buyers drifts up-price, pressuring the Air's role as the volume model.
Third-order effects
- The review captures the era's rigid trade-off — thin-and-light meant accepting a worse panel — and the subsequent record (the 2020 Pro's price and heat complaints, the 2023 Air 15's praised screen) shows Apple gradually dissolving that trade-off until display quality stopped being a Pro-exclusive feature.
- If that migration holds, the structural outcome is convergence: Pro and Air lines compete on ports, thermals, and upgradability rather than on a tiered display hierarchy, shrinking the spec gap that once justified the price separation.
The trend: Display quality has migrated down-market from Apple's Pro line into the Air over successive generations, eroding the spec hierarchy this 2015 review took for granted.