Pro 2 slow compared to MBA 11

[InspectHerGadget]

Trolling disclaimer: Not...

I commented previously having had a i7 SP3 which I returned that it was easily double the performance of my i5 4200 SP2.

I never thought until today of comparing web performance at least with my MBA 11.

This is what I found...disconcerting. If anyone has any ideas let me know. Yes it does have Norton 360 but the previous comparison I mentioned SP2/SP3 both had Norton 360. I also don't think the overhead would be that great.

I just did a test today comparing desktop IE on the Surface Pro 2 with my MBA 11 2013 Safari. It was easily double the speed.
It's interesting as the i7 on the SP3 would therefore be similar in performance on the web browser to my i5 1.3GHz MBA 11.
It makes the Surface Pro 2 seem slow. It is all recently installed and patched. True the SP2 has antivirus that the Mac doesn't have but my guess is that would be a small difference.

If anyone has any thoughts ideas or can carry out a similar comparison, please let me know....

Edit:

1. Bluetooth turned on has a huge affect on internet speed cutting it from 90 down to 30 Mbps. I knew of this affect and it can happen with the MBA too but the effect can be quite large. The download speed though is still not the cause of the slow Pro on browsing.

2. It looks like Norton itself may be at fault as it performed much better when unstalled then performed also much better when reinstalled.

Conclusions so far...

The WiFi performance on the SP2 (but also on the SP3) is adversely affected by having Bluetooth switched on.

The MBA is still faster on browsing but once Norton was reinstalled it was much better.

The performance difference I noticed in browsing between my i7 SP3 and this i5 4200 SP2 may be largely due to the issue with Norton, although obviously the i7 will be faster but a rematch would be in order...

 

[callihan_44]

in my experience antivirus is sometimes a waste of time, I run windows defender only and if I ever run into a problem I scan with malwarebytes. Most of the sites I visit on the internet are pretty secure but at work we have Norton business and we still get viruses. Usually through a pop up that people click on and boom infected.

 

[GreyFox7]

There seems to be a issue with InspectHerGadget labs testing methodology and results being somewhat unscientific, I'll stick with Anadtech for now.

 

[InspectHerGadget]

I don't recall Anandtech picking up on Bluetooth issues slowing Wifi, something that happens with the surface and Macbook. The difference on the Surface with Bluetooth off was huge. Since many people leave Bluetooth on, this is important. I noticed it on my testing as I can get 115Mbps download on my connection when connected by Ethernet using Gigabit router.

The Bluetooth interfering with Wifi isn't necessarily going to be noticed in normal browsing though.

I was surprised reinstalling Norton would improve performance but there you go unless you measure performance just after a reinstall with nothing on the computer, it can be hard to get good comparisons. The MBA has faster storage than the Surface and probably Safari is quicker as well. The PCIe storage is double the performance of either the SP2 or SP3 SSD storage.