Should I sell my MacBook Air to get a MacBook Pro?

I wouldn't do that trade, not on your life. You may actually find that your proposed MBP will appear to work slower than your existing MBA, due to the IO limitations of a hard disk vs. your MBA's flash storage. Most everything you do on a Mac that involves any waiting at all is hard disk read / write activity. It will definitely take longer for that MBP to start up and wake from sleep and its battery won't last as long between charges.

On the other hand if you have an offer of $950 for yours that's a pretty good deal. I'd take that deal and trade up to a newer MBA.

Whatever is causing your MBA to get hot is unknown. I run Netflix on one with the same specs as yours and it does not get hot. While streaming video the fan will operate at higher than idle speed, but less than 3000 RPM and the noise is not objectionable at that speed.

Find out why yours is getting hot, or better yet just take the $950 and buy a new MBA. Your cost to trade up was $1 a week. Now you'll have a much more capable one with a twelve hour battery life. Oh, Macs are so expensive... 😁

Please do both your buyer and yourself a favor and correctly prepare your MBA for sale.

Read: What to do before selling or giving away your Mac. Basically: erase the Mac completely and reinstall its original operating system - probably Lion. Follow these simple instructions and everyone's happy.

Here is an excellent video comparison between the 11” I5 vs. I7 2013 Macbook Air.

http://www.apple-tubes.com/apple-macbook-air-11-mid-2013-haswell-i5-vs-i7-compar ison/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7113/2013-macbook-air-core-i5-4250u-vs-core-i7-465 0u/2

I5 vs. I7 performance 13” Macbook Air 2013

Boot performance

11.7 I5 ……11.4 I7

Cinebench

1.1 I5….1.41 I7

IMovie Import and Opt.

6.69 I5….5.35 I7

IMovie Export

10.33 I5…8.20 I7

Final Cut Pro X

21.47 I5…17.71 I7

Adobe Lightroom 3 Export

25.8 I5….31.8 I7

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Performance

27.3 I5…22.6 I7

In terms of processing speed you would be comparing Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture to the Haswell so CPU clock speed alone will not be a sufficient metric, and the i7 vs. i5 complicates matters.

In most cases it's not worthwhile to examine such minute differences. You could compare Geekbench scores for instance, but a much better test would be to take your MacBook Air to an Apple Store and set it alongside a new MBA. Compare how long it takes each one to boot and perform similar tasks, and draw your own subjective conclusions. Perhaps you will perceive a difference, perhaps not, but even if there is it's not likely to be significant. While you're there you can perform the same comparison with a MacBook Pro. You can stay there for hours, they won't care.

This begs the question of why you're considering selling your MBA for anything new in the first place. If it's just the overheating issue that concerns you, that should be addressed. It's not normal. Its exhaust fan may be inoperative or you may have some ill-conceived software that's to blame.

FYI I've been streaming a Netflix movie using an MBA with identical specs as yours for nearly an hour, while posting here on ASC, as well as performing some other minor tasks like email and a few other web pages. The battery is at 82% and charging. The upper left keyboard area is merely warm.

Run Apple Hardware Test and make sure its fan is operating normally. Connect the MBA's power adapter while running AHT or it may report a spurious error.

LKember wrote:

... My laptop is only 2 years old but I feel like I'm getting a pretty good deal for a 2 year old laptop

I agree.