Macbook Air 1.1GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i5 vs MacBook Pro Core i5 2.4GHz 13" Retina (Late 2013) I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2013) 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 and I've been waiting for the new keyboard to be added to new macs in order to upgrade because my trusty "old" MacBook has been around the block… (USB port not working, scratched screen, busted speaker, etc. )

The new MacBook Air seems like a worthy contender… Just trying to figure out if I'd be actually downgrading in terms of speed 

I'm sure for web browsing and watching movies, it doesn't matter. The only processor intensive stuff I do would be:


Big illustration files in Affinity Photo/Designer
Same in Photoshop/Illustrator
Files with a ridiculous amount of frames in Figma (out of my control)


TL;DR: 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 vs 1.1GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i5? About the same? Better? Worse?

Thanks for any pointer in the right direction ✌️
Your MacBook Pro has a dual core i5-4258U CPU, which currently has average scores of 645/1,401 (single-core/multi-core) in Geekbench 5. There aren't yet enough scores of the latest (early 2020) MacBook Air but one early benchmark returned scores of 1,047/2,658.

This suggests that the MacBook Air should be almost twice as fast as your current MacBook Pro, which seems reasonable as the former has a seven generations-later quad core CPU. One thing to be aware of - due to the size of the MacBook Air it may not be able to sustain that level of performance for extended periods as the CPU may be throttled so that it doesn't exceed temperature thresholds. A MacBook Pro won't throttle the CPU as much as the chassis is slightly larger and it has improved cooling (even with any possible throttling the Air will be faster than your current MacBook Pro).