For wireless power transfer via magnetic resonant coupling (MRC-WPT), magnetic coupling between resonant coils can be greatly enhanced when a ferrite core is introduced inside the coils. Based on the equivalent circuit model of wireless power transfer system, transfer characteristics of the MRC-WPT system with air resonant coils and with a ferrite core are respectively analyzed in this paper. The influence mechanism of the load on the power transfer efficiency is investigated. Also, the requirement of load for improving transfer efficiency is derived when adding the ferrite core to the system. The numerical simulation and experiment result indicate that the transmission efficiency in the MRC-WPT system with ferrite core is higher than that in the counterpart with air resonant coils in the whole transfer region when the load is larger than the maximal critical load. In addition, for different transfer distances, the system efficiency for the system using the ferrite core tends to become lower than that in the air coil system when the load is smaller than the critical load.