M3 MacBook Air Review - Should You Upgrade

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthese are the new Macbook airs the 13-in and 15in running on Apple's latest M3 silicon and that is the big change here from the M2 13in that rolled out in 2022 and the 15in that was introduced in 2023 the overall design hasn't changed at all they're still simple and elegant and clean in fact uh this isn't even the M3 air it's the 15 in M2 Air This is actually the M3 version so you can see they're identical and the features for the most part are the same too and yeah the performance difference from the M2 to the M3 is not huge though the jumping graphics performance we saw with the M3 MacBook Pros is here too I'll get to more about our early Benchmark results in a bit I've only had my hands on these for a couple days but just generally speaking the M2 air was already pretty great even well into its second year so while the M3 is better than the M2 it's the difference between the M3 air and the M1 air and the Intel based MacBook airs that are dramatic before I get into specifics let's talk about configurations and pricing the base 13in M3 air is about $1,100 and has an 8 core CPU 8 core GPU 8 gigs of memory and a 256 gig SSD for storage that is not a lot of memory or storage for the money but more importantly it limits the overall longevity of the laptop so you'll really want to think long and hard before biting on those base models on the upside sort of uh if you upgrade either the memory or storage Apple also bumps you up to an M3 with a 10 core GPU this makes the $200 charge to double the memory or storage a little more understandable paying $400 to double both though that's a bit more of a gut punch regardless of specs though and performance gains there are two new features that all the configurations have they're small but worth talking about one is a move from Wi-Fi 6 to 6E which basically translates to faster Wireless speeds assuming you have a router that supports it and the second is a bit more interesting so if you you already own a MacBook Air you probably already know this or hopefully didn't find out the hard way that the air only supports One external display the M3 air will now support two external displays so you can get two Studio displays like this plug one in and then plug the other in to the USBC ports on the side and that will oh so it doesn't immediately give you the second display you have to close the air and then it will kick on the second display so you do have to have the lid closed in order to get the two displays up and that unfortunately also means you don't have a keyboard or trackpad anymore to work with so you'll need to get a set of these and you'll probably want the touch ID version of this because you've eliminated the touch ID access on the laptop if you are already have a MacBook Air and you want a second display you can pick up something like this pluggable dock uh that has display link and that will allow you to connect two displays to your MacBook Air but this is a much more elegant solution because it's built into the MacBook but that's really it for changes mostly because the design is newish so key features and Design Elements stay the same so that means things like the fanless recycled aluminum body the beautiful liquid retina displays the excellent 1080p FaceTime camera the great sounding speaker systems and the mag save 3 charging and dual Thunderbolt ports they are all here from the M2 versions of course that also means things like the camera Notch and the displays are still here the fact that there's Touch ID but still no face ID and the power and both USBC ports are crowded on the left so there's no option to charge uh from the right side so again if you already have an M2 MacBook Air the reasons to upgrade are limited if you're a Creator or want to play more demanding games we played a little balers gate and death stranding for example trading in an M2 air for an M3 might make sense on the other hand for M1 air and intel-based air owners the reasons to upgrade are are plentiful we ran a few benchmarks in the short time we've had these and the performance essentially matches that of the 14-in M3 MacBook Pro we tested last year it's generally faster than the M2 air but again it's the graphics performance that really shines and it trounced an intel-based 2019 MacBook Pro which happens to be my work laptop so that's a bit depressing for good measure we also tested a new Lenovo slim 7 which is a 14-in OLED laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor integrated art Graphics 32 gigs of memory and a terabyte of storage for around $1,000 its performance pretty much matches the M3s except for again Graphics where the Lenovo was competitive with the M1 air from 2020 so Intel clearly needs to do some work there still and anyway uh if you're wondering about battery life we frankly haven't had time to test it because these will likely run for close to the 18 hours that Apple claims the 14-in M3 Pro by the way we tested it last year and it ran for nearly 19 hours in our tests so yeah if you're ready to upgrade from an older MacBook Air really either the M2 or M3 models will be a significant Improvement the 13-in M2 MacBook Air is now the 900 $99 entry model and Apple has discontinued the 15in M2 so you can probably find some good deals on that right now but if you plan to use your MacBook Air for stem work or design work or rendering video or editing Raw photos the M3 is the better choice and you should get at least 16 gigs of memory you can check out more details on the M3 MacBook airs including more performance tests at cet.com so what do you think are you ready to pull the trigger for an M3 air or are you just going to wait to see if Apple ever includes more memory or storage for your money and then you know hopefully gets rid of that camera Notch anyway let me know in the comments thanks for watching and you'll see me when you see methese are the new Macbook airs the 13-in and 15in running on Apple's latest M3 silicon and that is the big change here from the M2 13in that rolled out in 2022 and the 15in that was introduced in 2023 the overall design hasn't changed at all they're still simple and elegant and clean in fact uh this isn't even the M3 air it's the 15 in M2 Air This is actually the M3 version so you can see they're identical and the features for the most part are the same too and yeah the performance difference from the M2 to the M3 is not huge though the jumping graphics performance we saw with the M3 MacBook Pros is here too I'll get to more about our early Benchmark results in a bit I've only had my hands on these for a couple days but just generally speaking the M2 air was already pretty great even well into its second year so while the M3 is better than the M2 it's the difference between the M3 air and the M1 air and the Intel based MacBook airs that are dramatic before I get into specifics let's talk about configurations and pricing the base 13in M3 air is about $1,100 and has an 8 core CPU 8 core GPU 8 gigs of memory and a 256 gig SSD for storage that is not a lot of memory or storage for the money but more importantly it limits the overall longevity of the laptop so you'll really want to think long and hard before biting on those base models on the upside sort of uh if you upgrade either the memory or storage Apple also bumps you up to an M3 with a 10 core GPU this makes the $200 charge to double the memory or storage a little more understandable paying $400 to double both though that's a bit more of a gut punch regardless of specs though and performance gains there are two new features that all the configurations have they're small but worth talking about one is a move from Wi-Fi 6 to 6E which basically translates to faster Wireless speeds assuming you have a router that supports it and the second is a bit more interesting so if you you already own a MacBook Air you probably already know this or hopefully didn't find out the hard way that the air only supports One external display the M3 air will now support two external displays so you can get two Studio displays like this plug one in and then plug the other in to the USBC ports on the side and that will oh so it doesn't immediately give you the second display you have to close the air and then it will kick on the second display so you do have to have the lid closed in order to get the two displays up and that unfortunately also means you don't have a keyboard or trackpad anymore to work with so you'll need to get a set of these and you'll probably want the touch ID version of this because you've eliminated the touch ID access on the laptop if you are already have a MacBook Air and you want a second display you can pick up something like this pluggable dock uh that has display link and that will allow you to connect two displays to your MacBook Air but this is a much more elegant solution because it's built into the MacBook but that's really it for changes mostly because the design is newish so key features and Design Elements stay the same so that means things like the fanless recycled aluminum body the beautiful liquid retina displays the excellent 1080p FaceTime camera the great sounding speaker systems and the mag save 3 charging and dual Thunderbolt ports they are all here from the M2 versions of course that also means things like the camera Notch and the displays are still here the fact that there's Touch ID but still no face ID and the power and both USBC ports are crowded on the left so there's no option to charge uh from the right side so again if you already have an M2 MacBook Air the reasons to upgrade are limited if you're a Creator or want to play more demanding games we played a little balers gate and death stranding for example trading in an M2 air for an M3 might make sense on the other hand for M1 air and intel-based air owners the reasons to upgrade are are plentiful we ran a few benchmarks in the short time we've had these and the performance essentially matches that of the 14-in M3 MacBook Pro we tested last year it's generally faster than the M2 air but again it's the graphics performance that really shines and it trounced an intel-based 2019 MacBook Pro which happens to be my work laptop so that's a bit depressing for good measure we also tested a new Lenovo slim 7 which is a 14-in OLED laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor integrated art Graphics 32 gigs of memory and a terabyte of storage for around $1,000 its performance pretty much matches the M3s except for again Graphics where the Lenovo was competitive with the M1 air from 2020 so Intel clearly needs to do some work there still and anyway uh if you're wondering about battery life we frankly haven't had time to test it because these will likely run for close to the 18 hours that Apple claims the 14-in M3 Pro by the way we tested it last year and it ran for nearly 19 hours in our tests so yeah if you're ready to upgrade from an older MacBook Air really either the M2 or M3 models will be a significant Improvement the 13-in M2 MacBook Air is now the 900 $99 entry model and Apple has discontinued the 15in M2 so you can probably find some good deals on that right now but if you plan to use your MacBook Air for stem work or design work or rendering video or editing Raw photos the M3 is the better choice and you should get at least 16 gigs of memory you can check out more details on the M3 MacBook airs including more performance tests at cet.com so what do you think are you ready to pull the trigger for an M3 air or are you just going to wait to see if Apple ever includes more memory or storage for your money and then you know hopefully gets rid of that camera Notch anyway let me know in the comments thanks for watching and you'll see me when you see me\n"