The M3 Chip: A Game-Changer for Mac Devices?

When it comes to upgrading your Mac device, one thing is clear - Apple's latest chip, the M3, brings significant improvements over its predecessor. In our testing, we found that the M3 chip can export videos in a fraction of the time it took with the M2. For example, on the M3, we were able to export a video in 3 minutes and 40 seconds, whereas on the M1, it took a whopping 5 minutes and 5 seconds for the same project. This is especially impressive when considering that the video was under 3 minutes long.

The M3 chip also brings another exciting feature: Hardware accelerated Ray tracing. This means that you'll be able to see those lighting effects in certain games and applications, even without investing in a MacBook Pro. For gamers, this is a game-changer (pun intended). We were thrilled to see how well the M3 Air performed in games like Death Stranding, running at 120 frames per second with Ray tracing enabled. The graphics were incredibly smooth, and we were impressed by the level of detail on screen, including rain droplets and character models that rivaled those found on the PS5.

The M3 Air's portability is also a major selling point. Weighing in at just 2.75 pounds, this laptop is as thin as it is powerful. With no fans to speak of, you'd think that performance would suffer, but we were pleasantly surprised by how well it handled demanding tasks like gaming and video editing. The fact that it can run these types of workloads smoothly without overheating is a testament to Apple's engineering prowess.

Of course, there are some downsides to the M3 Air. One notable omission is the lack of Thunderbolt 4 ports. Instead, you're stuck with two USB-C ports and two Thunderbolt 3 ports, which can only be used to display two external monitors at once. While this may not be a deal-breaker for everyone, it's definitely something to consider.

Another minor quibble is the battery life. With regular usage, we found that the M3 Air lasted around 18 hours, which is respectable but not particularly impressive compared to other laptops on the market. However, if you're using your laptop for more demanding tasks like gaming or video editing, you can expect it to last all day.

The anodized finish on the midnight color option of the M3 Air has also become a point of contention among users. Despite being handled multiple times, we found that fingerprints still showed up quite easily - even after undergoing the same anodization process as other colors. It's unclear whether this is due to some sort of manufacturing issue or simply a limitation of the finish itself.

In conclusion, the M3 Air is a no-brainer for anyone looking to upgrade from their current Mac device. Whether you're using an M1 or M2 chip, the M3 offers significant performance improvements and new features like Ray tracing that make it a compelling choice. If you're in the market for a new laptop and have considered purchasing the M2 instead, we highly recommend upgrading to the M3 Air.

As with any Apple product, there are some compromises to be made. In this case, it's the lack of Thunderbolt 4 ports and limited battery life that may not appeal to everyone. However, these trade-offs pale in comparison to the overall performance and quality of the M3 Air.

In terms of specific configurations, we recommend opting for at least 16GB of RAM and a larger storage option if possible. The base configuration with 8GB of RAM will not provide enough oomph for demanding tasks like gaming or video editing.

Overall, the M3 Air is an excellent choice for anyone looking to upgrade their Mac device. Its impressive performance, portability, and feature set make it a compelling option that's sure to satisfy even the most demanding users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on guys it's your aage consumer and today we got the new M3 MacBook airs in the studio so let's give them a quick unboxing apple.com should be able to answer that question well thank you Siri let's check them out now we've got two versions of the air over here we've got the 13in midnight version as well as the 15in in Starlight now I've got some questions about this midnight so we're going to unbox this guy Apple's really perfected that all right so right here we've got the 13in M3 MacBook Air we'll get to that in a second Inside the Box we also have the braided cable this is the mag safe braided cable so it's got USBC on one end mag safe on the other and over here we've also have a quick start guide safety information and stickers ah they're in Midnight as well and last but not least we have the charging brick Oh this one has the Dual USBC ports so it's a 35 W brick with two USBC ports so you can charge multiple devices at the same time but all right let's move these off to the side and check this out and here we have it this is the new 13in midnight now what's different with this guy is that it went through an anodization sealing process so there should be less fingerprints on the midnight that was the Heartbreaker with the original midnight it looked beautiful this looks beautiful but it got fingerprint so easily and we saw that reduction come to the new Macbook Pros in that new black so hopefully we're seeing it here as well now I got the original so we're going to do some comparisons all right so we got the original and you guys can just you can you can see it for yourself right new one so from what we're seeing it looks like while it might still get fingerprints it's not going to completely eliminate it if that's what you're looking for so it reduce the amount compared to the previous one but now that we got this out the way going to spend some time with it and let's talk about what it can do all right you guys so let's get into these MacBook airs now for me I'm really familiar with the MacBook airs because they haven't changed the design much they haven't changed it at all it's exactly the same me personally I'm 100% okay with that because I think the airs are in a really good place they look amazing I love the form factor I like the overall uniform design uh we know that Mac come with amazing displays plenty bright it's a dark screen but the screens get plenty bright if you need to uh pump up the brightness at all colors are accurate we use them to edit all of our videos the keyboard typing experience is the same as with the previous air so it's all good things all around like just the standard stuff screen keyboard trackpad all of it is solid it's portable because they're obviously the airs and even speakers sound really good considering the fact that they're in such slim designs so with all the typical user experiences that you get from a laptop the air is in a really good place this design is one I hope that they keep for a while because it's really good I mean even the 1080p webcam over here is solid and you guys can hear the mics that are built into the air and honestly I don't know maybe it's all the lights but I feel like like I look kind of kind of nice right now but it might be the LIE now in terms of configurations you have the 13 and 15in option M3 is the only processor available if you're looking at the M3 lineup and you get up to 24 gigs of RAM 8 gigs is available but take my word for it don't go for that one and you also get up to 2 terab of storage but now let's talk about what is new and that's the M3 chip so M3 has been out for a little bit now on the MacBook Pros now they've come and made their way onto the airs now now I'm going to throw like the numbers up so you guys can see them for yourselves but to put it simply you're going to see the better performance jumps when you compare this to the M1 chip and like models before that like the Intel models so on the performance side of things unless you're doing super crazy work uh the air is a really really solid machine even I've been able to use the M2 air to get some of the stuff that I do in the studio here like you know a little bit of editing short form stuff and we're just going to do a super just quick export you can see it runs through this like butter this is like nothing to it uh we're going to export this real quick like I said if you're coming from an M2 don't like don't even look over here all right like this is not for you but if you're coming from something like the M1 MacBook Air that's where you're going to see the difference the same project that we showed you exported in 3 minutes and 40 seconds on the M3 while on the M1 it took it 5 minutes and 5 Seconds for for a shorter video like this which happens to be under 3 minutes you'll probably see that with bigger projects there'll be an even larger Gap now other benefits M3 brings to the table is Hardware accelerated Ray tracing so we're now going to be able to see you know those lighting effects in certain games uh as well as other applications so if you don't necessarily want to invest in like a MacBook Pro but you still want to have access to some of those features in software or games like that with the M3 air you'll now be able to access that and I got to say on the gaming side of things I'm just curious how many years we are away from serious AAA games coming over to the Mac we've been talking about this for a while now but seeing real legit raate tracing on the system itself is dope being able to play a game like death stranding and have it at 120 frames per second with ra tracing we've actually got this thing running at so we actually got it at 2560 by 1440 you know standard resolution at 120 frames per second graphics on very high that's the highest it's offering and it runs really really well and you can see that there's just a lot going on with the rain there's like rain droplets on the screen you can see the detail on the actual character I'm impressed this game that those are that's higher frame in PS5 I have which is not something anybody would expect right but yeah as we get I mean more serious titles on you know devices like this you got to remember this is a super thin device with no fans and Meanwhile we're playing huge titles and it runs super smoothly if we're not seeing Series aleaa titles on the Mac in 5 years I'm going to be pretty disappointed so definitely some great additions in terms of gaming now one other thing that we haven't really talked about yet is the two USB ports on the sides the two Thunderbolt 3 ports can now actually display two external displays which is awesome but you can't you can't use three you can't use the max display at the same time so it has to be closed Jay was making a joke that this could actually just replace Mac minis which kind of makes sense you know it it'd be maybe a little bit more expensive but you can have something completely portable whenever you want the only thing about this setup right here is that you you completely lose access to Thunderbolt ports you still get like USBC ports on the displays but like you just don't have access to legit Thunderbolt when you're using both of them for this I mean you could also just not use two monitors and just use a single one with the display on the air itself still have your Thunderbolt port and you still have two displays now if you've used a MacBook with apple silicon you know the battery life is pretty legit and there's like no real changes here 18 hours of battery life it lasts all day like unless you're doing some like crazy work or maybe a ton of gaming between the M2 and M3 with regular usage it's going to last you a couple days in my experience and one last thing I'll say about the anodized seal of the midnight version is that after handling it for a while the fingerprints still rack up quite a bit now to be fair I have pretty oily skin but compared to my space Black Mac Pro that I daily you can see it's quite a bit more visible even though they've been through the same anodization process honestly it just seems like a tough thing to beat for certain colors now is this a laptop worth picking up absolutely just get the right configuration don't go for the 8 gigs of RAM and everything else is just solid from a performance form factor and just overall quality perspective like this thing is absolutely awesome like I said earlier if you've got the M2 this is not for you for everyone else though it is a no-brainer of an upgrade even for M1 I feel like it's going to move in the direction that iPhones move in where if you have the previous generation chances are you don't really need to upgrade uh but if you have anything a little bit further back chances are you'll probably see some nice improvements I mean I love the air there's a reason why it's so popular if I had to change anything I would say I you know I wish it had more ports I know it's hard with a body this thin but I definitely would like to see you know three Thunderbolt ports not the a gig and just getting rid of the a gigs of r that that too that and less fingerprints on the midnight and I'm soldwhat's going on guys it's your aage consumer and today we got the new M3 MacBook airs in the studio so let's give them a quick unboxing apple.com should be able to answer that question well thank you Siri let's check them out now we've got two versions of the air over here we've got the 13in midnight version as well as the 15in in Starlight now I've got some questions about this midnight so we're going to unbox this guy Apple's really perfected that all right so right here we've got the 13in M3 MacBook Air we'll get to that in a second Inside the Box we also have the braided cable this is the mag safe braided cable so it's got USBC on one end mag safe on the other and over here we've also have a quick start guide safety information and stickers ah they're in Midnight as well and last but not least we have the charging brick Oh this one has the Dual USBC ports so it's a 35 W brick with two USBC ports so you can charge multiple devices at the same time but all right let's move these off to the side and check this out and here we have it this is the new 13in midnight now what's different with this guy is that it went through an anodization sealing process so there should be less fingerprints on the midnight that was the Heartbreaker with the original midnight it looked beautiful this looks beautiful but it got fingerprint so easily and we saw that reduction come to the new Macbook Pros in that new black so hopefully we're seeing it here as well now I got the original so we're going to do some comparisons all right so we got the original and you guys can just you can you can see it for yourself right new one so from what we're seeing it looks like while it might still get fingerprints it's not going to completely eliminate it if that's what you're looking for so it reduce the amount compared to the previous one but now that we got this out the way going to spend some time with it and let's talk about what it can do all right you guys so let's get into these MacBook airs now for me I'm really familiar with the MacBook airs because they haven't changed the design much they haven't changed it at all it's exactly the same me personally I'm 100% okay with that because I think the airs are in a really good place they look amazing I love the form factor I like the overall uniform design uh we know that Mac come with amazing displays plenty bright it's a dark screen but the screens get plenty bright if you need to uh pump up the brightness at all colors are accurate we use them to edit all of our videos the keyboard typing experience is the same as with the previous air so it's all good things all around like just the standard stuff screen keyboard trackpad all of it is solid it's portable because they're obviously the airs and even speakers sound really good considering the fact that they're in such slim designs so with all the typical user experiences that you get from a laptop the air is in a really good place this design is one I hope that they keep for a while because it's really good I mean even the 1080p webcam over here is solid and you guys can hear the mics that are built into the air and honestly I don't know maybe it's all the lights but I feel like like I look kind of kind of nice right now but it might be the LIE now in terms of configurations you have the 13 and 15in option M3 is the only processor available if you're looking at the M3 lineup and you get up to 24 gigs of RAM 8 gigs is available but take my word for it don't go for that one and you also get up to 2 terab of storage but now let's talk about what is new and that's the M3 chip so M3 has been out for a little bit now on the MacBook Pros now they've come and made their way onto the airs now now I'm going to throw like the numbers up so you guys can see them for yourselves but to put it simply you're going to see the better performance jumps when you compare this to the M1 chip and like models before that like the Intel models so on the performance side of things unless you're doing super crazy work uh the air is a really really solid machine even I've been able to use the M2 air to get some of the stuff that I do in the studio here like you know a little bit of editing short form stuff and we're just going to do a super just quick export you can see it runs through this like butter this is like nothing to it uh we're going to export this real quick like I said if you're coming from an M2 don't like don't even look over here all right like this is not for you but if you're coming from something like the M1 MacBook Air that's where you're going to see the difference the same project that we showed you exported in 3 minutes and 40 seconds on the M3 while on the M1 it took it 5 minutes and 5 Seconds for for a shorter video like this which happens to be under 3 minutes you'll probably see that with bigger projects there'll be an even larger Gap now other benefits M3 brings to the table is Hardware accelerated Ray tracing so we're now going to be able to see you know those lighting effects in certain games uh as well as other applications so if you don't necessarily want to invest in like a MacBook Pro but you still want to have access to some of those features in software or games like that with the M3 air you'll now be able to access that and I got to say on the gaming side of things I'm just curious how many years we are away from serious AAA games coming over to the Mac we've been talking about this for a while now but seeing real legit raate tracing on the system itself is dope being able to play a game like death stranding and have it at 120 frames per second with ra tracing we've actually got this thing running at so we actually got it at 2560 by 1440 you know standard resolution at 120 frames per second graphics on very high that's the highest it's offering and it runs really really well and you can see that there's just a lot going on with the rain there's like rain droplets on the screen you can see the detail on the actual character I'm impressed this game that those are that's higher frame in PS5 I have which is not something anybody would expect right but yeah as we get I mean more serious titles on you know devices like this you got to remember this is a super thin device with no fans and Meanwhile we're playing huge titles and it runs super smoothly if we're not seeing Series aleaa titles on the Mac in 5 years I'm going to be pretty disappointed so definitely some great additions in terms of gaming now one other thing that we haven't really talked about yet is the two USB ports on the sides the two Thunderbolt 3 ports can now actually display two external displays which is awesome but you can't you can't use three you can't use the max display at the same time so it has to be closed Jay was making a joke that this could actually just replace Mac minis which kind of makes sense you know it it'd be maybe a little bit more expensive but you can have something completely portable whenever you want the only thing about this setup right here is that you you completely lose access to Thunderbolt ports you still get like USBC ports on the displays but like you just don't have access to legit Thunderbolt when you're using both of them for this I mean you could also just not use two monitors and just use a single one with the display on the air itself still have your Thunderbolt port and you still have two displays now if you've used a MacBook with apple silicon you know the battery life is pretty legit and there's like no real changes here 18 hours of battery life it lasts all day like unless you're doing some like crazy work or maybe a ton of gaming between the M2 and M3 with regular usage it's going to last you a couple days in my experience and one last thing I'll say about the anodized seal of the midnight version is that after handling it for a while the fingerprints still rack up quite a bit now to be fair I have pretty oily skin but compared to my space Black Mac Pro that I daily you can see it's quite a bit more visible even though they've been through the same anodization process honestly it just seems like a tough thing to beat for certain colors now is this a laptop worth picking up absolutely just get the right configuration don't go for the 8 gigs of RAM and everything else is just solid from a performance form factor and just overall quality perspective like this thing is absolutely awesome like I said earlier if you've got the M2 this is not for you for everyone else though it is a no-brainer of an upgrade even for M1 I feel like it's going to move in the direction that iPhones move in where if you have the previous generation chances are you don't really need to upgrade uh but if you have anything a little bit further back chances are you'll probably see some nice improvements I mean I love the air there's a reason why it's so popular if I had to change anything I would say I you know I wish it had more ports I know it's hard with a body this thin but I definitely would like to see you know three Thunderbolt ports not the a gig and just getting rid of the a gigs of r that that too that and less fingerprints on the midnight and I'm sold\n"