**The M3 MacBook Air: A Generational Upgrade**

When it comes to upgrading from one generation of MacBook Air to the next, there are several factors to consider. The external display situation is particularly interesting. If you're looking to use an external display with your laptop, only when the laptop is closed will that work. However, using two large external displays can be very beneficial for tasks like editing video, and having a clamshell mode on the laptop makes it possible to achieve this.

A better finish, slightly faster Wi-Fi, and faster base storage are all well and good, but they don't make for much of a generational upgrade. The real meat of the new M3 chip is what sets it apart from its predecessor. It's still an 8-core CPU with four high-efficiency cores and four high-performance cores. Let's take a look at how this compares to previous generations.

**Geekbench 6 Results**

Inside Geekbench 6, we can see undoubted great gains on both the single core and multi-core tests. This is very impressive generation over generation. The GPU comes in both eight and ten core flavors, with the M3 MacBook Air having the ten-core GPU. If you're looking at the new models, it's a $100 upgrade for the 13-inch MacBook Air. However, if you opt for the 15-in MacBook Air, it is included by default.

There was a small change in the GPU performance between the M2 and M3 MacBook Airs. In that case, we went from an eight-core GPU to a ten-core GPU, which was a big jump. Here, though, we're looking at a ten-core versus a ten-core, so there's not as much generational change.

**Other Benchmarks**

While Geekbench 6 is certainly a useful benchmark, it isn't the end-all be-all of benchmarks. Let's take a look at some other results to get a more rounded picture of what we can expect in terms of performance. Cinebench R23 showed us that the M3 MacBook Air had better single-core scores than expected, with multi-core scores not by huge amounts.

Speedometer 3.0 is a new benchmark that has literally just launched today. We were able to run it and see some phenomenal browser performance upgrades. This is very important because many people are buying MacBook Air for web browsing. It's great to see this level of improvement.

**Infinity Photo Benchmarks**

We also took a look at the Infinity photo benchmarks, which showed off the combined CPU scores on the top two lines and the combined GPU scores on the bottom two lines. You can see for yourself how much of an improvement the M3 had over its predecessor in these tests.

**What's New with the M3 Chip**

The M3 chip is more than just a boost in CPU and graphics – it also packs hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mass shading, AV1 decoding, and a faster neural engine. Apple has been laying the groundwork for the neural engine for some time now, and I think we're going to see a lot about this technology at WWDC later this year.

**Is It Worth the $100 Upgrade?**

If you're looking specifically at the 13-in version of the M2 or M3 MacBook Air, it's $100 more to buy the newer model. Whether these changes are worth that $100 depends on your specific needs and circumstances. If you already have an M2 version, it might not be worth shelling out for. However, if you're looking at this as a brand-new machine, the M3 is amazingly solid.

**The 15-in M3 MacBook Air: A Great Value**

In my opinion, the 15-in M3 MacBook Air is basically my go-to recommendation for anyone looking to buy a Mac. It hits that sweet spot of price-performance-screen size – everything kind of right there in the middle. If you're interested in a new MacBook Air, I think it's a great value.

**Deals and Discounts**

We've already started gathering deals and discounts on the new M3 version of the MacBook Air, but we also have closeout deals on the M2 versions that have been cleared out. Check them out down below!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI've got both the M3 MacBook Air and the last generation M2 MacBook Air how much better is the new model should you just pick up a discounted M2 or is the M3 really just that much better well that's what I'm about to find out specifically what I'm going to be looking at here is I've got my last generation M2 MacBook Air this is the 13-in MacBook Air the M2 Chip with a 10 core GPU I'm going to be comparing this guy against the brand new 15-in Macbook Air with the M3 chip on the inside also starts off at a 10 core GPU when you're looking at the 15-in version so 10 core GPU versus 10 core GPU M2 versus M3 generation over generation there are several big changes that I'm going to be breaking down the new M3 chip changes to storage improved Wi-Fi the new finish and that whole display situation we should probably start with a good news bad news situation Apple has listened and increased the performance of the base SSD when compared to the M2 the downside it's still only 256 gigs with previous versions of the MacBook Air Apple would use one chip for that base 256 gig storage configuration but larger configurations would use two chips for example the 512 gig option would use two 200 56 gig chips that means data could be written to both chips at the same time when wired in parallel which also meant that the solo chip had notably worse performance that was rated with these 2024 models that use two 128 gig chips for that base 256 gig configuration the L gen 256 GB model managed read and rate speeds of around 1450 megabytes per second each way but my new 256 gig M3 version had 1,00 mb per second on the right speed and over 2700 for the read speed it's still ridiculous though that apple is including 256 gigs as a starting option anyway it's an upcharge of $200 to go to the 512 gig storage and at that point you're only $100 away from the 14-in MacBook Pro which does start with 512 gigs of storage I just think it's criminally unacceptable to offer 256 gigs as your base storage option on a laptop here in 2024 I mean Apple's going to end up shooting themselves in the foot here because it's going to give people a reason to drop back to discounted or refurbished M2 versions so that they can invest more money into the storage because most people probably will need to upgrade from that 256 also tucked away on the internals of this machine right above the new M3 chip is Apple wireless chip it houses both the Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi Apple upgraded the Wi-Fi here from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 6E the big change with Wi-Fi 6E is the addition of the 6 GHz band Spectrum alongside 2.4 and five that newly allocated spectrum is really helpful in crowded areas like cities or apartment buildings when there's a ton of different routers all competing for that Spectrum assuming you have a router that supports it that six GHz band can also be used as a wireless back haul for mesh routers so you could still see benefits here with that Network even if you don't have all Wi-Fi 6E devices in your house the biggest Wireless changes though are going to be coming with Wi-Fi 7 there's a chance we could see some mac updated with Wi-Fi 7 later this year but since these things were you know just updated it's going to be at least a year before we see Wi-Fi 7 coming to the MacBook airline in my studio I still have Wi-Fi 6 routers for my primary Network so I ran a few speed tests with both machines on Wi-Fi 6 to see how they compared unsurprisingly on the Wi-Fi 6 Network there there wasn't much of a difference here they were basically the same I actually had slightly better performance on the M2 MacBook Air but there's a you know big differential in this test like you run it it can go faster and slower so it kind of averages everything out I I don't think there's much of a difference at all thanks to the Wi-Fi 6E here if you're using it on a Wi-Fi 6 Network luckily I also had a Wi-Fi 6E Network that I could test so I ran the test again on Wi-Fi 6E to see how that actually diff yeah and and still there there wasn't much of a differ like 960 versus 1,000 it a very small difference between these two machines even on a WiFi 6E Network it's only going to really make sense if you are in those crowded areas or is that back haul for a mesh system so there's still going to be benefits to Wi-Fi 6E but at least here in my home I didn't see a huge difference that would lead me to really necessitate jumping to the newer model for that specific reason the biggest changes though are yet to come but before we talk about them let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor for this video journey I know we're all eager to get back to the other stuff but I just have to show off the Nexa sleeve from Journey and I promise you you have not seen anything like this before the journey Nexa sleeve is technically a 4in one sleeve that fits both 13 and 14 or 15 and 16 in laptops you get the check this out so this is the sleeve itself it has this heathered fabric on the back that I think looks very handsome and on this side it's a vegan leather and you're notice the top here so the top magnetically closes and hides your laptop inside you can open it remove our MacBook Air you set your sleeve down on your desk so first it could just be a nice little pad to set your laptop on but you could also set your laptop to the side and use that vegan leather surface as a very bespoke portable mouse pad but that's not not what makes this thing so exciting on the side it has not only a little Chi charging pad for your airpods but it also has a second Max safe compatible charging pad for your iPhone then you just run a USBC cable out the back to connect it to your laptop or to a power supply and you can charge your gear wherever you are I think this is so clever I love the idea of protecting your laptop while also giving you all these other benefits there are a bunch of other laptop sleeves out there but I have not seen any that build in a maive compatible charger a chi charger a mouse pad and all this impact protection for your laptop All in One Singular device I think it's really smart if you guys think it's cool you can grab one of the link below in the description thanks again to Journey for sponsoring this video one of the things that I think is so funny is despite the number of internal changes that Apple made to the new Macbook Air one of the things that I've have been question about most is the new finish applied to the midnight version so like before the new M3 MacBook airs come in silver Starlight space gray and midnight clearly midnight is the best color here and you guys overwhelmingly agreed with me more than 50% of you all voted that midnight was the superior color of the MacBook Air Apple says they put a new coating on the midnight colorway similar to the one they appli to the space black MacBook Pro that repels fingerprints since I happen to have both versions let's test it let's start off like simple right these are clean hands I just washed them before shooting this so clean relatively like skin oil free and everything and I'm just going to touch both machines and kind of see if there's any residue left on either of them and how much it changes yeah for the for the most part I don't really seem to see much on either machine there there's not much hand residue left at all though again clean hands so that's not always going to be the case right this simulates them uh real World environments maybe you were eating some chips so let's stick my hand in a bag of chips with freshly oiled fingers let's go ahead and touch both machines and see how they do yeah it's it's very apparent that more Grime shows on the last generation Machine versus the new one though the new model does not resist all residue there is still some little residue showing up finally let's use a damp paper towel and wipe them both down and see how easily they clean up how easily do these fingerprints remove unsurprisingly the new one wins here even when wiping down the old machine you can see like the water streaks of the of the cloth wiping across it versus the new one it just removes fingerprints easier so yeah to me it's pretty apparent that the new one not only repels more fingerprints but is easier to clean absolutely a win you've all been quite vocal and I'm pretty sure Apple's heard you for the first time you can use two external displays on an Apple silicon MacBook Air previously you were limited to one 6K external display this only works though when the laptop is closed when it's open you can use the built-in display and an external 6K display if you put your Mac into clamshell mode possibly putting it under a shelf or maybe into like a little stand on your desk you can use one 6K display and a second 5K display personally I almost always work with my laptop in clamshell mode and and having two really large external displays is really beneficial for doing things like editing video okay so a better finish slightly speedier Wi-Fi faster base storage are all well and good but it doesn't make for much of a generational upgrade the real meat of this thing is the M3 chip it's still an 8 core CPU with four high efficiency cores and four high performance cores let's go ahead and spin it up inside of a geekbench 6 these are undoubted great gains here on geek Ben 6 both on the single core and the multie this is very impressive generation over generation the GPU comes in both eight and 10 core flavors as I mentioned both the M2 MacBook Air and the M3 MacBook Air I'm testing have the 10 core GPU if you're looking at the new models it's a $100 upgrade for the 13-inch MacBook Air but if you opt for the 15-in MacBook Air it is included by default there was a small change here in the GPU per performance but it wasn't massive there was a much bigger change from the M1 to the M2 because in that case we were going from an 8 core GPU to a 10 core GPU so there was like a big jump there with two additional GPU cores but here we're looking at a 10 core versus a 10 core so there's not a ton of generational change it's definitely better but not as massive of a leap geekbench isn't the end all Beall of benchmarks though so let's take a look at a couple other ones it'll give you a more of a rounded picture of what you can expect in terms of per performance in cinebench R23 the single core score definitely was better on that M3 MacBook Air the multi-core was better not by huge amount but I'm surprised we did see as much of a benefit here on the single core as we did we also have to look at speedometer 3.0 which literally just launched today as I'm adding some of this content here and again there's a browser range Benchmark and big performance upgrades and I think this is very important because a lot of people are buying MacBook Air for web browsing and it's great to see phenomenal browser performance here rounding this out we can look at the infinity photo benchmarks these first two lines are showing off the combined CPU scores and the bottom two are showing off the combined GPU scores you can see for yourself how much of improvement that the M3 had the M3 though is more than just a boost in CPU and a boost in graphics it also packs Hardware accelerated Ray tracing and mass shading av1 decoding and even a faster neural engine Apple's been laying the groundwork with the neural engine for some time and I think it's going to really come into play later this year I expect we're going to hear a lot about the neural engine in Ai and machine learning at WWDC this June so be sure you are subscribed to the channel so you don't miss as we get into talking about that a whole lot more if you're looking specifically at the 13-in version of the M2 or the M3 MacBook Air it's $100 more to buy the newer model are these changes worth that $100 I think so but it's also very emblematic of how powerful the M2 version of the MacBook Air was or rather is since it's still available you can get a great machine for a grand but if you can spend a little more the M3 is amazingly solid it's not worth shelling out for if you already have an M2 version but it's perfect for anybody else out there on the market and honestly the the 15-in I think is just an amazing machine and I did an entire video how this the 15-in M3 MacBook Air is basically my go-to recommendation for anybody looking to buy a Mac I think it just hits that sweet spot of price performance screen size everything kind of right there in the middle I think it is a great value if you're interested in a new Macbook Air there's links in the description we've already started Gathering deals and discounts on the new M3 version of the MacBook Air but we also have closeout deals on the M2 versions that have been clearanced out so check those out down below if you do end up buying a new Macbook Air let me know Down Below in the comments which configuration and color you ended up getting I'm really curiousI've got both the M3 MacBook Air and the last generation M2 MacBook Air how much better is the new model should you just pick up a discounted M2 or is the M3 really just that much better well that's what I'm about to find out specifically what I'm going to be looking at here is I've got my last generation M2 MacBook Air this is the 13-in MacBook Air the M2 Chip with a 10 core GPU I'm going to be comparing this guy against the brand new 15-in Macbook Air with the M3 chip on the inside also starts off at a 10 core GPU when you're looking at the 15-in version so 10 core GPU versus 10 core GPU M2 versus M3 generation over generation there are several big changes that I'm going to be breaking down the new M3 chip changes to storage improved Wi-Fi the new finish and that whole display situation we should probably start with a good news bad news situation Apple has listened and increased the performance of the base SSD when compared to the M2 the downside it's still only 256 gigs with previous versions of the MacBook Air Apple would use one chip for that base 256 gig storage configuration but larger configurations would use two chips for example the 512 gig option would use two 200 56 gig chips that means data could be written to both chips at the same time when wired in parallel which also meant that the solo chip had notably worse performance that was rated with these 2024 models that use two 128 gig chips for that base 256 gig configuration the L gen 256 GB model managed read and rate speeds of around 1450 megabytes per second each way but my new 256 gig M3 version had 1,00 mb per second on the right speed and over 2700 for the read speed it's still ridiculous though that apple is including 256 gigs as a starting option anyway it's an upcharge of $200 to go to the 512 gig storage and at that point you're only $100 away from the 14-in MacBook Pro which does start with 512 gigs of storage I just think it's criminally unacceptable to offer 256 gigs as your base storage option on a laptop here in 2024 I mean Apple's going to end up shooting themselves in the foot here because it's going to give people a reason to drop back to discounted or refurbished M2 versions so that they can invest more money into the storage because most people probably will need to upgrade from that 256 also tucked away on the internals of this machine right above the new M3 chip is Apple wireless chip it houses both the Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi Apple upgraded the Wi-Fi here from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 6E the big change with Wi-Fi 6E is the addition of the 6 GHz band Spectrum alongside 2.4 and five that newly allocated spectrum is really helpful in crowded areas like cities or apartment buildings when there's a ton of different routers all competing for that Spectrum assuming you have a router that supports it that six GHz band can also be used as a wireless back haul for mesh routers so you could still see benefits here with that Network even if you don't have all Wi-Fi 6E devices in your house the biggest Wireless changes though are going to be coming with Wi-Fi 7 there's a chance we could see some mac updated with Wi-Fi 7 later this year but since these things were you know just updated it's going to be at least a year before we see Wi-Fi 7 coming to the MacBook airline in my studio I still have Wi-Fi 6 routers for my primary Network so I ran a few speed tests with both machines on Wi-Fi 6 to see how they compared unsurprisingly on the Wi-Fi 6 Network there there wasn't much of a difference here they were basically the same I actually had slightly better performance on the M2 MacBook Air but there's a you know big differential in this test like you run it it can go faster and slower so it kind of averages everything out I I don't think there's much of a difference at all thanks to the Wi-Fi 6E here if you're using it on a Wi-Fi 6 Network luckily I also had a Wi-Fi 6E Network that I could test so I ran the test again on Wi-Fi 6E to see how that actually diff yeah and and still there there wasn't much of a differ like 960 versus 1,000 it a very small difference between these two machines even on a WiFi 6E Network it's only going to really make sense if you are in those crowded areas or is that back haul for a mesh system so there's still going to be benefits to Wi-Fi 6E but at least here in my home I didn't see a huge difference that would lead me to really necessitate jumping to the newer model for that specific reason the biggest changes though are yet to come but before we talk about them let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor for this video journey I know we're all eager to get back to the other stuff but I just have to show off the Nexa sleeve from Journey and I promise you you have not seen anything like this before the journey Nexa sleeve is technically a 4in one sleeve that fits both 13 and 14 or 15 and 16 in laptops you get the check this out so this is the sleeve itself it has this heathered fabric on the back that I think looks very handsome and on this side it's a vegan leather and you're notice the top here so the top magnetically closes and hides your laptop inside you can open it remove our MacBook Air you set your sleeve down on your desk so first it could just be a nice little pad to set your laptop on but you could also set your laptop to the side and use that vegan leather surface as a very bespoke portable mouse pad but that's not not what makes this thing so exciting on the side it has not only a little Chi charging pad for your airpods but it also has a second Max safe compatible charging pad for your iPhone then you just run a USBC cable out the back to connect it to your laptop or to a power supply and you can charge your gear wherever you are I think this is so clever I love the idea of protecting your laptop while also giving you all these other benefits there are a bunch of other laptop sleeves out there but I have not seen any that build in a maive compatible charger a chi charger a mouse pad and all this impact protection for your laptop All in One Singular device I think it's really smart if you guys think it's cool you can grab one of the link below in the description thanks again to Journey for sponsoring this video one of the things that I think is so funny is despite the number of internal changes that Apple made to the new Macbook Air one of the things that I've have been question about most is the new finish applied to the midnight version so like before the new M3 MacBook airs come in silver Starlight space gray and midnight clearly midnight is the best color here and you guys overwhelmingly agreed with me more than 50% of you all voted that midnight was the superior color of the MacBook Air Apple says they put a new coating on the midnight colorway similar to the one they appli to the space black MacBook Pro that repels fingerprints since I happen to have both versions let's test it let's start off like simple right these are clean hands I just washed them before shooting this so clean relatively like skin oil free and everything and I'm just going to touch both machines and kind of see if there's any residue left on either of them and how much it changes yeah for the for the most part I don't really seem to see much on either machine there there's not much hand residue left at all though again clean hands so that's not always going to be the case right this simulates them uh real World environments maybe you were eating some chips so let's stick my hand in a bag of chips with freshly oiled fingers let's go ahead and touch both machines and see how they do yeah it's it's very apparent that more Grime shows on the last generation Machine versus the new one though the new model does not resist all residue there is still some little residue showing up finally let's use a damp paper towel and wipe them both down and see how easily they clean up how easily do these fingerprints remove unsurprisingly the new one wins here even when wiping down the old machine you can see like the water streaks of the of the cloth wiping across it versus the new one it just removes fingerprints easier so yeah to me it's pretty apparent that the new one not only repels more fingerprints but is easier to clean absolutely a win you've all been quite vocal and I'm pretty sure Apple's heard you for the first time you can use two external displays on an Apple silicon MacBook Air previously you were limited to one 6K external display this only works though when the laptop is closed when it's open you can use the built-in display and an external 6K display if you put your Mac into clamshell mode possibly putting it under a shelf or maybe into like a little stand on your desk you can use one 6K display and a second 5K display personally I almost always work with my laptop in clamshell mode and and having two really large external displays is really beneficial for doing things like editing video okay so a better finish slightly speedier Wi-Fi faster base storage are all well and good but it doesn't make for much of a generational upgrade the real meat of this thing is the M3 chip it's still an 8 core CPU with four high efficiency cores and four high performance cores let's go ahead and spin it up inside of a geekbench 6 these are undoubted great gains here on geek Ben 6 both on the single core and the multie this is very impressive generation over generation the GPU comes in both eight and 10 core flavors as I mentioned both the M2 MacBook Air and the M3 MacBook Air I'm testing have the 10 core GPU if you're looking at the new models it's a $100 upgrade for the 13-inch MacBook Air but if you opt for the 15-in MacBook Air it is included by default there was a small change here in the GPU per performance but it wasn't massive there was a much bigger change from the M1 to the M2 because in that case we were going from an 8 core GPU to a 10 core GPU so there was like a big jump there with two additional GPU cores but here we're looking at a 10 core versus a 10 core so there's not a ton of generational change it's definitely better but not as massive of a leap geekbench isn't the end all Beall of benchmarks though so let's take a look at a couple other ones it'll give you a more of a rounded picture of what you can expect in terms of per performance in cinebench R23 the single core score definitely was better on that M3 MacBook Air the multi-core was better not by huge amount but I'm surprised we did see as much of a benefit here on the single core as we did we also have to look at speedometer 3.0 which literally just launched today as I'm adding some of this content here and again there's a browser range Benchmark and big performance upgrades and I think this is very important because a lot of people are buying MacBook Air for web browsing and it's great to see phenomenal browser performance here rounding this out we can look at the infinity photo benchmarks these first two lines are showing off the combined CPU scores and the bottom two are showing off the combined GPU scores you can see for yourself how much of improvement that the M3 had the M3 though is more than just a boost in CPU and a boost in graphics it also packs Hardware accelerated Ray tracing and mass shading av1 decoding and even a faster neural engine Apple's been laying the groundwork with the neural engine for some time and I think it's going to really come into play later this year I expect we're going to hear a lot about the neural engine in Ai and machine learning at WWDC this June so be sure you are subscribed to the channel so you don't miss as we get into talking about that a whole lot more if you're looking specifically at the 13-in version of the M2 or the M3 MacBook Air it's $100 more to buy the newer model are these changes worth that $100 I think so but it's also very emblematic of how powerful the M2 version of the MacBook Air was or rather is since it's still available you can get a great machine for a grand but if you can spend a little more the M3 is amazingly solid it's not worth shelling out for if you already have an M2 version but it's perfect for anybody else out there on the market and honestly the the 15-in I think is just an amazing machine and I did an entire video how this the 15-in M3 MacBook Air is basically my go-to recommendation for anybody looking to buy a Mac I think it just hits that sweet spot of price performance screen size everything kind of right there in the middle I think it is a great value if you're interested in a new Macbook Air there's links in the description we've already started Gathering deals and discounts on the new M3 version of the MacBook Air but we also have closeout deals on the M2 versions that have been clearanced out so check those out down below if you do end up buying a new Macbook Air let me know Down Below in the comments which configuration and color you ended up getting I'm really curious\n"