Does familiarity breed contempt?
The $1,099 M3 MacBook Air is as good as it has always been.
These sharp, well-designed laptops dont sacrifice much for their slim design.
The 15-inch MacBook Air with M3 provides more screen real estate, but it’s essentially the same laptop as the 13-inch, except for slightly better graphics processing.Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
They were good before and are now, which hasnt changed much with the transition from M2 to M3.
Is the M3 version better than the M2?
Is it $100 worth of better?
The visual evolution from the M1 MacBook Air up to M3.Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
It depends if you want extra battery life and the ability to connect to two external monitors.
Theyre great laptops, but could I honestly tell I was using an M1 chip versus a M3?
For the most part, no.
Unfortunately, you can’t use two external monitors while the M3 MacBook Air is open.Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
The13-inch version that saw the light in 2022was also a grand old-time.
Our benchmarks show that each PC with the same stats is practically identical.
The 13-inch still weighs 2.7 pounds, while the 15 sits at 3.3 pounds.
The left photo is the MacBook Air with M3. The right is the MacBook Air with M2.Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
Even with the fanless design, MacBook Airs just do not get hot, even under stress.
During regular use, the warmest the 15-inch version ever got was below 84 degrees Fahrenheit toward the screen.
And all thats very good because the Air is dead silent.
Theres no sound of fans, even under stress.
Put them side by side; theyre not the same hue.
The 15-inch version sits at 2880 by 1864 resolution with a touted 500 nits.
Can you spot the difference between the M2 and M3 MacBook Air?Photo: Artem Golub / Gizmodo
If you have seen any MacBook display from the past two years, its the same thing here.
Thats not a bad thing.
However,were still crossing our fingers for OLED MacBook Prosand, probably sooner,OLED iPads.
How much would you pay for a few more ports and a 14-inch screen?Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo
An M3 Max-powered Pro can do up to four external displays with the screen on.
But it does work if youre down to multiply the number of monitors youre using at once.
To note from the get-go, theres no practical performance loss between the 13-inch and 15-inch versions.
Still, its unlikely to hit Intels latest, higher-end i7s.
I still wish we could see a Pro or Max-level chip under Apples ultra-thin frame.
That might not be possible with the fan-less design, but I can still dream.
Macs arent known for gaming, and the MacBook Air is the least of all.
Mind you, these games were developed or redeveloped to work well on Apples hardware.
Thats good enough for a turn-based game but not the optimal way to play.
So, is it more powerful than the M1 MacBook Air?
The M3 nearly doubles the M1s score on 3D Marks Wild Life Extreme test.
How about the M2?
It was 500 points higher in single-core and closer to 2,000 in multi-core.
Thats a step up, but not as dramatic as the four-year difference.
In the end, all-day battery life is really what matters.
Still, battery life will drop if you do anything more than basic browsing and productivity.
The laptop also supports up to a 70W adapter for faster charging.
You wont be disappointed if you want to upgrade from the M1, especially the Intel-based MacBooks.
A MacBook Pro with 16 GB of memory costs just under $2,000.
Or is it better to say Apples pricing model might be getting away from itself?
My moneys on the latter.
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