M3 MacBook Air Review: A Better Reason to Upgrade?

Speaker 1: These are the new MacBook. Hes the 13 inch and 15 inch running on apple's latest M three silicon. And that is the big change here from the M two 13 inch that rolled out in 2022 and the 15 inch that was introduced in 2023. The overall design hasn't changed at all. They're still simple and elegant and clean. In fact, this isn't even the M three air. It's the 15 [00:00:30] inch M two air. This is actually the M three 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 M two to the M three is not huge though. The jumping graphics performance we saw with the M three 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 M two Air was already [00:01:00] great, even well into its second year. So while the M three is better than the M two, it's the difference between the M three air and the M1 air and the Intel based MacBook Airs that are dramatic. Speaker 1: Before I get into specifics, let's talk about configurations and pricing. The base 13 inch M three air is about $1,100 and has an eight core CPU eight core GPU eight gigs of memory [00:01:30] 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 if you upgrade either the memory or storage, apple also bumps you up to an M three with a 10 core GPU. This makes the $200 charge to double the memory or storage. [00:02:00] 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. Speaker 1: They're small but worth talking about. One is a move from wifi six to six E, 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 already [00:02:30] 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 M three 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 USPC ports on the side, and that will, so it doesn't immediately give you the second display. You have [00:03:00] 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 track pad anymore to work with. Speaker 1: 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 already [00:03:30] have a MacBook Air and you want a second display, you can pick up something like this Pluggable doc 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 fan less [00:04:00] recycled aluminum body, the beautiful liquid retina displays, the excellent 10 80 P FaceTime camera, the great sounding speaker systems, and the Mag Save three charging and dual thunderbolt ports. They are all here from the M two versions. Speaker 1: 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 [00:04:30] on the left, so there's no option to charge from the right side. So again, if you already have an M two MacBook Air, the reasons to upgrade are limited. If you're a creator or want to play more demanding games, we played a little balder's gate and death stranding, for example, trading in an M two air for an M three might make sense. On the other hand, for M1 Air and Intel-based air owners, the reasons to upgrade are plentiful. [00:05:00] We ran a few benchmarks in the short time. We've had these, and the performance essentially matches that of the 14 inch M three MacBook Pro we tested last year, it's generally faster than the M two 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. Speaker 1: So that's a bit depressing for good measure. We also tested a new Lenovo [00:05:30] Slim seven, which is a 14 inch ole laptop with an Intel core Ultra seven processor, integrated art graphics, 32 gigs of memory and a terabyte of storage for around a thousand dollars. Its performance pretty much matches the m threes 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. Anyway, [00:06:00] 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 inch M three 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 M two or M three models will be a significant improvement. Speaker 1: The 13 inch M two MacBook Air is now the $999 [00:06:30] entry model, and Apple has discontinued the 15 inch M two. So you can probably find some good deals on that right now. But if you plan to use your MacBook Air Force STEM work or design work, or rendering video or editing raw photos, the M three is the better choice, and you should get at least 16 gigs of memory. You can check out more details on the M three MacBook airs, including more performance tests@cnet.com. [00:07:00] So what do you think? Are you ready to pull the trigger for an M three air or are you just going to wait to see if Apple ever includes more memory or storage for your money and then 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.