By Jason Snell

March 7, 2024 6:00 AM PT

M3 MacBook Air Review: More of a good thing

Apple’s definitive laptop of the last decade, the MacBook Air, finally got an exterior redesign in 2022 with the release of the M2 MacBook Air. This new model traded in the classic wedge shape and rounded edges for flat sides with curved corners, restored the MagSafe connector, and dramatically reduced the size of the display bezel.

It’s a great revision, and I’m happy to report that the M3 MacBook Air, due to be released Friday, is identical to the M2 model in terms of external design. Without reading the model number printed on the bottom, I’m not sure you could tell them apart.

This is not to say that there aren’t new features, of course. The M3 chip introduced with the M3 iMac and MacBook Pro in November offers improved performance, and there are a few other wrinkles that provide a little texture to this update.

But the bottom line is that Apple did a spectacularly good job redesigning the MacBook Air in 2022, and now here’s a revision that brings Apple’s most popular Mac up to date with the latest generation of Apple silicon. If you already have an M2 Air, you probably don’t need this update (with one notable exception I’ll get to later). But if you’ve been holding onto an Intel MacBook Air and waiting for the right time to jump… the M3 Air will provide a soft and pleasant landing.

Back to basics

I’m not kidding: I can’t tell the M2 and M3 MacBook Air models apart. They’re essentially identical. There are 13-inch and 15-inch models, just as there were (eventually) with the previous generation. The 15-inch Air has slightly better speakers, but the only palpable difference is that it’s got a bigger screen than the 13-inch model. Because the 15-inch M2 model trailed the 13-inch version by a year, this marks the first time that both sizes have launched simultaneously. If you’ve always wanted a larger laptop screen but haven’t wanted to spend the money on a MacBook Pro, the 15-inch Air is a great choice.

The single change to the exterior of the M3 Air to previous versions is a new fingerprint-resistant anodization seal on the dark “midnight” models, which do show fingerprints more than the others. This is apparently the same approach that Apple took with the Space Black M3 MacBook Pro.

My reaction is pretty much the same as the one I had to the MacBook Pro: Apple hasn’t “cured” fingerprints. It is absolutely possible to put fingerprints all over the midnight MacBook Air. I managed to cover it in streaks in a couple of minutes. It might be a little more resistant than the old model, and it might be easier to wipe the surface clean, but after a day’s use, the M2 and M3 midnight Airs in my house looked more or less the same.

It’s worth noting that the MacBook Air’s 1080p FaceTime camera is passable but not amazing—I wish Apple would tuck a nicer camera up there. These new models also have a “notch” in the display that contains the camera, so you’ll lose a little bit of menu bar space, but I’ve never found it to be a big issue. I forget the notch is there, honestly.

And proving that some changes are invisible to the eye, Apple claims that this is the first Apple product to be made with more than 50 percent recycled content, including all of the aluminum, the rare-earth elements in magnets, and the copper on the logic board. (I can’t tell the difference between recycled atoms and original ones, and neither can you.)

Dual-screen details

A feature of Apple’s Intel-based MacBook Air models was the ability to drive multiple external monitors at once, providing a relatively affordable way to get a multi-screen workspace. When the MacBook Air moved to Apple Silicon, it lost that capability. In fact, the base M1 and M2 chips are only able to support two displays—and in a laptop, one of those is built in, so that meant support for only one external display.

This set up the frustrating situation where MacBook Air users with multiple-monitor setups were going to need to spend $2000 on a MacBook Pro if they wanted to upgrade to Apple Silicon and keep their setups. The most frustrating thing was that the Mac Mini supported two displays—but of course, it didn’t have that built-in laptop screen.

But the M3 has changed things! I was able to use the M3 MacBook Air with two Apple Studio Displays—as long as I kept the lid of the laptop closed and used an external keyboard and trackpad to control everything. I plugged the two displays into the two Thunderbolt ports on the MacBook Air, and when I closed the lid, the second of the two monitors turned on.

There are a few quirks. The Air can support one 6K display, but the second display can only be 5K resolution. In my setup with two Studio Displays, I could only set the secondary display to use the option that scales everything down a little bit (to the equivalent of 2880 x 1620 resolution); the “main display” (in other words, the one that takes over for the internal one) couldn’t be greater than 2560 x 1440.

In any event, this is a big expansion of the functionality of the MacBook Air for a certain class of users. Apple silicon laptops make great desktop computers when tethered to an external display, and now users don’t have to buy a MacBook Pro to get that functionality. (The base M3 MacBook Pro, which strangely shipped without support for a second external display, will receive a software update later this year to bring it to parity with the M3 MacBook Air.)

The M3 Air also adds support for Wi-Fi 6E, while the older M2 models only support Wi-Fi 6. The difference is real. On my home Internet connection, I was able to get 931 Mbps down and 813 MBps up via Wi-Fi, which is more or less the same speed as my wired connection to my router. In the same spot, my M2 Air could only manage 618 up and 700 down. I wouldn’t buy a new laptop just to have faster Wi-Fi—and keep in mind that you need to upgrade your router and possibly your home internet to take advantage of these speeds—but that’s the fastest Wi-Fi connection I’ve ever experienced.

They keep getting faster

The big speed boost in Apple silicon came during the transition to Intel. Since then, things have kept incrementally improving. The M3 Max is actually a pretty decent bit faster than the M2 Max, but the low-end M3 chip used in the MacBook Air is only a little bit faster than the M2 in the 2022 model. The M3 was about 19 percent faster than the M2 in multi-core CPU tasks but a more impressive 39 percent faster than the M1. In graphics tests, it was only about four percent faster than an M2 Air with the same number of GPU cores.

In a noticeable shifting of gears from previous product launches, Apple has devoted a large amount of time to promoting the M3 Air as the best consumer computer for artificial intelligence tasks, citing the integrated Neural Engine in the M3 chip. Of course, Apple silicon Macs have had the Neural Engine since the M1, and while some AI applications use the Neural Engine, others use the GPU cores—and still others run in the cloud, entirely separate from the computer.

So, is the M3 Air an AI powerhouse? I’m sure it’s fine, and it did manage to transcribe a podcast using OpenAI Whisper in less than 80 percent of the time it took an M2 model—but that was pretty much down to the extra GPU cores, I think. And, of course, an M3 Max MacBook Pro with 40 GPU cores polished off that same transcript in 40 percent less time than the M3 Air.

So yes, the M3 Air is faster than the M2 model and quite a bit faster than the M1 model. But in the Apple silicon era, the MacBook Air has enough horsepower for most general use cases. If you’re really pushing things with something like an AI transcript or a video encode, the MacBook Pro line offers a whole lot of performance upside, which is why I included a 16-CPU, 40-GPU M3 Max MacBook Pro in my speed charts as a comparison.

To be sure, there are other reasons to buy a MacBook Pro instead of a MacBook Air, most notably the beautiful display and the extra ports. The Pro also has a cooling fan, which the Air doesn’t. This makes the Air really nice and quiet, but in extremely taxing situations, the Air will have to restrain itself in order to prevent overheating, while the Pro can just crank up the fans and keep on churning.

Who should upgrade?

If you’ve got an M2 MacBook Air, you can stay put—unless you’re desperate to plug in a second display, that is. M1 Air users might be tempted to upgrade, and there are a lot of reasons to do so—not just that the M3 is faster, but that the entire MacBook Air redesign that came with the M2 is pretty great. (The 13-inch M2 model is still on Apple’s price list, a bargain at $999.)

If you’re still using an Intel MacBook Air, well… if you’re doing that because you have a two-monitor setup, you’ve probably already placed your order. I no longer have a late-model Intel MacBook Air to use as a comparison to these Apple silicon models, but suffice it to say that an Apple silicon Mac is a huge upgrade over the old Intel models.

The truth is, unless you’ve been waiting to plug in a second monitor to a MacBook Air, this upgrade isn’t going to blow anyone away—and that’s okay. The chips keep getting faster, 2022’s MacBook Air design refresh remains great, and the 15-inch model offers a large screen for people who don’t need MacBook Pro prices or features. The MacBook Air is Apple’s most popular Mac, and now it’s even better.

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