Review | M3 MacBook Air review: Apple’s remote-work icon made faster and more efficient, and the most powerful laptop in its weight class

Apple’s M3 MacBook Air looks like the M2 model, but is 20 per cent more powerful. It performs better on battery power than Intel-powered competitors
Its AI capabilities are nothing new and it is lacking in terms of ports. The larger screen on the 15-inch model makes this workhorse a pleasure to work with

Apple

Ben Sin

Published: 4:15am, 12 Mar 2024

Why you can trust SCMP

Eight months ago Apple introduced a 15-inch screen MacBook Air that became an immediate hit, particularly with the digital nomad and remote work community because of its “happy medium” screen size.

The 13-inch model that had been the standard of the Air series since its 2008 debut, while still an option for consumers, felt cramped.

Now that M2-powered 15-inch MacBook Air is to give way to an upgraded edition with the latest Apple silicon, the M3.

This model is a so-called spec bump in every sense of the word, as it brings back the exact same design and outer components as the M2 MacBook Air; what’s new are the available colour options and the M3 chip inside.

The new 15-inch Apple MacBook Air M3 has the same design as the M2 model, but is different in terms of the colour options available, and the chip inside. Photo: Ben Sin

Let’s get this out of the way now: if you own the M2 MacBook Air, you absolutely do not need to upgrade to this laptop. But if you have an older M1 or Intel-powered MacBook, or have been using a 16-inch MacBook Pro and want to shed some weight without losing much screen real estate, this new machine is worth a look.

Design and hardware

The 15-inch MacBook Air M3 weighs 1.49kg (3.3 pounds) and is 11.43mm (0.45 inches) thick. While this isn’t particularly light or thin compared to many laptops on the market, it is a welcome downsize from the 16-inch MacBook Pro.

And because the MacBook Air is powered by Apple’s critically acclaimed M3 silicon, it’s the most powerful laptop in this weight class.

My unit comes in the new Midnight – dark grey – colour scheme. Apple markets this colour as a “breakthrough” with anodisation coating to reduce fingerprints.

The Midnight version of the Apple MacBook Air M3 has anodisation coating intended to reduce fingerprints. Photo: Ben Sin

From my experience, this does not seem to work at all – my laptop lid was covered with smudges after an hour of use.

As is the case with all MacBook Air models, the ports are lacking. There are just a pair of USB-C ports, a headphone jack and a MagSafe charging port. The two USB-C ports are Thunderbolt 4 and so have high data transfer speeds and enable output to two external monitors. The six-speaker set-up, keyboard and trackpad are all excellent.

This laptop is all about the M3 chip, which is the first Apple silicon produced on 3-nanometre architecture and continues the M-series run of unrivalled energy efficiency.

While the speaker set-up, keyboard and trackpad are all excellent, the ports are lacking – as is the case with all MacBook Air models. Photo: Ben Sin

Software and features

This MacBook ships with MacOS Sonoma 14.4. MacOS Sonoma is a big upgrade in MacOS, taking on a new design language that looks more in line with the iPhone and iPad’s software. You can now even run iOS widgets on the MacBook, which comes in very handy for iPhone users.

Like every tech company, Apple is marketing its new machine as an AI laptop, and while the 16-core neural engine of the M3 chip does allow the software to run some generative AI tasks on device, the reality is older M-series MacBooks can run those same large language models, just at a slower speed.

Performance and battery life

The M3 is the latest iteration of Apple’s self-developed silicon that turned the industry on its head with its energy efficiency.

The M3 continues that by jumping to 3-nanometre architecture (meaning the chip can house more transistors than 5-nanometre chips), and brings a 20 per cent CPU and GPU performance boost over the M2 chip. The M3 model is 65 per cent faster than the M1.

The new M3 MacBook Air is 65 per cent faster than the M1 model. Photo: Ben Sin

These numbers are mostly backed up by both benchmark scores and real life performance metrics. I exported a few 4K videos on Apple’s Final Cut Pro and found the M3 export times faster than those of older MacBook Air models by an amount that reflected those percentages.

The new MacBook Air is noticeably more efficient than most Windows laptops running on Intel processors.

In terms of raw power, the latest Intel processors can keep up with Apple silicon, if not surpass it. But they’re significantly more power hungry and see a major performance dip when the laptop is running on battery power.

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The beauty of the M chip is that you can use the laptop unplugged and performance remains at near peak level.

If your work consists of just typing and reading words, there’s absolutely nothing you can throw at this MacBook to slow it down. And you’ll get up to 15 hours of battery life on a single charge, too.

A heavy user like me – who edits 4K videos and plays console-quality video games such as NBA 2K24 – can occasionally get the machine to stutter, but not enough for it to be bothersome. That a two-hour video editing session only drains about 55 per cent of the battery shows tremendous efficiency.

Conclusion

Apple’s MacBook Air line has already won over the masses. I travel often and enjoy going to coffee shops; from Hong Kong to Los Angeles, Barcelona to Bangkok, the bulk of laptops I see are MacBook Air.

I think this 15-inch model has a good chance of overtaking the 13-inch as the most popular model, because once you see the larger screen, you don’t want to go back.

The 15-inch M3 MacBook Air’s price starts at HK$13,499 in Hong Kong and US$1,299 in the United States.

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