Apple’s new MacBook Air M3 goes on sale tomorrow (March 8) and after spending a few days reviewing a 13-inch and 15-inch model, we can finally tell you exactly how well it performs in our test lab.
This is important because it helps us understand exactly how much of a performance boost you get when you pay for one of these new Airs, which are powered by the new Apple M3 chip.
This is the third generation of Apple silicon for Macs, and while I’m sure these M3 Airs are faster and more power efficient than their predecessors, I’m not sure exactly. how much better if they are, or if it is worth investing in upgrading.
To help you decide, I’ve put together everything we’ve learned from our hands-on testing of these new MacBook Air M3s here to show you how they stack up against the best MacBooks and best Windows laptops to date. Whether you’re looking to make the Mac switch with the M3 or consider yourself an Apple stalwart who’s unsure whether to upgrade to the M3 MacBook Air or M2 MacBook Air, the data our test lab has gathered should help you make your decision. .
Visualization tests
First, let me tell you what we discovered by pointing our Klein K10-A colorimeters at these new Airs. If you want to move on to the juicy speed and battery life results below, I won’t judge you, but these screens are worth studying.
We measure brightness, test how well the screen displays colors, and how close the colors are to being accurate. The chart below breaks it down in a way that’s easy to read if you know what the numbers mean, which I’ll be happy to explain to you.
The Delta-E score tells us how accurate the colors are (the closer to 0, the better) and the sRGB color gamut percentage tells you how much of the common sRGB color gamut these displays can display. Both new M3 Airs cover 100% of the sRGB color gamut without going too far, meaning you can expect fairly colorful and color-accurate displays. Their Delta-E scores show that they are also quite accurate, although laptops like the 14-inch MacBook Pro M3 and Acer Swift Go 14 outperform the M3 Air in this regard.
But you don’t really need to worry about those numbers unless you do a lot of work that requires color accuracy. What’s most relevant to most people is the average brightness of a laptop screen, because that helps you know how usable it is near windows or in direct sunlight. We tested the screen’s brightness in five different zones and averaged them to get the average brightness, which is measured in nits.
As you can see, the new M3 Airs basically hit the 500 nits of brightness that Apple advertises, but they’re not as bright as the latest MacBook Pros, which are advertised with up to 600 nits of brightness or more when viewing HDR content.
These new Airs are also noticeably brighter than some of the more recent Windows 11 laptops we’ve tested, like the Acer Swift Go 14 and Dell XPS 14.
Test of performance
Now let’s talk about performance testing, where we really find out how fast this thing is under the hood. We’re currently performing performance testing on the 13- and 15-inch M3 Air, and while we’ve finished most of our work, we’re still waiting to complete some final testing.
But while we’re not done collecting data, I can already share many key test results that will help you understand how much faster these new M3 Air are compared to their predecessors.
The first big test we run is Geekbench 6, a cross-platform benchmark that helps us measure how fast a CPU is by running it through a single-core and multi-core test, and then generating a score for each with which we can compare. other PCs.
The 13-inch M3 Air and 15-inch M3 Air easily outperformed the older models and were basically neck and neck in this and all tests, coming within a hundred points of each other in each test. So if you’re worried about a significant power difference between M3 Air sizes, don’t be: Each of these new Airs pivots around their predecessors, confirming early reports that the M3 MacBook Air benchmarks show large gains on M2.
What’s more interesting is the difference between the Geekbench 6 results for the M3 Airs and the latest Windows laptops we’ve tested that include the latest Intel Meteor Lake chips. As you can see, Acer’s Swift Go 14 and Dell’s XPS 14 fell behind the M3 Air in single-core performance, but managed to outperform Apple’s M3 laptops in multi-core performance tests.
That’s worth knowing, but what’s also worth knowing is that these test score disparities probably equate to barely noticeable differences in real-world performance. In some scenarios, Intel laptops might complete tasks faster than Apple’s M3 Air, especially if the apps being used are optimized to use multiple cores at once, but most of the time you probably won’t notice the difference.
We also ran the M3 Airs through Blackmagic’s drive speed test tool to get an idea of how fast their SSDs are and how they compare to older Macs. Since Blackmagic doesn’t work well with Intel chipsets, we didn’t run it on the Windows laptops we reviewed, so I can only share with you how these new M3 Air compare to their predecessors.
And the news is generally good, if unexciting: Apple’s M3 Air appear to perform as well or better than their predecessors in Blackmagic’s tests. Dig deeper into the results chart above and you’ll see that the only exception is the drive speed of the 13-inch M3 Air, which seems to write a bit slower than its predecessor. You’ll hardly notice a difference in daily use, but it’s worth knowing!
Let’s also see how well these new M3 Air handle video encoding. We run every laptop we review through our own custom test for this, which multiplies the time it takes for the laptop to transcode a 4K video to 1080p using Handbrake.
We compared the times to see which Mac is faster, and as you can see from our results, the M3 is definitely faster than the M2, with the new Airs completing this task more than a minute faster than their predecessors.
They’re not as fast as the latest Intel Windows 11 laptops, however, as the Acer Swift Go 14 and Dell XPS 14 were at least a few seconds faster than either of the M3 Airs. And none of Apple’s new M3 Airs could cut video faster than any recent MacBook Pro, not even the M2 MacBook Pro that Apple released more than a year ago.
Finally, let’s quickly talk about games. We don’t have a lot of test data yet to determine how well the 15-inch MacBook Air M3 runs games, but we finished testing the 13-inch version and, as you can see from our other tests, these two machines vary a lot. little in terms of performance.
What we know so far suggests that you might want to opt for a MacBook Pro or a Windows laptop if you’re a gaming enthusiast, because these new Airs aren’t designed for that. As you can see, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 is a better gaming machine than its M2-equipped predecessor, but it’s otherwise outclassed by every laptop on the list.
It’s hard to compare their performance even in a simple cross-platform game like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, for example, because these Airs have screens with uncommon aspect ratios and resolutions of 16:10. So while most of the results above are for 1200p resolution, in some cases our tests were run at different resolutions and I’ve indicated this where appropriate.
But even when you take into account the disparity between laptop sizes and resolutions, it’s clear that the M3 Air are not designed to be gaming machines. So if you want to play a few rounds of Fortnite between classes but don’t want to lug around one of the best gaming laptops, you might be a little happier with a MacBook Pro or a similarly priced Windows ultraportable like the XPS 14.
Battery duration
We’ve put the two new M3 Airs through our internal battery test and the results are pretty good. Each lasted just over 15 hours on a full charge, and while that falls short of the 18 hours of battery life that Apple claims these MacBooks can achieve, it’s still a very good score compared to most computers. portable.
As you can see in the results chart above, both the 13-inch and 15-inch M3 MacBook Airs lasted longer than the M2 or M1 Air on a single charge. These new M3 Airs also lasted longer than some of the more recent Meteor Lake Windows 11 laptops we’ve tested, like the Dell XPS 14 and Acer Swift Go 14.
But despite their long-lasting performance, these new M3 Airs simply couldn’t outlast the latest generations of MacBook Pro, which is still one of the best battery life laptops on the market.
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Apple hasn’t even released the MacBook Air M3 yet, but thanks to our testing lab and the company’s willingness to ship us units early, we already know how much better these machines are than their predecessors.
And the answer, simply put, is a little better! The M3 chip takes these slim productivity wedges to new heights, delivering better battery life and faster performance than any MacBook Air before it. If you love the Air, this is the best new model on the market.
But if you’re just looking to buy a new laptop, the M3 chip doesn’t give these new Airs any significant advantage over the competition, except in battery life. In that realm, MacBooks remain the reigning kings of the court thanks to the power efficiency of Apple silicon, and the M3 Air is high in the hierarchy.
However, if you’re looking to play games or do demanding work like video editing, you’ll probably be happier looking elsewhere. MacBook Pros are still the best choice for these tasks if you’re committed to Apple hardware, and gaming laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 are still a better buy if you really want the highest frames per second possible in recent years. games and more games to play. choose from.
- New MacBook Pros planned for launch in mid-2024
- MacBook Air M3 vs MacBook Air M1: Should you upgrade?
- The OLED MacBook Pro is reportedly coming, but you’ll have to wait a bit – here’s why
