I declared the M2 MacBook Air I bought in January 2023 “the best laptop that Apple has ever produced.” In March 2024, I upgraded to the M3. I went from an M2 MacBook Air with 24GB RAM and 1TB disk to an M3 MacBook Air with… 24GB of RAM and 1TB of disk. It is safe to say that I have found essentially my ideal laptop in the MacBook Air. It is fast, it is light, it is relatively affordable, and it is silent.
I’ve been using the M3 Air for less than a week but can already tell that this will be another great machine for me, and is worth it for me to go from the M2, which was fantastic already, to the M3.
For the first time in years, I looked closely at benchmarks for the M3. Going from Intel to the M1 was a truly revelatory experience. One that I don’t see repeating itself for many, many years, if ever. It is not like that to go from an M1 to M2 to M3. These are incremental improvements, but that isn’t to say that they are small or not worth the cost and aggravation of an upgrade.
I was very happy with my M1 MacBook Air and normally upgrade every few years. I opted to upgrade to the M2 a year ago only when I started having hardware problems related to a drop the machine suffered with its first owner. As an aside, the USB ports on the Air are a replaceable daughterboard. The repair was affordable and the machine is still in active daily use at work.
Returning to the M2 Air, I was surprised at how much I noticed the performance improvements, which I largely attributed to the increase in RAM from 16GB to 24GB. This is a change that gets little media attention, and is a non-standard configuration, but has provided me with a very meaningful improvement in productivity when using many large apps.
The M3 MacBook Air holds this RAM limit steady from the M2, but offers a greater improvement to the CPU and GPU. Looking at benchmarks, the M3 MacBook Air is about on par with the low-end M2 MacBook Pro at multi-core performance, and is significantly better than the M2 Pro at single-core performance.
Overall, the M3 MacBook Air benchmarks about 20% faster than the M2 in single core and 25% faster in multicore. This represents a 30% improvement in single core from the M1 and a 45% improvement in multicore since the M1. 3DMark improvements are similarly impressive. The M1 to M2 improvement was about 50%, and then another 20% from the M2 to the M3. This translates to an over 80% improvement from the M1 to the M3.
I’ve been using the M3 MacBook Air for about a month now, and it has been an uneventful, solid upgrade. It is definitely faster day-to-day use. The difference is subtle but worthwhile. Not unlike moving from the iPhone 13 to an iPhone 15.
For work, now that the M3 CPU can handle multiple monitors, the MacBook Air will be our go-to recommendation for anyone looking for a Mac. Battery life is the best in the industry, and unless you need more than 24GB of RAM, more than 2GB of disk, or absolutely require the most cores or extra ports, I don’t think the heavier MacBook Pros (including the M3 MBP) are worth the upgrade. The MacBook Air is simply the best laptop on the market for most people.
As we enter year 4 of the Apple Silicon transition, and the third generation of products, I remain deeply impressed with what Apple has accomplished. Apple Silicon is FAST. I would rather an M1 MacBook Air than any current ThinkPad or Surface. Why? Because the machine is so snappy and is completely silent, and has a battery that is so good that I never think of it. Nearly four years later, there still isn’t anything out there that comes close to what Apple achieved on their first hardware release, and they continue to offer meaningful iterations that eke out even better real-world performance and battery life.
I love using technology. I want to use the best computer I can. For years now, that has meant a MacBook Air. The M3 MacBook Air may look the same as the predecessor, but it is meaningfully faster. This is the laptop to beat, and barring something truly spectacular in 2024, I suspect it will be this way until the inevitable M4
