Apple MacBook Air 13 M3 review - A lot faster and with Wi-Fi 6E

[Redaktion]

Apple has updated its MacBook Air and thanks to its M3 SoC, the laptop's performance is now higher than ever before. Further improvements include its Wi-Fi 6E support and the ability to connect up to two external displays. Moreover, the blue Midnight color variant has been given a new coating to repel fingerprint marks.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-13-M3-review-A-lot-faster-and-with-Wi-Fi-6E.811129.0.html

[lmao]

less power consumption with 20% added performance right there for all 3nm deniers.

single passively cooled arm cpu making fun of almost entire x86 cpu lineups is good for competition in the long run. maybe windows crowd will also start getting normal laptops in the end.

addition of 16/512 to list of base models is also a long awaited touch, now countries stocking only base models will get access to 16Gb base without wait, as it's not a custom model anymore.

[Andreas Galster]

A laptop with the supposedly amazing Meteor Lake processor has 200 minutes less runtime despite a 20Wh larger battery. It's wild how far behind intel STILL is.

[Neenyah]

Fast panel for Apple, 27.2 ms and 34.5 ms are great values where ghosting won't be visible, maybe some motion blur but no ghosting so that's very nice. That backlight bleeding is extreme though. Trash keyboard as usual with Apple, extremely thin ABS plastic which turns to shiny mess within 2-6 weeks of usage. Excellent everything else, very nice laptop and even surprisingly fair price for Apple but then again at first upgrade here the 14 MBP is clearly much better value.

[lmao]

Trash keyboard as usual with Apple

disagree, many typists like them for durability and typing speed. generation of magic keyboards that came after butterfly ones is very good.

which turns to shiny mess within 2-6 weeks of usage.

depends on hands
keycaps are easily replaceable without disassembly if anything, 10 bucks

and even surprisingly fair price for Apple

it hasn't changed since M2 Air tho, M1 was cheaper because apple silicon was new

That backlight bleeding is extreme though.

i think someone staring at black screen at max brightness in dark room has bigger problems than backlight bleeding lol

[not a shill]

Wow, what a huge disappointment as always. Horrible GPU performance, nothing crazy when it comes to CPU despite the 3nm process, and 60 Hz in 2024 like what??? And 8/256 base configuration LOL. Not sure who's this for.

[Neenyah]

disagree, many typists like them for durability and typing speed. generation of magic keyboards that came after butterfly ones is very good.

I agree with that but I was talking strictly about their durability, everything else is a matter of personal preference so I don't want to comment on that (especially not as someone who can quickly adjust to any keyboard).

depends on hands
keycaps are easily replaceable without disassembly if anything, 10 bucks

I mean it is pure friction under fingers where they polish matte plastic to glossiness. You can use gloves and there won't be any difference. That is inevitable with any ABS keyboard on the market and while PBT keycaps are infinitely superior in durability they are also thicker and more expensive so it's not surprising that pretty much all OEMs use ABS. Then again why is Apple stubborn to make absolute thinnest ABS coating on their keycaps, that's the question here. This is extreme but it's normal for Apple to develop so fast:

• M1 Pro - Unsightly keypad wear after only 7 months. Is this normal? None of my other non-Apple laptops exhibit this issue. (2 years ago)
• How do I clean my Mac keyboard? (3 months ago)

Replacing keycaps is easy, sure, but why even bother so often and so frequently with that just because they [Apple] can't create like 40% thicker caps. I've seen 5+ y.o. heavily used cheap Acers with such wear, not an expensive premium product after just a month or two, meh. Well, none but Macs 😐

it hasn't changed since M2 Air tho, M1 was cheaper because apple silicon was new

The M2 16/512 was actually 200€-250€ more expensive 😳 Of course it dropped now in price because of the new Air but that same M3 16/512 is currently at 1700€. Excellent value!

i think someone staring at black screen at max brightness in dark room has bigger problems than backlight bleeding lol

True for max brightness 😁 But watching movies and stuff like that, they often have very dark areas where such bleed is visible fairly easily even at 30-50% brightness. Not an issue for me personally though, I prefer panel response times over backlight bleed because I see the former easily but the latter mostly when I intentionally make to see it (like all lights off at night and watching dark content).

[lmao]

thinnest ABS coating on their keycaps

might be related to very minimal distance between keys and screen when lid closed idk

Excellent value!

even better at $1500 in US, feelsbad for your vats

[AppleMFlop]

A laptop with the supposedly amazing Meteor Lake processor has 200 minutes less runtime despite a 20Wh larger battery. It's wild how far behind intel STILL is.

Intel isn't though. The HP Dragonfly laptop that is compared has HIGHER battery life than brand new M3 Air (with Intel Raptor lake, so actually a generation behind) and the Meteor Lake laptop compared only has 3 hours less of battery life so at still a fantastic 12 hours. Sorry the Apple sheep love working for 15 hours straight like the little bootlickers they are but 12hrs vs 15 hrs is irrelevant in real world REAL WORK scenarios. Absolutely nobody with a brain or an ounce of self respect is working nonstop for over 10-11 hours.

[NikoB]

A laptop with the supposedly amazing Meteor Lake processor has 200 minutes less runtime despite a 20Wh larger battery. It's wild how far behind intel STILL is.

There is nothing surprising here. "3nm" TSMC vs "7nm" Intel. The winner is obvious.
It would be much more interesting to compare x86 cores on "3nm" TSMC with "3nm" ARM Apple on TSMC. And then I'm sure Apple would have no chance.

All this fuss is uninteresting as tests in incomparable code environments.

But it is much more interesting in reviews of Apple laptops to see a test of the memory controller, including its operation with 4k pages in random access. And what do we see here? And we still see the same shame of the latest SSDs, which are more than 100 times (here 174 times) slower at 4k IOPs than RAM.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

The shame of Apple is that as soon as this same 16GB (minus the OS kernel and drivers) of soldered memory runs out, everything will become dramatically worse - software performance will drop by more than 100(!) times, with any access to the swap file on the SSD,

This is exactly the problem - with its cheap price (and Apple's wild prices), RAM should be from 32GB, but rather 64GB. Already at 32GB, the load on the slow SSD of this laptop will drop significantly.

But the memory controller also consumes. And you have to pay for everything...

[Neenyah]

everything will become dramatically worse - software performance will drop by more than 100(!) times, with any access to the swap file on the SSD,

Bold of you to assume that you or any human on this planet can keep the pace - both mental and in operating the device - with the SoC and the RAM to actually notice any difference. Just try to calculate 86582×83.58 faster than the slowest calculator on the planet (good luck).

[Neenyah]

Absolutely nobody with a brain or an ounce of self respect is working nonstop for over 10-11 hours.

And if they do they don't on battery. I will never understand that "better battery" argument for doing any work with laptops. 4-6 hours is more than enough. Almost all modern laptops charge very fast these days, 0 to 60% in 30 minutes and similar. Sure it's nice to have 10+ hours of battery life but why is that needed for actual work? Rhetorical question of course.

Literally not a single sane person will get home (if they WFH) and sit right next to any plug in their home and not plug it in. None.

Same if they use the device in their office/workplace - who in their right mind will sit at the desk and straight up refuse to plug the device in when the cable is just 20-30 cm away on their desk? Especially when pretty much all offices have docks and such with power delivery, external monitor(s) and so on?

[lmao]

more interesting to compare x86 cores on "3nm" TSMC with "3nm" ARM Apple on TSMC.

all you need to perform this comparison in your mind is the fact that x86 core is always larger and more complex than arm core.

including its operation with 4k pages in random access

4k pages are outdated tech used in x86 in 2024 because changing it will break a lot of software.
apple silicon is using bigger pages.

Absolutely nobody with a brain or an ounce of self respect is working nonstop for over 10-11 hours.

anyone with a brain understands that 15 hours is just a scripted web surfing benchmark, not any real work scenario. when you start working, laptop with "15 hours wifi" will last you longer than laptop with "7 hours wifi" by (very roughly) about half. actual amount of hours depends on your load.
if you are interested why long battery life matters, get out of basement and get on the first 6-7+ hrs plane (or two back to back) in your life.

and overall about "working 10hrs is not self respectful" - imo it's more like an opinion of someone who never worked and probably typing this 'high-end philosophy' on a cheap lenovo, while $200-300k/yr engineers are working their asses off and sleeping at work lol.

[lmao]

those engineers when some random nobody on the internet says they are brainless and do not respect themselves:
gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Woody-Harrelson-Wiping-Tears-Money.gif

[Plum]

@lmao

They are idiots though. In Sales you can make the same money or even more with 2-3 hours max per day, respecting yourself and your family.

I haven't worked more that 3 hours per day on average for the last ten years, all while making 6 figures and traveling the work as our company is remote first.

But you do you and use money bills to dry your tears. I would have to do the same if I needed to sleep at work to make decent money while not having enough free time to actually enjoy it. It's even better if people like you live in high priced cities where large chunk of that money has to go into high living costs for a average quality of life.

Pro tip: buy crypto during the next bear market and easily 10x your money with 0 effort.