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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom from Tech Chap and this is the M1 MacBook Air. It came out late 2020 so this is
00:06four years old and it's been Apple's cheapest laptop and also good enough for pretty much
00:10everyone. But then last year they introduced the M2 in the 13-inch and a new bigger 15-inch flavor
00:17along with a big design refresh, the new M2 chip, better webcam, thinner bezels and the M2 was better
00:23in pretty much every way. The main downside was it's more expensive and with the M1 which is
00:27still very capable, a couple hundred quid cheaper and then you've got the new MacBook Pro 14s, a few
00:31hundred more, it was a tougher sell. Until now perhaps because if I pop these over here and start
00:37my stack of MacBooks as Apple have just launched the new M3 MacBook Airs which are more powerful,
00:43we get better connectivity, also in 13 and 15-inch flavors but this is more of a spec bump because
00:49what this launch also does is finally push out the M1 Air. This has been discontinued, you can't
00:56officially buy it new from Apple, you can still buy it refurbished and also obviously lots of
01:00retailers still have stock of it but this which started at $999 has now been replaced with this,
01:06the M2 Air now starting at $999. So this has had a bit of a price cut making the M2 Air the new
01:13entry-level MacBook. So is now a good time to upgrade? What's new with these M3s? Is it worth
01:18paying an extra hundred over the M2 to get these fancy new ones? And which spec should you actually
01:23go for? Well I'm glad you asked. And by the way I'll have a full MacBook buying guide coming in
01:28the next few days so make sure you have hit that subscribe button and give me a thumbs up if you
01:32enjoy the video. So in the box with the new MacBook Air M3 you have well the laptop obviously and also
01:38the MagSafe charger. Now by default this is a 30 watt charger but if you go for the higher storage
01:43option or pay a little bit extra you can get either a dual port 35 watt charger so you can
01:48plug in your phone as well as your laptop or a much faster 70 watt fast charger for your MacBook.
01:53And I would probably get that one. And because we have this MagSafe port which we didn't on the M1
01:58Air we still have the two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports free for plugging in your monitors,
02:02adapters and external storage drives. So I have the 13 inch in starlight and the 15 in midnight
02:09but you've also got silver and space gray options and actually this midnight color is the only one
02:14that benefits from the anti-fingerprinty finish that we also get on the space black MacBook Pro
02:20although bear in mind that does only apply to the lid and the base the exterior of the chassis not
02:26on the inside and if it's anything like my 16 inch space black MacBook Pro which I'm currently using
02:32for some notes on my script it's still a bit of a greasy mess on the inside. This is the M2 midnight
02:38and this is the M3 midnight. Maybe a couple of less smudges but it's not that big of a deal.
02:44But still the MacBook Air is a lovely looking laptop. It might not be as futuristic looking as
02:49the Dell XPS although I don't love the keyboard on that thing or as productivity focused perhaps as
02:54the dual screen Asus ZenBook Duo. It's a standard clamshell laptop. It's a MacBook you know what
02:59you're getting and I still think it looks good. It's thin, it's light, we get a great keyboard and
03:03touchpad, top-notch performance and it's completely fanless so unlike the pros it doesn't make any
03:07sound and even under pressure it never got more than a bit warm. It will easily last you a full
03:12day on battery and Apple say up to 18 hours of local video playback. The same as the M2 although
03:18over the past couple of days I've been averaging about 12 hours of general use which is still very
03:22good. Now right off the bat if you already own a MacBook Air with the M2 then this is not worth
03:28the upgrade. There's three main differences. You get the M3 chip which is a little bit faster
03:33particularly for graphics and AI and we'll come to some performance benchmark... benchmarks in
03:37a second. We also get Wi-Fi 6E rather than Wi-Fi 6 but of course you will need a 6E router to take
03:43advantage of that and almost no one does. Plus we have Wi-Fi 7 now so it would have been good to
03:48see that but anyway Wi-Fi 6E and also you can now output to two external monitors with the M3 chip
03:54whereas this is limited to one. Although the caveat is you are still only limited to two screens so in
04:00order to have two monitors and you can see here the M3 Air is hooked up to two 5k studio displays
04:05the laptop needs to be in clamshell mode, closed essentially. Open the lid and it'll turn one of
04:10these screens off. Quick side note actually because right now the base MacBook Pro the 14 inch with
04:16the M3 chip actually is limited to just one external screen like the M2 Air but Apple say
04:21there will be a software update to bring parity with these new M3 Airs which means that functionality
04:26was there all along and Apple simply turned it off on the base model Pros to convince you to pay
04:31extra to get the M3 Pro chip in the Pro laptops. In terms of the screen again identical to last
04:38year's M2 Air but if you are coming from the M1 then you will benefit from the 20% brighter
04:43brightness 500 nits up from 400 nits and this brightness does match what you get on the Apple
04:48studio display and also it's a little bit bigger screen because they've shrunk the bezels and of
04:52course we get that notch at the top there which houses the much improved 1080p webcam. Here's a
04:58test for the webcam Paddington station pretty loud now what I can do is switch on voice isolation
05:06with a microphone hopefully that's cut out some of that background sound other options I have with
05:11the FaceTime 1080p camera I can go to portrait mode I can also adjust the strength of that now
05:17this isn't new for the M3 but it basically shares the same camera as the M2 although we do have
05:22improved microphones the voice clarity has improved apparently although also the speakers
05:28one change with the speakers one downgrade arguably is we've lost the wide sound according
05:33to Apple specs at least I couldn't hear that much difference between the M2 and the M3. I still
05:38think the M1 sounds a little bit better because you've got the actual speaker grills flanking
05:42the keyboard although MacBook Pros definitely still win. I can also put on studio light
05:49and yeah everyone's probably looking at me like why is he talking to a laptop
05:52in a train station. One last thing to mention while I've got you in terms of the difference
05:56between the 13 and the 15 MacBook Airs they are identical except for three things bigger screen
06:02obviously about 200 pounds more expensive and the 15 inch has six speakers versus four speakers on
06:09the 13 inch so for a slightly better sound and it is known to be better you might want the 15 inch
06:15don't get me wrong these are very nice screens good color accuracy wide viewing angles the 500
06:20bit brightness is pretty good and I think the quad hd resolution thereabouts is a good fit for the
06:25size however compared to some of the windows rivals the screen I think is falling behind a
06:29little bit there's no 120 hertz high refresh there's no oled or mini led option no touchscreen
06:35so versus the M2 not worth the upgrade and even Apple quote the performance increases from the
06:39M1 they're not really suggesting that you should upgrade from last year's M2 however versus the
06:44M1 which came out in 2020 or god forbid you're running an older intel powered MacBook then there
06:49may be finally enough reasons to actually upgrade. So let's talk about the M3 this new processor which
06:55is really the headline upgrade of these new MacBooks how much faster is it than the M1 and
06:59the M2 well let me throw a whole bunch of numbers at you and you can see the jump from the M1 is a
07:04lot more significant than the M2. Apple said it was up to 60% faster and in that OpenCL graphics
07:09test 61% and in Cinebench we're looking at a nearly 50% jump from the M1 to the M3 in multi-core
07:16performance and then finally we have Blender Premiere Pro and of course old faithful Shadow
07:21of the Tomb Raider and so broadly we're looking at about a 55% uptick from the M1 and around 15%
07:27from the M2 thereabouts and this translates to games as well because the M3 supports dynamic
07:32caching mesh shaders and hardware ray tracing although ray tracing isn't really that widely
07:36used right now basically it all adds up to mean it's much faster in games and considering we're
07:41getting roughly the same battery in the same form factor and still with a fanless design in terms of
07:46efficiency and performance you've got to take your hat off to those Apple engineers. Now we just need
07:52more games on Mac. Obviously we've got a decent sized Steam library but nothing compared to what
07:57you get on Windows. You've got Apple Arcade, you can stream games from Xbox Cloud or GeForce Now
08:01so you do have options but hopefully with this new more powerful processor in both the A's and
08:06the Pro's we will see more devs port their games to run natively on macOS. What is also interesting
08:12though is that the M3 in the MacBook Air gives us broadly the same performance as the M3 in the
08:17MacBook Pro. In a couple of tests it falls behind particularly when we're dealing with sustained
08:21performance because of course the Pro laptop has fans so the M3 chip doesn't have to throttle as
08:26quickly. But it does raise the question is the MacBook Pro actually worth buying now with this M3
08:30Air? Well I'm going to make a whole video just about that so make sure you have subscribed.
08:36Apple's also very keen to push the AI performance of these guys. The M3 has a 16-core neural engine
08:42and while there are a handful of AI accelerated applications out there, Apple showed me FreeChat
08:47and Luminar Neo, right now it's a bit more about future-proofing and also as Apple are expected to
08:52completely revolutionize their AI capabilities with Gen AI and Siri, probably announced at this
08:57year's WWDC in June coming with new software updates later in the year, but for now the vast
09:02majority of your AI-ing will be in the cloud. Your Photoshop Gen fill, your Chat GPT and Copilot in
09:08Microsoft Office. Oh and also don't forget the M3 gives us an AV1 decode engine which without boring
09:14you all to death is kind of a big deal for being able to play back videos that use the AV1 codec
09:18which more and more will, much more efficiently. But numbers aside it is incredibly impressive how
09:24capable this M3 chip is and to a larger extent the M2 and still the M1 as well to be fair,
09:29especially as these MacBook Airs are a fanless design. Being able to edit 4K videos and use 3D
09:34apps like Blender, even some proper gaming at full HD with mid to high settings, for almost everyone
09:40this is more power than you'll ever need. As my mum would say, it'll see her out. Although if you
09:44do need something with a bit more oomph, particularly sustained oomph because it has a fan, then you do
09:49of course have the MacBook Pro options as well. This is a maxed out 16-inch MacBook Pro which
09:54costs like seven and a half grand, that's the top spec one, you don't need to spend that kind of money
09:58but certainly if you've got an extra 400 or so in your budget and want a brighter higher refresh
10:03screen, more ports and just a more powerful M3 Pro or Max processor, then you do have that option.
10:09So all that for £1,099, what's not to love? Well, a couple of things. Firstly, we have to talk about
10:17the specs because the base M3 Air still only comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage, that's the same
10:24configuration that we got on the M1 Air four years ago. Obviously it's faster RAM and storage but I
10:29don't think it's enough, so I would 100% pay the extra £200 to double it to 16GB and also by
10:35doing that, or if you opt for more storage, you also get the M3 with a 10-core GPU, an extra two
10:41cores over the base spec. But then I'd probably also recommend doubling the storage for another
10:46£200 to 512GB, partly because it's a faster SSD drive, although it's not that significant of a
10:51difference that you'd really notice it in everyday life, but it's, you know, a faster drive, but also
10:55more importantly for the increased storage space, you're going to fill up 256GB pretty quickly.
11:00But then an M3 Air with 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage, probably the spec you would want,
11:05you're looking at £1,500 or £1,700 if you want the 15-inch. Realistically though, I would probably
11:11just go with the 16GB of RAM because you can't upgrade it and if you're going to use this for
11:15the next five or six years or so, then you don't want to be running out of RAM, especially as apps
11:19and games become even more demanding. And while 256GB of storage isn't that much, you can always
11:24just plug in an external SSD or backup to iCloud, you have options that you don't have with the RAM.
11:30I am pleased to see though that for the first time there is an off-the-shelf SKU with 16GB of RAM,
11:35so you should just be able to walk into a store and pick one up and not have to customise it and
11:39wait for it to ship. Also, don't forget you can trade in your laptop. This is the base spec M1 Air
11:44from four years ago and Apple will give me £385 with a trade-in towards one of these guys, which
11:50is a pretty good deal. It's over a third of the original price, although I would probably just
11:53give this to someone because it's still a very capable laptop. And speaking of which, if you can
11:57get the M1 Air on a good deal, and right now on Amazon UK it's like £770 for a new M1 Air,
12:04that's not a bad price for this. So to wrap up, the MacBook Air M3 is by no means a perfect laptop
12:10and Apple's stinginess with the RAM and storage continues to be a frustration. But still, these
12:15really are excellent all-rounder laptops. They'll last you a long time, as we've seen from the still
12:20very capable M1 Air. I mean, there aren't many four-year-old Windows laptops that still hold up
12:24this well, so I reckon for most of us, if you need a new MacBook, I would just get the M2 for £999.
12:30However, while the £100 or dollar premium for the M3 isn't that much, if you are considering it for
12:36the better performance, then you will also definitely want to upgrade the RAM to 16 gigs,
12:39which does make it then significantly more expensive. To put it another way, I would take
12:44a 16 gig M2 versus an 8 gig M3 laptop. But what about you? What laptop are you using right now
12:50and are you tempted to upgrade? And if you have any questions or anything you'd like me to test,
12:54then drop a comment below. Thank you so much for watching, guys, and I'll see you next time
12:58right here on The Tech Jab, as I just assemble my stack of MacBook Airs.