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00:00This is the new MacBook Air M3. It's the 13-inch, this is the 15, and this is the MacBook Pro,
00:06also with the M3. And I want to figure out whether you should go for the Air or the Pro.
00:10Because Apple have just refreshed the 13 and the 15-inch Airs for 2024 with the new M3 chip,
00:15which is the same 3 nanometer Apple silicon used in the base model 14-inch Pro,
00:20we also now get Wi-Fi 6E and now the ability to output to two external monitors.
00:25Albeit with the laptop lid closed, so technically still only two screens.
00:29Altogether then a fairly modest upgrade, I'm sure you'll agree. And of course the M2's had a price
00:34cut down to $999, replacing the old M1 Air as the entry-level MacBook with the 13-inch M3 starting
00:40at $1099. But then we have the MacBook Pro. This is the 14-inch, also with the M3 chip,
00:45the base model MacBook Pro, and this replaces the older 13-inch Pro that had the touch bar.
00:50And while the Pro also has a bigger brother in the form of a 16-inch model, and you can also
00:54spec it with an M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, so this can get ludicrously expensive, but in this video
01:00I'm comparing the M3 Air and M3 Pro. So hopefully by the end you have a better idea which one's
01:06right for you. So let's kick off with the price. M3 Air, base model, £1,099. £1,699, or $1,599
01:14actually. It's $100 cheaper, but that doesn't include sales tax in the US. So there is some
01:19price variation around the world obviously. So let's talk specs. And as I say they all use the
01:23M3 chip, although as I'll show you in a minute the Pro can be a fair bit quicker. The Pro also
01:28gets 512 gigs of storage as standard, double the Air's 256, and also a 10-core GPU as standard
01:34versus 8 on the Air. Although you can pay 100 more or just upgrade the RAM which automatically
01:38gets you the extra graphics cores. Fine. What is frustrating though, particularly with the
01:43Pro laptop, is that these all come with 8 gigabytes of RAM as standard, 8 gigs of memory,
01:48which is the same amount as we got with the M1 Air from four years ago. For the Pro especially,
01:53I think it's a bit unforgivable that it still comes with 8 gigs. And I would absolutely pay the
01:58200 extra to get 16 gigs of RAM regardless of which one of these you go for. Because you can't
02:02upgrade it yourself, so probably budget an extra 200 regardless of which one you go for. I know,
02:07I hate it too. So realistically the MacBook Air has two main advantages over the Pro. It's cheaper
02:14and it's more compact. We have lost the tapered edge of the outgoing M1 Air and it does now share
02:19a very similar design with the Pro, notch and all. And while it's not a like-for-like because
02:24the Airs are 13 and 15 inch and the Pros are 14 and 16, the Air is a good deal thinner and lighter.
02:30To give you an idea, this 15-inch Air is actually 40 grams lighter than this 14-inch Pro.
02:37And it's about four millimeters thinner. Does it make a big difference carrying it around,
02:42putting in a backpack and opening on a train or in a coffee shop? I'd argue no, not really. Although
02:47I do quite like the starlight and midnight color options we get with the Airs, it is a shame that
02:51the Pros just come in plain old silver or space gray, unless you go for a higher spec and unlock
02:56the midnight option. More importantly though, as I get confused which laptop is which and move these
03:00around my desk, is the MacBook Air is a fanless design. There are no fans in this, so no matter
03:05what you're doing it runs completely silent. So I definitely appreciate the Air's form factor,
03:10but in my mind the chunkier Pro makes up for it in other ways. Firstly, it does have fans. When you
03:16are gaming, rendering, designing, 3D editing, whatever more demanding thing it is you're doing,
03:21then they wear up and help keep the chip cool, which means you get less throttling
03:25and better sustained performance. And we'll come back to that in a second. The Pro also squeezes
03:29in more ports. Both laptops get two USB-C Thunderbolt 4s, a MagSafe charger and a headphone
03:34jack, but the Pro also gets a full-size SD card reader and an HDMI 2.1. So photographers and
03:40videographers like myself definitely appreciate having that. And if you're a monitor like that
03:45one there I'm reviewing right now, it's the new LG 32-inch 4K OLED gaming monitor. Very,
03:50very nice, but it doesn't have a USB-C port. I can then at least use the HDMI. Of course,
03:56both the Airs and the Pro get the same fantastic touchpad and keyboard. We have the Touch ID power
04:00button. No differences there. But we do have to talk about the speakers, because both 14 and
04:0516-inch Pros pack in six high-fidelity speakers with force-canceling woofers. And versus the Air,
04:12it's a much richer, more bassy and just fuller sound. However, the 15-inch Air does actually get
04:31six speakers to the 13-inch's four, and it does sound noticeably better.
04:55So this is kind of a halfway house between them, but certainly the Pro does still sound
04:59noticeably better. For me though, the biggest difference between the Air and the Pro is the
05:04screen. MacBook Air, 60Hz, 500 nits, LCD. MacBook Pro, 120Hz, 1600 nits, mini-LED.
05:13Okay, taking those things in turn. First, the higher refresh rate, or ProMotion as Apple like
05:18to call it, means everything on the Pro feels so much smoother, whether you're scrolling through
05:22websites, scrolling through a project timeline, gaming. I wouldn't say it's a must-have feature,
05:27but most Windows laptops at this price point do offer 120Hz, and it makes the laptop just
05:32feel significantly faster. Second, the brightness. And I think this is a bigger deal. We get 500 nits
05:37on the Air, 600 on the Pro. So right out of the gate, it's 20% brighter no matter what you're
05:42doing. However, if you're watching, gaming or editing in HDR, say you're watching a show on
05:47Apple TV, then this can peak at 1600 nits. And the best bit is you can use an app like Vivid,
05:53which can unlock that HDR brightness across the whole desktop, whatever you're doing.
05:58Obviously this will impact your battery life, but I use this all the time if I'm outdoors or
06:02travelling, and often it means I can actually see the screen without having to squint and get a
06:05headache. It's a big plus. And third, this is using a mini-LED backlight, compared to the Air's
06:11regular LCD screen, which means we get much better contrast, with proper inky blacks rather than
06:17washed-out greys. Day-to-day, I'd argue it's not all that different, and unlike an OLED screen,
06:22you can sometimes see blooming, but if you're watching lots of movies, you're editing photos,
06:27then along with being much brighter and much faster, the Pro's screen, for me,
06:31is the biggest selling point. The Air isn't bad by any stretch, but I think compared to the Pro,
06:37and more egregiously compared to similarly priced Windows competitors, the screen is falling behind
06:42a little bit. But let's move on and talk about performance. Is the Pro actually faster? Well,
06:47the answer is yes, but only sometimes. It depends on how you use it. Quick caveat though, because
06:52this M3 Air review sample that Apple sent me, it has 16 gigs of RAM, and therefore the 10-core GPU.
06:58By default, it has 8 gigs of RAM and an 8-core GPU, whereas this is the base model MacBook Pro,
07:03which comes with a 10-core GPU, so that is the same, but only 8 gigs of RAM. So in theory,
07:07this will perform a little bit better than the base Air, so it's not quite an apples-to-apples,
07:12an apples-to-oranges, if you will, but it's pretty close. And actually, to start with,
07:15in Geekbench 6, which only takes a couple of minutes to run, there's actually nothing really
07:19in it between them. And across the three tests, the Air I've got here comes out slightly on top,
07:24although the difference is pretty negligible, and as I say, it does have more RAM.
07:28Now, in Cinebench, which is a more demanding 10-minute benchmark for the processor,
07:32while single-core is again nigh on the same, the multi-core is a good 15% higher.
07:37And look at this, the M3 in the Air is running at 108 degrees Celsius versus 102, 103 on the Pro.
07:45I actually would have thought the Pro wouldn't even get that hot, but with the 4,000 or so RPM
07:49fan whirring away, it does allow the Pro to maintain higher clock speeds, giving us better performance.
07:54Now, this is Blender, and I'm going to run this ripple animation for 10 minutes to see which one
07:58renders more frames. And thanks to the magic of editing, let's skip forward, and we're looking at
08:03540 on the Air versus 624 on the Pro. 15% optic. And finally, old faithful, Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
08:10I do realise no one's actually playing this, but it's one of the few games on Mac with a benchmark
08:14tool, and it's still pretty demanding. And running at 1200p, high settings, we're looking at 31 versus
08:2038 FPS, which is a solid 22% boost for the Pro. So it all comes down to the Pro having a fan,
08:26and under sustained load, crucially sustained load, if you have gaming, you're video editing,
08:31you're rendering, 3D design, that sort of thing, then you are going to see a sort of 15, 20% optic
08:36in performance over the Air. But in everyday life, just, you know, scrolling through websites,
08:40opening apps, and just using it normally, if you will, for a bit of Netflix and Google Docs,
08:45you're not really going to see a difference. However, having that extra performance on
08:48tap when it's needed, while also offering a longer battery life, that's a pretty good
08:53combination. Now, Apple say the MacBook Air M3s will get you 18 hours of local video playback
08:59and 22 hours on the MacBook Pro. So on paper, according to Apple, this will last about 10, 15%
09:05longer. But we can't take Apple's word for it, so I thought I'd run a quick test. And by a quick test,
09:10I mean leaving it for 10 hours overnight playing a YouTube video to see where they end up. The 13-inch
09:15Air ended on 30%, the 15-inch Air had 36%, and the Pro had 39%. So good, better, best. Just like the
09:23speakers. Whichever one you go for, though, definitely up for the fast charger, which does
09:27come included if you go for the extra storage. So where does that leave us? Which one should you
09:32actually buy? Well, on the one hand, it is good that we have so many options. You've got the M2 Air
09:37starting at £999, and then you've got the new M3 Airs, and then you've got the two Pros, and you can
09:41play with all the different specs and go for M3 Pro and Max chips. Lots of different options. On the
09:45other hand, what I don't like is how they still come with 8GB of RAM and Apple is still the master
09:50of the opsel. And to add 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage, a spec you probably might want is an extra £400
09:56if you go for an Air, or an extra £200 with this because you already have 512GB storage. So that is
10:01a bit frustrating. But to answer the question of which one I would buy, well, assuming you're not
10:05doing anything crazy and you just want a good all-round laptop that doesn't break the bank, then
10:09I would probably get none of these. I'd probably get the M2 Air. Just the base model for £999 is £100
10:16less than this. Yes, it doesn't have the slightly faster M3 chip, doesn't have Wi-Fi 6E, and you can
10:20only output to one monitor. And, you know, a £100 premium isn't that much to ask for, but it's
10:25starting to creep up. And I think what I would do is get an M2 Air, spec it with 16GB of RAM,
10:30and then maybe spend £50 on an external SSD so you've got more storage space as well.
10:34That will do you for the next five, six, seven years to be honest. In terms of the MacBook Pro,
10:38well, it's in the name. This is a Pro device. Yes, the screen is lovely, the speakers are fantastic,
10:43and I do use a MacBook Pro 16 every single, as I bang the desk, every single day of the week,
10:48and I absolutely love it. But it is so expensive, and I think unless your business, your company,
10:53is buying it for you, or you're buying it yourself for work as a bit of an investment,
10:57starting at £1,700, you're going to want to double the RAM, which puts you up to 1,900,
11:01and really the best bit about the Pro is that you can spec it with an M3 Pro or M3 Max chip.
11:06So yeah, my conclusion is, annoyingly, it depends on what you're going to use it for,
11:10and also what your budget is. I'm going to stop waffling now. Hopefully that was helpful.
11:13If you've got any other questions about this, drop a comment below, and I'll do my best to
11:16get back to you. If you enjoyed the video, a like and a thumbs up, and a subscribe,
11:20and all those annoying YouTuber cliches would be lovely, and I'll see you next time right here
11:24on The Tech Chap.