MacBook Air

m3-macbook-air-refresh-boosts-storage-speeds-for-256gb-models

M3 MacBook Air refresh boosts storage speeds for 256GB models

13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, Apple, Apple M2, Apple M3, MacBook Air, Tech / /

in a flash —

For the M2 Air, getting better storage speeds required a 512GB (or larger) SSD.

–

The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.

Enlarge / The 13- and 15-inch M3 MacBook Air.

Andrew Cunningham

When Apple upgraded its Macs with the M2 chip, some users noticed that storage speeds were actually quite a bit lower than they were in the M1 versions. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and the 512GB M2 MacBook Pro had their storage speeds roughly halved compared to M1 Macs with the same storage capacities.

Teardowns revealed that this was because Apple was using fewer physical flash memory chips to provide the same amount of storage. Modern SSDs achieve their high speeds partly by reading from and writing to multiple NAND flash chips simultaneously, a process called “interleaving.” When there’s only one flash chip to access, speeds go down.

Early teardowns of the M3 MacBook Air suggest that Apple may have reversed course here, at least for some Airs. The Max Tech YouTube channel took a 256GB M3 Air apart, showing a pair of 128GB NAND flash chips rather than the single 256GB chip that the M2 Air used. BlackMagic Disk Speed Test performance increases accordingly; read and write speeds for the 256GB M2 Air come in at around 1,600 MB/s, while the M3 Air has read speeds of roughly 2,900 MB/s and write speeds of about 2,100 MB/s. That’s roughly in line with the M1 Air’s performance.

For the other M3 MacBook Airs, storage speed should be mostly comparable to the M2 versions. Apple sent us the 512GB configuration of the 13- and 15-inch M3 Airs, and storage speeds in the BlackMagic Disk Speed Test were roughly the same as for the 512GB M2 Airs—roughly 3,000 MB/s for both reading and writing.

Though this appears to be good news for M3 Air buyers, it doesn’t guarantee that any given 256GB MacBook Air will come configured this way. Apple uses multiple suppliers for many of the components in its devices, and the company could ship a mix of 128GB and 256GB chips in different 256GB MacBook Airs based on which components are cheaper or more readily available at any given time. (The Max Tech channel speculates that a single 128GB NAND chip costs Apple more than a single 256GB NAND chip, though Max Tech doesn’t cite a source for this, and we just don’t know what prices Apple negotiates with its suppliers for these components.)

Though it’s nice that the M3 Air’s baseline storage speeds are increasing, it’s too bad that a new Air is still offering the same storage speed as the M1 Airs released over three years ago. It’s frustrating that Apple can’t improve storage speeds along with CPU and GPU performance, especially when the standard M.2 SSDs in PCs are getting faster and cost less money than what Apple sells in its Mac lineup.

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Review: Apple’s efficient M3 MacBook Airs are just about as good as laptops get

13-inch MacBook Air, 15-inch MacBook Air, Apple, Apple M3, Features, MacBook Air, Tech / /

Air apparent —

For Intel or even M1 upgraders, there’s a lot to like about the M3 Air.

–

Apple's M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022's design.

Enlarge / Apple’s M3 MacBook Airs put a new chip in 2022’s design.

Andrew Cunningham

Right off the bat, the M3 MacBook Airs aren’t as interesting as the M2 models.

July 2022’s M2 MacBook Air updated the design of the 13-inch laptop for the Apple Silicon era after the M1 Air’s external design played it safe. And the first-ever 15-inch MacBook Air, released over a year later, was an appealing option for people who wanted a larger screen but didn’t need the extra power or cost of a MacBook Pro. Together, they were a comprehensive rethink of Apple’s approach to its mainstream laptops, modeled after the similarly dramatic Apple Silicon MacBook Pro redesigns.

The M3 Airs don’t do any of that. They are laptop designs we’ve already seen, wrapped around a processor we’ve already seen. But they may end up being more important than the M2 Airs because of when they’re being released—as the last of the Intel Macs slowly age and break and Apple winds down software support for them (if not in this year’s macOS release, then almost certainly next year’s). Between the faster chip and a couple of other feature updates, the new machines may also be the first ones that are truly worth a look for M1 Air early adopters who want an upgrade.

Apple left us a scant 48 hours to test and use this laptop, but here’s what we’ve observed so far.

Does the design hold up?

  • The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs. Same design, but the 15-inch Air has a bigger screen and trackpad and better speakers, while the 13-inch Air is smaller and lighter. Note both the fingerprints on the Midnight finish and how the notch can be either more or less visible based on your settings.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Air footprints compared: the 13-inch on top of the 15-inch.

    Andrew Cunningham

The M1 MacBook Air is still the one I use most days, and anyone coming from a 2018–2020 Intel MacBook Air will be familiar with the design. So the M2/M3-era MacBook Air design is still striking to me, despite being the better part of two years old.

By and large, I think the newer design holds up pretty well; I don’t mind the loss of the taper, even if it makes the laptop look a bit more boxy and less sleek. The full-height function row and tweaked keyboard are both good, and I don’t generally have issues with trackpad palm rejection on either the 13- or 15-inch models. It’s nice to have MagSafe back, though in the end, I almost always charge the Air with one of the many USB-C chargers I have strategically tucked into most rooms in the house.

Specs at a glance: Apple M3 MacBook Air (as reviewed)
Screen 13.6-inch 2560×1664 IPS LCD 15.3-inch 2880×1864
OS macOS 14.4 Sonoma
CPU Apple M3 (4 E-cores, 4 P-cores)
RAM 16GB unified memory
GPU Apple M3 (10 GPU cores)
Storage 512GB soldered SSD
Battery 52.6 WHr 66.5 WHr
Networking Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.3
Ports 2x Thunderbolt/USB4, MagSafe 3, headphones
Size 11.97×8.46×0.44 inches (304.1×215×113 mm) 13.40×9.35×0.45 inches (340.4×237.6×115 mm)
Weight 2.7 lbs (1.24 kg) 3.3 lbs (1.51 kg)
Warranty 1-year
Price as reviewed $1,499 $1,699
Other perks 1080p webcam, TouchID

I’m also reminded anew of just how much I like the 15-inch MacBook Air as someone who likes a big screen but doesn’t use a laptop for much gaming or anything heavier than Photoshop or Lightroom (and I generally don’t care that much about high-refresh-rate displays). The combination of size and weight really is close to ideal, and though the 15-inch Air is unmistakably larger and heavier than the 13-inch model, the difference isn’t so large in daily use that I spend a lot of time thinking about it. The improved speaker setup is also nice to have when you’re playing music or using that bigger screen to watch something.

The biggest downside of the design remains the display notch. As we and others have noted multiple times, it’s not that you don’t get used to it, and in typical desktop use (especially in dark mode and with a dark wallpaper), you can often forget it’s there. But in the absence of FaceID or some major other functional addition, it feels like a lot of space to take up for not a lot of user-visible benefit.

Sure, a 1080p webcam instead of a 720p webcam is nice, but I would choose a notch-less screen with more usable space every time if given the choice. (The strips of screen to either side of the notch can only really display the macOS menu bar; go into the Control Center area of the Settings and change “automatically hide and show the Menu Bar’ to “Never” if you don’t want those strips of screen to go totally wasted in full-screen mode).

  • The Midnight finish as seen on a 15-inch MacBook Air, freshly cleaned and pristine.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • This is what the laptop looked like before I cleaned it. I’ve had it for two days. You’ll definitely still see fingerprints.

    Andrew Cunningham

One design change that Apple has highlighted for the M3 Airs is a new coating for the Midnight (read: blue-tinted black) version of the Air that is said to reduce its fingerprint-y-ness. Apple did the same thing for the M3 version of the MacBook Pro last year.

The new finish looks a shade or two lighter than the old Midnight coating and does show fingerprints a bit less. But “less” isn’t “none,” and my Air was immediately, visibly fingerprint-y and skin-oily, both on the lid and in the palm rest area. It remains more noticeable than on either the Starlight finish of the 13-inch M3 Air or the space gray finish on my M1 Air. Choose your color finish accordingly.

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macbook-airs-get-an-m3-upgrade,-while-the-m1-model-is-finally-retired

MacBook Airs get an M3 upgrade, while the M1 model is finally retired

Apple, Apple M3, Mac, MacBook Air, Tech / /

bout time —

M2 Air is the new $999 base model, M1 Air goes away after more than 3 years.

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Apple is refreshing the MacBook Air with M3 chips but leaving everything else about the 2022 redesign intact.

Enlarge / Apple is refreshing the MacBook Air with M3 chips but leaving everything else about the 2022 redesign intact.

Apple

Apple has quietly refreshed its MacBook Air lineup, bringing new chips (and in some cases, new prices) to its most popular laptops. New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs include Apple’s latest-generation M3 chip, while the old M2 MacBook Air now replaces 2020’s M1 MacBook Air as Apple’s $999 entry-level laptop. The new 13- and 15-inch M3 systems start at $1,099 and $1,299; they can be ordered today and will be released on March 8.

The new Airs use the same design as the M2 versions. Compared to older M1 and late-Intel-era Airs, they have slightly larger displays with a prominent notch, a non-tapered but still thin-and-light chassis, larger trackpads, modestly refined keyboards, and a MagSafe port for charging.

All of the new Airs use the M3, with no options to upgrade to faster or more capable processors (frustratingly, this means the Air is still restricted to just a single external display). The $1,099 13-inch Air does use a slightly cut-down version of the chip with 8 GPU cores instead of 10, with the 10-core GPU available as a $100 upgrade; all 15-inch models use the fully enabled M3 with the 10-core GPU.

Aside from the M3 chip, the new laptops also support Wi-Fi 6E, and hardware-accelerated video decoding for the AV1 video codec. But other specs, including RAM and storage options, stay the same as before. Both laptops start with 8GB and 256GB or RAM and storage, respectively, and top out at 24GB and 2TB. Both Airs’ performance should generally be similar to the 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro that starts at $1,599, though the Pro has a cooling fan that may help it run heavy workloads a bit more quickly.

All versions of the M3 include four high-performance CPU cores and four high-efficiency CPU cores, the same as the M1 and M2, though Apple says that chip upgrades have made the M3 “up to 60 percent faster” than the M1. Performance upgrades compared to the M2 will be a bit milder.

The update gets the 13- and 15-inch Airs onto the same update schedule, though the timing is a bit awkward for the barely nine-month-old 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. That’s an even shorter life cycle than we saw with the M2 MacBook Pros that Apple replaced last November after just 11 months. But the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air originally came out in July of 2022 and was well overdue for an upgrade.

The only Macs without an M3 update are Apple’s desktops: the Mac mini, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Pro. Of these, the M2 Mac mini is the oldest, and Apple has already released the M3 and M3 Pro chips that would probably be used in a refresh. It’s possible that Apple is waiting to get the mini and the Studio models in sync with one another to prevent some of the awkward overlap that happened last year when the Mac mini got an M2 upgrade but the Studio still used M1 chips.

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