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

In general, nothing has changed about the MacBook Air 13's design and case quality. Compared to the old MacBook Air M1, the current design doesn't make use of a wedge-shaped base unit. In practical use, this isn't an issue despite its hard front edge, as the base unit is simply too flat to be annoying for your wrists. Its build remains excellent and the same can be said for its stability. Its maximum opening angle is 135 degrees.

With the release of the M2 generation, Apple extended its well-known color variants Silver and Space Gray to include two new options: Starlight and Midnight. The dark blue variant Midnight looked especially good on the product photos but it quickly turned out to be quite the fingerprint magnet and it was nearly impossible to keep its surfaces clean. Subsequently, the new M3 model (Midnight) comes with an anodized coating—the same as the black version of the MacBook Pro 14/16—to help mitigate this. As a result, fingerprint marks are a lot less of an issue. As was already the case with the black MBP 14, marks do become visible after longer periods of time, but the surfaces can be cleaned much easier using a cloth.

One feature is new, however, as previously, the MacBook Air M2 could only power one external monitor aside from its internal panel. The hardware requirements for the M3 SoC are identical, so it is still only possible to control two displays, but if you close the screen lid, you can now also use two external monitors (1x up to 6K/60 Hz, 1x up to 5K/60 Hz). Of course, this still isn't totally ideal but it is a clear step in the right direction and could make all the difference if you are looking to use two monitors. 

We tested the new function with two external screens (one via USB-C and the other via USB-C/HDMI adapter), which worked perfectly. The MacBook Pro 14 M3 is also set to receive this function at a later date via a software update.

Apple continues to rely on a 13.6-inch IPS screen within the Air. Its resolution is slightly crooked at 2,560 x 1,664 pixels. The 64 additional vertical pixels are used for the area next to the notch. As always, it doesn't look the best, but it also doesn't take any space away from the actual 16:10 panel.

Subjectively, the panel's picture quality remains impressive. Colors look intense and content is sharp; in addition, macOS still shows no scaling issues. We would, however, like to start seeing an update to 120 Hz, as this model continues to feature a 60-Hz panel. Its response times aren't particularly quick but they also aren't noticeably slow—in everyday use, you won't notice any ghosting. PWM isn't used and its screen brightness and color temperature are adapted automatically depending on the ambient light.

The Apple M3 SoC is Apple's first chip manufactured using the 3-nm process. Its core configuration is the same as the old M2 SoC but thanks to its improved manufacturing process, Apple has been able to raise its clock rates without it using that much more energy. Its four performance cores now reach a maximum of 4.056 GHz (or ~3.6 GHz with all cores loaded) and the four efficiency cores clock at a maximum of 2.748 GHz. During the multi-core tests, the processor consumed ~21 watts for a short while, after which it steadily decreased and balanced out at 10.5 watts during 12 minutes of continuous load (R23 Multi: 8,237 points, so ~19 % less). In general, its performance during short tests is comparable with the MacBook Pro 14 M3, whose performance remains stable, however, thanks to its active cooling.

Compared to the old M2 SoC, its performance is now around 20 % higher on average. This means the M3 SoC ran just below the level of a Ryzen 7 7840U or the Core Ultra 7 155H within the ThinkPad X1 Carbon G12 during the multi-core tests—however, both of those models also consume a lot more energy.

In the single-core tests, Apple was again able to improve performance by a whopping 20 % compared to the M2, giving it a head start in front of the competition from AMD and Intel. These are impressive results, especially if you consider its low single-core consumption of just over 5 watts. We already took a look at the new M3 SoC's efficiency in our analysis article. In battery use, the MacBook Air 13 M3's CPU performance remains constant. Further CPU benchmarks can be found here.

The old MacBook Air M2 was already a super fast device in everyday use and this is the same with the new M3 SoC. Especially when running native applications, its performance is great and in the synthetic benchmarks, the new MacBook Air 13 M3 almost always came ahead of its Windows competitors.

Applications for Intel-based Macs can be emulated via Rosetta 2, which works very well. There may be a slight difference in speed (especially during complex applications) but in general, it works absolutely fine. The topic surrounding AI is a total trend at the moment, and Apple too has already installed an NPU in the form of its Neural Engine since the release of the M1 chips. This is used, for example, to predict words when writing messages. If you like to use Microsoft's Office Suite including Co-Pilot, then you won't have to worry, as this function is made available via the Cloud, meaning there shouldn't be any difference to Windows devices.

As was already the case with the MacBook Pro 14 M3, Apple has continued to only equip the MacBook Air 13 M3 with PCIe-3.0 SSDs. The 512-GB version (AP0512Z) is installed into our test device and its transfer rates were as expected, namely ~3.5 GB/s. As a result, you won't be faced with any limitations during everyday use. We again expect a much lower performance when it comes to the 256-GB model (~50 %) and we will check this as soon as possible. After first booting up the device, users have 465 GB free to use. The Air M3 can be fitted with a 2-TB SSD at most. Further SSD benchmarks can be found here.

The M3 GPU with 10 cores is installed into our test sample, which we already know from the MacBook Pro 14 M3. Its maximum power consumption is around 15 watts and in total, its performance is on the same level as the MacBook Pro—although the Air has to slow down under permanent load here, too. During the 3DMark WildLife-Extreme stress test, its result fell by about 25 % after 20 runs. Its GPU performance also offers an advantage of 20 % compared to the old M2 GPU with 10 cores. In battery use, its graphics performance remains constant and further benchmarks can be found here. 

Gaming on the MacBook is slowly picking up speed and games such as Total War: Pharaoh or Baldur's Gate 3 run natively on the MacBook. However, Baldur's Gate 3 is too demanding with high details, so you'll have to activate FSR in order to achieve about 35fps in 1080p/High. When it comes to FSR, you should at least choose the setting quality because if you don't, the laptop's graphics performance suffers dramatically. Emulated games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider or The Witcher 3 also run on the MacBook but depending on the game, there may be some limitations and their performance is a little limited, too.