Apple's Macbook Air gets the M3 Treatment!

Is it time for an upgrade? In a surprise announcement, Apple’s finally bringing their powerful M3 silicon to their super popular Macbook Air laptops! This new M3 Macbook Air not only promises to be a big improvement to either the M1 or even M2 Macbook Air models, it’s also promising to be a powerful contender in the AI laptop race.

That’s a very bold claim that’s for sure. But what kind of promises are they making with this Macbook Air anyway? Turns out, it’s a number of things, and we’re going to take a look at them here following the laptop’s quiet launch.

Big performance improvements with M3!

As we’ve already seen with their M3 Macbook Pro release, Apple’s M3 provides quite a boost in performance, even when compared to the M2 Macbook Pro. Dynamic Caching for instance, helps optimize GPU memory allocation and utilization, boosting overall efficiency. Likewise, it’s pretty cool to see this on the Macbook Air.

For one, Apple claims that the M3 Macbook Air will be around 60% faster than the original M1 Macbook Air. In fact, it’s provided a number of examples that supposedly illustrates these performance gains:

• The game No Man’s Sky is supposedly 60% faster than the M1 Macbook Air

• Enhancing photos with Photomator Pro is up to 40% faster

• Working with Excel spreadsheets is up to 35% faster compared to the M1

• Video editing with Final Cut Pro is up to 60% faster compared to the M1

The M3 is built on top of a 3nm process, giving it great efficiency too, in addition to its performance. Aside from that bump in speed, Apple’s promising up to 18 hours of battery life on these new models. It’s definitely shaping up to be an upgrade worth heading into.

"The best consumer laptop for AI!"

The AI PC race isn’t a new arena for Apple. Having transitioned to using its own silicon, their Macbooks have always been built with AI workloads in mind. This goes doubly true for the upcoming M3 Macbook Air, given that it’s now rocking an efficient 16-core Neural Engine as well as accelerators in its GPU and CPU.

So if you’re someone who likes running large language models (LLMs), editing with Pixelmator Pro or CapCut, or even doing some transcribing, then the new ultraportable and fan-less, M3 Macbook Air can be quite the convenient upgrade. All of this can be done on-device too rather than relying on the cloud for faster turnaround times.

M3 in your preferred size!

Fans of the 15-inch M2 Macbook Air who’re planning to upgrade will be delighted to know that Apple’s offering the M3 in both 13 and 15-inch variants. Both models will retain Apple’s popular Liquid Retina display, featuring higher resolutions than most Windows devices, support for 1 billion colors, 500 nits of brightness, and everything we expect about Apple’s displays.

What’s new is that both of them are now capable of supporting up to two external displays, provided the laptop’s lid is closed. So if you’re the type who multitasks a lot, then this should give you the advantage of working on two big screens.

Ports remain the same though, including one for MagSafe charging, two Thunderbolt ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. You do get the same “Midnight” color that we’ve seen in the M3 Macbook Pro though, with the anodization seal that supposedly helps it stay fingerprint-free!

Farewell to the M1 Macbook Air?

With the M3 Macbook Air now slated for release, Apple has announced that it will now discontinue the M1 Macbook Air. The device had been quite revolutionary during its release, and it even managed to stick around as an affordable option despite Apple rolling out its M2-equipped successor.

It also means the end of the Macbook Air’s familiar wedge-shaped chassis. The M3 Air will be following the more symmetrical and squared-off design of the M2.

The Macbook Air has always been a popular pick for many users, owing to its great balance between efficiency, performance, and portability. It’s a great productivity pick for many professionals and students. We’ll definitely let you know when these devices finally make their way here to your most trusted online gadget store!

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