After the 24-inch iMac and MacBook Pro, Apple added the powerful M3 chip to the MacBook Air. Just like the A17 Pro for iPhone 15 Pro (Max), the M3 chip is designed using a 3nm manufacturing process and this is reflected in the performance of the chip.
In the summer of 2022, the 13.6-inch MacBook Air was provided with a brand new design, and a larger version with a 15.3-inch display appeared a year later. Both MacBook Air models have received a minor update, which has only improved the specifications.
Extra powerful thanks to M3 chip
Last fall, Apple unveiled the M3 chip for Mac and it is expected that the new generation of MacBook Air will also use it. Like the A17 Pro for iPhone 15 Pro (Max), the M3 chip is designed using a 3nm manufacturing process. This is an advanced manufacturing technology used to make semiconductor chips. A 3nm process means that the transistor gate is only 3 nanometers wide, this article explains what is so special about it.
The GPU is faster, more efficient and uses the new Dynamic Caching technology. In addition, thanks to this GPU, new features such as ray tracing and mesh shading with hardware acceleration are possible for rendering on Mac for the first time. The rendering speed is now up to 2.5 times faster than with the M1 chips. This is especially a big plus when gaming on a Mac.
The CPU’s performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 percent and 50 percent faster than the M1, respectively, and the Neural Engine is 60 percent faster than the M1 line. Furthermore, there is a new media engine that supports AV1 decoding, so that images from streaming services are displayed more efficiently and in higher quality.
M3 processor specifications
Thanks to the M3 chip, the MacBook Air has great computing power and can complete tasks in no time. Below are the specifications of the processor:
- 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
- up to 10-core GPU (standard for 15.6-inch MacBook Air)
- Up to 24 GB memory (standard 8 GB)
- 16-core Neural Engine
- Ray tracing with hardware acceleration
- 100 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Media engine: H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW with hardware acceleration
- ProRes encoding and decoding engine
- choice of up to 2 TB of storage (standard 256 GB)
Other innovations
Furthermore, Apple has replaced the internal ‘standard’ microphones with three studio-quality beamforming microphones with a high signal-to-noise ratio. Finally, Apple added WiFi 6E, which was WiFi 6.
Support for up to two external displays: MacBook Air with M3 now supports two external displays when the laptop is closed. Ideal for business users and anyone who works with multiple displays to multitask with different apps or documents.
The design of the 15.3-inch and 13.6-inch MacBook Air remains unchanged. The color choices have also remained the same, so space black remains exclusive to the MacBook Pro with M3 Pro or M3 Max chip.
Availability of MacBook Air with M3 chip
The new MacBook Air with M3 chip will be available for purchase from Friday and will be delivered from March 8. The newer generation MacBook Air has a starting price of €1299 for the 13-inch model and €1599 for the 15-inch Mac.
The MacBook Air with M2 chip still remains for sale with a starting price of € 1,199. The MacBook Air with ‘old’ design and M1 chip has been discontinued. The MacBook Air will soon also be available at other web shops such as Bol.com, Coolblue, MediaMarkt, Amazon, Paradigit and Yorcom.