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Apple have given the MacMook Air a big update with the M3 chip

Luke Henderson

Apple have announced that the MacBook Air is getting an upgrade by including the latest M3 chip that came to MacBook Pro in November of 2023.

With the new chip, Apple have said that the new MacBook Air is now 60% faster than MacBook Air models with the M1 chip, which was only released a few years ago, so that is quite a bump in performance. If that was not enough, it is roughly 13 x faster than the last MacBook Air that had the Intel chip inside.

The new MacBook Air comes in both 13 and 15 inch models, a battery that offers 18 hours of use and Wi-Fi that is twice as fast as the previous generation, all of which is packed inside a device that is 1.13cm thick when closed.

Perhaps one of the coolest aspects of the new design, the laptop is made up of 50% recycled content:

  • including 100 per cent recycled aluminium in the enclosure

  • 100 per cent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets

  • 100 per cent recycled copper in the main logic board.

That last one is also the first time Apple have ever done this. If that was not enough, the new MacBook Air meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, and is free of mercury, brominated flame retardants, and PVC.

Plus the packaging is 99 per cent fibre-based, bringing Apple closer to its goal to remove plastic from all packaging by 2025.

The MacBook Air in the 13 inch model has a starting price of $1,799 and the 15 inch model starts at $2,199, with prices going up for those who include more storage or memory.


As the specs of any machine are important, here are the basic specs for the M3 MacBook Air, it is important to note that they are the base, so some options can be increased, usually around memory and storage.

Chip

Apple M3 chip

  • 8-core CPU with four performance cores and four efficiency cores

  • 8-core GPU

  • Hardware-accelerated ray tracing

  • 16-core Neural Engine

  • 100GB/s memory bandwidth

Media Engine

  • Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW

  • Video decode engine

  • Video encode engine

  • ProRes encode and decode engine

  • AV1 decode engine

Display

Liquid Retina display

  • 13.6-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology1;
    2560-by-1664 native resolution at 224 pixels per inch

  • 500 nits brightness

Colour

  • Support for 1 billion colours

  • Wide colour (P3)

  • True Tone technology

Memory

  • 8GB

    • 8GB unified memory

  • Configurable to:

    • 16GB or 24GB

Battery and Power

  • Up to 18 hours Apple TV app movie playback

  • Up to 15 hours wireless web

  • 52.6-watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery

  • 30W USB-C Power Adapter (included with M2 and M3 with 8‑core GPU)

  • 35W Dual USB-C Port Power Adapter (included with M2 and M3 with 10-core GPU and 512GB storage, configurable with M2 and M3 with 8‑core GPU)

  • USB-C to MagSafe 3 Cable

  • Fast-charge–capable with 70W USB-C Power Adapter

Storage

  • 256GB SSD

  • Configurable to:

    • 512GB, 1TB or 2TB

Charging and Expansion

MagSafe 3 charging port

3.5-mm headphone jack

Two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports with support for:

  • Charging

  • DisplayPort

  • Thunderbolt 3 (up to 40 Gbps)

  • USB 4 (up to 40 Gbps)

Display Support

  • Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colours and:

  • One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz

  • Close the MacBook Air lid to use a second external display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz

Video Playback

  • Supported formats include HEVC, H.264, AV1 and ProRes

  • HDR with Dolby Vision, HDR10 and HLG

Audio Playback

  • Supported formats include AAC, MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos

Keyboard and Trackpad

Backlit Magic Keyboard with:

  • 78 (US) or 79 (ISO) keys including 12 full-height function keys and four arrow keys in an inverted-T arrangement

  • Touch ID

  • Ambient light sensor

  • Force Touch trackpad for precise cursor control and pressure-sensing capabilities; enables Force clicks, accelerators, pressure-sensitive drawing and Multi-Touch gestures

Wireless

M3

  • Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax)4

  • Bluetooth 5.3

Camera

  • 1080p FaceTime HD camera

  • Advanced image signal processor with computational video

Audio

  • Four-speaker sound system

  • Support for Spatial Audio when playing music or video with Dolby Atmos on built-in speakers

  • Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking when using AirPods (3rd generation), AirPods Pro and AirPods Max

  • Three-mic array with directional beamforming

  • Voice Isolation and Wide Spectrum microphone modes (M3)

  • Enhanced voice clarity in audio and video calls (M3)

  • 3.5-mm headphone jack with advanced support for high‑impedance headphones

Size and Weight

  • Height: 1.13 cm

  • Width: 30.41 cm

  • Depth: 21.5 cm

  • Weight: 1.24 kg