The M3 Air might not be light years ahead of its predecessor M2, but it’s still a seriously powerful lightweight laptop when stacked up against anything older.
Apple’s latest MacBook Air packs the new M3 processor for a hint of Pro power in an otherwise familiar package while also bringing the company’s core laptop lineup into a tidy choice of four machines, all running on the same technology.
The huge screen and expansive touchpad still combine with the extremely thin and light body to make a compelling laptop, though side-by-side with last year’s M2 model, they’re practically identical., the new chip is not as big a leap from the M2 as the M2 was from M1. But since few people are likely to upgrade their laptops every year, that’s not a huge issue.
Apple’s dynamic caching makes graphics more efficient and allows system resources to be shared more effectively, while support for mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing makes it easier for complex games to be ported over from Windows. Current games likerun confidently on the new Air, and thanks to Apple’s MetalFX AI scaling, you can push them to decently high frame rates by console standards.