M3 MacBook Air reviews: midnight fingerprints, dual display limits, fanless M3 performance

Zac Hall | Mar 7 2024 - 6:51 am PT

Apple surprised us on Monday morning with the introduction of the M3 MacBook Air. It can now drive two external monitors while the lid is closed, the midnight color should be less prone to fingerprints, and both the 13- and 15-inch sizes are available from day one. Apple calls the M3 MacBook Air the best consumer laptop for AI, and it hits stores on Friday. In the meantime, let’s check out some of the first press reviews.

M3 MacBook Air hands-on videos

M3 MacBook Air reviews

What’s the takeaway? One is that the midnight color option still smudges. That’s according to The Verge:

Apple says the midnight colorway should be less prone to fingerprints. So far, that does not seem to be the case.

Too bad since the space black MacBook Pro actually holds up well against fingerprints. Apple says it used the same anodization seal on the M3 MacBook Air as the dark MacBook Pro finish. Maybe it doesn’t kick in until midnight?

Another new thing to try specifically with this hardware is dual external display support. In iJustine’s video, she shows off connecting two external displays. As expected, the second external display only activates when the MacBook Air lid is closed.

If you open the lid to use the keyboard, trackpad, or Touch ID, the second external monitor will stop displaying anything until you close the lid. That’s something CNET highlighted as a weakness:

On the surface, this doesn’t seem like much of an issue, unless you typically use your laptop’s keyboard and trackpad while working on an external display. For me, the bigger hiccup is the loss of Touch ID on the Air’s keyboard. You can just open and close the lid to use Touch ID, but I use mine so much during the day that that would get old really fast. The better option is to get Apple’s Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, and while you’re at it, pick up a Magic Trackpad or Mouse to complete the package.

As for who the M3 MacBook Air is for, the answer seems to nearly everyone except M2 MacBook Air owners. Of course, this isn’t the first Apple laptop we’ve seen with the M3 chip. Apple introduced the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 last fall. The difference? The MacBook Air uses the chip in a fanless design. Ars Technica touches on the performance differences you can expect because of the cooling situation:

The M3 does throttle fairly quickly in the passively cooled Air design, running at its maximum of 20–22 W for just a few seconds in our Handbrake video encoding test, gradually sliding down to around 11–12 W over the next minute and a half or so, and then dropping further into the 9 W range after about nine minutes on the job. The M3 was using 9 W when it completed the test (the encode took almost 13 minutes to complete, though there could be further fluctuations for even longer jobs).

The numbers speak for themselves, though—however fast it throttles, a passively cooled M3 runs faster than an M1 or M2, and it stands up well against modern actively cooled laptops with Intel and AMD CPUs inside. But if you regularly stress the CPU and GPU, you are still probably leaving a bit of the M3’s performance on the table relative to the same chip in the $1,599 MacBook Pro.

Plus the wifi is as good as ever, according to Six Colors:

The M3 Air also adds support for Wi-Fi 6E, while the older M2 models only support Wi-Fi 6. The difference is real. On my home Internet connection, I was able to get 931 Mbps down and 813 MBps up via Wi-Fi, which is more or less the same speed as my wired connection to my router. In the same spot, my M2 Air could only manage 618 up and 700 down. I wouldn’t buy a new laptop just to have faster Wi-Fi—and keep in mind that you need to upgrade your router and possibly your home internet to take advantage of these speeds—but that’s the fastest Wi-Fi connection I’ve ever experienced.

The other star of the MacBook Air party is the M2 MacBook Air, which sticks around from $999 for the first time. If you want a 15-inch model, however, you’ll need to go M3. Apple’s 15-inch M2 MacBook Air has been replaced after less than a year.

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