Apple has quietly refreshed its MacBook Air lineup, bringing new chips (and in some circumstances, new costs) to its hottest laptops. New 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs embody Apple’s latest-generation M3 chip, whereas the outdated M2 MacBook Air now replaces 2020’s M1 MacBook Air as Apple’s $999 entry-level laptop computer. The brand new 13- and 15-inch M3 methods begin at $1,099 and $1,299; they are often ordered right this moment and can be launched on March 8.
The brand new Airs use the identical design because the M2 variations. In comparison with older M1 and late-Intel-era Airs, they’ve barely bigger shows with a distinguished notch, a non-tapered however nonetheless thin-and-light chassis, bigger trackpads, modestly refined keyboards, and a MagSafe port for charging.
The entire new Airs use the M3, with no choices to improve to sooner or extra succesful processors (this implies the Air remains to be restricted to only a single exterior show when the built-in show is on, although the M3 can now drive two exterior shows when the lid is closed, one thing older chips did not supply). The $1,099 13-inch Air does use a barely cut-down model of the chip with 8 GPU cores as a substitute of 10, with the 10-core GPU accessible as a $100 improve; all 15-inch fashions use the absolutely enabled M3 with the 10-core GPU.
Other than the M3 chip, the brand new laptops additionally help Wi-Fi 6E, and hardware-accelerated video decoding for the AV1 video codec. However different specs, together with RAM and storage choices, keep the identical as earlier than. Each laptops begin with 8GB and 256GB or RAM and storage, respectively, and high out at 24GB and 2TB. Each Airs’ efficiency ought to usually be just like the 14-inch M3 MacBook Professional that begins at $1,599, although the Professional has a cooling fan that will assist it run heavy workloads a bit extra rapidly.
All variations of the M3 embody 4 high-performance CPU cores and 4 high-efficiency CPU cores, the identical because the M1 and M2, although Apple says that chip upgrades have made the M3 “as much as 60 % sooner” than the M1. Efficiency upgrades in comparison with the M2 can be a bit milder.
The replace will get the 13- and 15-inch Airs onto the identical replace schedule, although the timing is a bit awkward for the hardly nine-month-old 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. That is an excellent shorter life cycle than we noticed with the M2 MacBook Professionals that Apple changed final November after simply 11 months. However the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air initially got here out in July of 2022 and was effectively overdue for an improve.
The one Macs with out an M3 replace are Apple’s desktops: the Mac mini, the Mac Studio, and the Mac Professional. Of those, the M2 Mac mini is the oldest, and Apple has already launched the M3 and M3 Professional chips that might in all probability be utilized in a refresh. It is attainable that Apple is ready to get the mini and the Studio fashions in sync with each other to stop a number of the awkward overlap that occurred final 12 months when the Mac mini acquired an M2 improve however the Studio nonetheless used M1 chips.