Apple introduced the M3 chip series in October at its “Scary Fast” event. These chips have been featured in various devices such as the MacBook Pro and iMac. Recently, Apple released M3-powered MacBook Airs in 13” and 15” sizes that rely solely on passive cooling for different performance capabilities.
Initial benchmarks from Geekbench show a 20% increase in both single and multi-core CPU performance compared to the M2-powered Airs. Compared to the original M1 Air, the performance boost ranges from 30-40%.
M3 MacBook Air versus: M2 15” • M2 13” • M1 13”
For a detailed breakdown of the scores, you can visit these links: vs. M2 15”, vs. M2 13”, vs. M1 13”.
The M3 chip series primarily focuses on GPU improvements, which are not evaluated by Geekbench. The lack of active cooling on the Air models could impact performance during sustained workloads, but for everyday tasks, the difference is negligible.
M3 MacBook Air vs. M3 MacBook Pro
Apple also offers Pro models with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips for users requiring more computational power.
The starting price for the MacBook Air M3 is $1,100 for the 13” model and $1,300 for the 15” model. Both models include an 8-core CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The GPU differs with an 8-core option for the 13” model and a 10-core option for the 15” model. In comparison, the M2-powered 13” Air starts at $1,000 with an 8-core CPU and GPU as well as 8/256GB memory.
