Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Don’t buy a MacBook Pro – MacBook Air M3”.
I’M going to say something controversial, it shouldn’t be controversial, but a bunch of you in the comments are probably going to say it is, but if you’re in the market for a Macbook, this is probably the one you should buy. This is the new Macbook Air, with fancy topof thee line, M3 processor and realistically for most people. This is more than you need, as with most Apple packaging, simple and sweet. Oh hey! It’S not plastic anymore. We’Ve got typical propaganda.
Also still with the spacer, though, like what is this look look at how much empty space there is in there we’ve got wait wo whoo, wo there we go stickers. Thank you. I was worried for a second the day that Apple stops, including Apple stickers, in their packaging, is the day that um we know we have failed as a society, we’ve got charger, brick also in a glassing bag. What is this? This is a 30 W USBC power adapter and then the cute little sleeved mag safe, cable type c on one end, mag safe on the other. I did get confirmation for 20 bucks us you can upgrade to a 70 W single port charger uh or a dual Port 35 watt charger. Depending on what you prefer. I would go with the 70 wat because faster charging on this side, we’ve got the mag safe charging port for the cable. I showed you earlier, along with two USBC ports, these run at Thunderbolt, 3 or USB 4, so 40 gig on those.
There is no additional USBC ports on the other side, uh like some MacBook Pros uh, and it is going to be the same same configuration if you have the 13 or 15in air. We’Ve got a headphone jack here, which I like to see on the bottom feet. For those that are interested free of charge ooh, I forgot the M2 air was with the sexy colors. Look at that same iio that hey look same iio damn this is some.
This is the same laptop but faster. I guess let me Crack him open. Hey look same laptop, I can tell you already. The moral of this story is going to be to buy a used M2 MacBook or a Reverb, maybe or apparently Walmart has M1 MacBook airs for like 700 bucks, as for on paper, they’re, not obviously the same laptop.
The big thing you’re getting here is the new M3 chip. Now we’ve gone into the details, far more extensively in the MacBook Pro M3 video, but the main differences are little bit better efficiency, really good performance as before, but even a little bit more better. We’Ve got av1 d coding, but not end coding and uh right Hardware Ray tracing. If you game on your MacBook, a or maybe in in blender.
I don’t know if it supports it yet, but that that could be a use case and then other than that specs wise you’re, looking at pretty much the same laptop aside from the Wi-Fi 6E support that they added as well so it’ll be fast on Wi-Fi. If you also happen to have a Wi-Fi, 6E router and fast internet that can take advantage of it. Oh I almost forgot. There is one more important Hardware thing on the m2a air.
You could have an external display, but only one on the M3. You can now have two external displays, but there isn’t really any hardware Improvement. It’S still a single display controller. So when you’re using two external displays, you can’t use the laptop display. That’S because they’re mxing, the normal laptop display out through a display output and not actually giving you an additional display, controller um. It is technically better than the M1 air in terms of flexibility, but not better in in terms of supporting more displays. It’S the same amount. They’Re just giving you the ability to use the laptop display output on a separate monitor, so it sucks it’s still technically like better than they had before, but but come on on a Windows laptop. You can have like four display outputs. If you want what you can’t get on a Windows laptop, is this much horsepower without the noise? At least that’s what I’m expecting? Unlike you, who didn’t expect this segue to our sponsor apos, their white fox eclipse is a beautifully constructed 68 key mechanical keyboard that promotes customizability, while sounding and looking great right out of the box. It has standard hot swappable switches and Universal keycap compatibility that you’d expect to see in Enthusiast boards, but where it really stands out from the crowd is its meticulously designed and crafted components such as a flexible PCB with poron switch foam and vibration isolating Edge. Gaskets.
Also highlighting its versatility is the ability to use it wired or wirelessly. The freedom of customizable RGB options, as well as compatibility with Windows and Mac, so check it out at the link down below and use code, lmg eclipse for 10 % off. In theory, the keyboard and trackpad should be the same, but let’s uh try them out. Where is like a notepad app in here notes, my name is Jake and I think this keyboard is pretty solid.
It feels really similar, but almost like. Maybe it’s just because this one is new, like this feels clicker. This feels like a just slightest bit mushier, I don’t know, I think it’s just because it’s used, and one is not hard to say. Trackpad feels the same. It’S a nice big size for the class of laptop everything. There looks the same and is still good. We’Ve got the same display with the notch thought we were past this thing Apple, but all right. Why not? A dynamic Island H, H, it’s the same 13.6 in IPS, display 2560 X, 1664, 500 nits brightness, not high refresh rate, but a wide P3 color gam it.
Let me do some speaker, they sound a little different. Am I crazy come here Belle, it’s! Okay, like don’t get me wrong, it is very similar but like ever so slightly just the tiniest bit different and it almost just sounds more distorted on the left yeah. Actually it is. I did notice on the specs page on the M2. They listed Wide, Stereo Sound and said the M2 sounds better and they don’t list it on this one.
I don’t know that it’s better it it’s it’s like so close that you’re not really going to be able to tell the difference. Aside from, if you were doing this, the one thing I will say you are losing out compared to a MacBook Pro is MacBook Pro speakers are obviously a little bit better. The these are still solid, for I mean where even where did the speakers come from, they fire the speaker out of like here, so it it like bounces at you, it’s a good design.
It works, I mean it sounds pretty solid like and it has sounded pretty solid on this one too. As usual, the display is pretty close to as they specify it seems like it’s. A tiny bit brighter uh, color tracking is very accurate.
That being said, Apple’s not really in the position they once were, where they just led the class Windows. Laptops are starting to catch up and, in some cases, even surpass Apple, but you do at least know that you’re going to get a fairly color accurate display buying an Apple laptop, not to mention that Mac OS does a really good job of color management. It doesn’t have HDR like the MacBook Pros, because there’s no local dimming uh and it’s only 60 HZ, which probably doesn’t matter to you. Realistically, it does look nice on the eyes, though. Well, let’s talk performance, then what do we got here in games? It is a bit faster.
You can and will get slightly more frames than your friend with a MacBook Air M2. You won’t get more frames than your friend with a MacBook Pro M3. That’S for sure, but it also has two extra GPU cores on that M3 chip and a cooling fan which is going to make a big difference. If you plan on gaming for more than 45 seconds, you are going to run into a situation where you will thermal throttle similar to all the previous mbased MacBook airs, if you think about it in your day-to-day, your web browsing you’re, never going to notice that, however Gaming extended workloads, it does make a difference.
There are ways to get around it. You know you could get a a laptop cooling pad or when you’re editing in Premiere and close the lid and have your two monitors now haha screw you MacBook Air M2 dude, but it is still worth mentioning. That being said, it does also mean that this machine is silent. Now don’t get me wrong, I would probably use a Windows laptop if the battery life didn’t suck – and you know a couple other things, but God damn Apple really has the leg up when it comes to that here, let’s look at the battery life.
The efficiency is better, so you are getting even better battery life in a stress test. Interestingly, the MacBook Air M3 actually scored better in the stress test and that’s probably because it’s thermal throttling, so it’s drawing less power. It’S not a huge difference, but I guess if you consider the larger battery, it’s pretty noticeable when you’re in 12 hours, 12 and 1/2 hours in an endurance test you’re already into a situation where you can’t even really complain about it like like. Let’S be real here. That’S more than one and a half work days of consistently watching YouTube videos. Now, let’s talk productivity in blender uh. We actually couldn’t run our typical blender Barbershop test, because it runs out of memory on these 8 gig models. You actually just can’t render that complex of a scene anymore. So if you’re planning on doing anything a little more serious like video, editing, regularly, let’s say or blender rendering or or whatever you might want to look at getting more RAM. Although the M3 chip does have a substantial leg up in blender uh, they implemented that months ago already, and so it’s widely supported and we can see it in the numbers – the M3 laptops absolutely Stomp, the M2 air and presumably the pro. Although we didn’t test that here, uh in cine bench little bit of a performance Improvement, kind of expected to see that in nukex, which is a nearly hourong test, depending on what laptop you have again, the fan makes a huge difference. Not thermal throttling makes a huge difference in pett bench, which is a lot shorter of a test sort of in Photoshop.
You can see you’re getting pretty much the same performance and that’s because any sort of high load is typically going to be for short bursts, which the kind of thermal mass of the chassis of this laptop can absorb. When you go into Premiere, which is video editing where you’re going to have a sustained load? Well, now there’s a big difference, especially if you go to render like a 30 minute long. Video it’ll go pretty fast and then it’ll slow down, and it’s also somewhere, where having extra Ram, will definitely help you um. It is still faster than the air M2 sure don’t get me wrong, but an M3 Pro. It’S a lot faster, but overall I mean this.
Is It’s a fast laptop? Let let me do a Wi-Fi speed test. Hey look at this all right, open, Speed, Test all right! 500. 500! That’S not bad! Let me try speed, test, speed, test and see if it’s any different.
Oh look at that upload speed. Let’S go it faster than open Speed Test. That’S weird. All right seems like we’re getting around 500 down 500 to 700 up, depending on which service I use for whatever reason, and then let’s try WiFi.
6E. 500. 600. It’S not really! Looking that much better! I’M going to be honest with you! I mean 600 600.
It is faster than the 5 gig Wi-Fi. Try. The local, open Speed Test see how that goes still about the same 600 down a little bit faster. Look the Wi-Fi on the laptop.
It’S just it’s pretty fast! It’S not the fastest! I’Ve ever seen, but also I tried it on my phone and it wasn’t faster. So maybe the AP is just um, I don’t know having a day. Let’S be honest, this is a pretty iterative update.
Do I like it? Yes, it’s still faster. If you do blender yeah probably upgrade, but if you do blender, you should probably buy a pro as well uh. It is 100 bucks cheaper than the M2 was at launch mind you. When the M2 air launched uh, we were in a little bit of of a different Global Supply Chain situation, and that could maybe be a justification for it. But as of right now, it’s $ 100 more than the M2.
If all you do is web browsing and watching memes and YouTube videos and basic photo editing like buy an M2 you’d, be kind of silly to buy this. It’S it’s pretty much the same other than in the situations I laid out honestly buy an M1. You don’t get the cool colors on the m and the M3 with the M1, but you can buy it at Walmart for 700 bucks, which is 300 bucks cheaper than the M2 to buy new and 400 bucks cheaper than this one. So yeah.
If you like, this video hit the like button, it’s a it’s a nice laptop. I don’t. I don’t have anything bad to say about it. It’S still realistically expensive in the grand scheme of things, but not that expensive, for what you’re getting .