Apple Refreshes its 13″ and 15″ MacBook Air With M3 Chips

After the EU Commission just hit Apple with a €1.8 billion antitrust fine over music streaming, the company probably needed to drop some news and shift the focus to more positive things. To do so, the company just took the wraps off its new M3 MacBook Air models, which will start shipping on Friday, March 8.

The new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air use the same M3 chip that made its debut in refreshed iMac and MacBook Pros last fall. Apple claims the new M3 MacBook Air is up to 60% faster than the M1 version released in 2020, and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based model.

Just like Apple’s M2 chip, the M3 comes with an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores), an up to 10-core GPU, and it supports up to 24GB of unified memory and up to 2TB of storage. However, the M3 is built with a more efficient 3nm technology, and it also adds support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and an AV1 decode engine.

Apple claims the 16-core neural engine in its M3 chip makes the MacBook Air “the world’s best consumer laptop for AI.” Apple’s announcement mentioned how the MacBook Air is great for running optimized AI models locally as well as AI-powered apps “such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.” Yes, it’s quite unexpected to see Apple mention Copilot in a press release, but here we are.

The new M3 MacBook Air keeps the same design as the M2 models, with 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina displays with up to 500 nits of brightness. However, the M3 models can now support up to two external displays when the laptop lid is closed, and they also support faster connectivity with Wi-Fi 6E.

Pre-orders for the M3 MacBook Air have started today on the Apple Store. The base 13-inch model starts at $1,099 with just 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, while the 15-inch model starts at €1,299. Apple is also dropping the price of the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air to $999, and the company has now discontinued the M1 model.