15-inch M3 MacBook Air hands-on: Pretty, pretty, pretty good

Appleannounced the new M3 MacBook Airlast Monday and it ’s available to pre - ordering now , with shipment and Apple Store retail arrival on Friday , March 8 . We got our hand on the newfangled laptop , and before we publish our full critique next week , we have some first impressions .

We got a Starlight 15 - inch MacBook Air . We did n’t get a Midnight laptop , so we ca n’t check out the “ breakthrough anodization cachet ” Apple has developed to quash fingerprints , which wasone of the criticismsof the M2 model .

15-inch M3 MacBook Air unboxing slideshow

15-inch M3 MacBook Air photo gallery

Foundry

15-inch M3 MacBook Air: Preliminary benchmarks

To start with examination , we ran Geekbench 6.2.2 and Cinebench 2024 . We ’ve seen the M3 in the14 - inch MacBook Pro(and theiMac ) and it looks like the M3 MacBook Air numbers are what we expect . We ’ll put up more trial solution in our full reassessment coming before long .

Geekbench 6.2.2 benchmarks

In both the Geekbench Multi - Core and Single - Core exam , the M3 MacBook Air was 20 per centum faster than the M2 MacBook Air . We saw a 20 percentage increase from the M1 to the M2 , so the addition here is in line with what we expected .

Cinebench 2024 benchmarks

In Cinebench 2024 , the difference between the M3 and M2 in the CPU Multi Core is practically the same as Geekbench , 21 pct . One difference that put up out is the one between the M3 in the MacBook Air and the M3 in the MacBook Pro – it ’s only 5 percent , which is n’t really much . But it ’s there , most likely because the fanless MacBook Air has to slow down a tiny bit to maintain a proper operating temperature . If you look at the CPU Single Core results , you see that two M3 laptop posted the same score .

We ’re just getting commence with the M3 MacBook Air . Look for our full , in - depth review of the M3 MacBook Air coming soon .