TechCrunch reviews Apple’s M3 MacBook Air: ‘I keep coming back to the Air’

The new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air soars with the powerful M3 chip, featuring a super-portable design, power-efficient performance, and all-day battery life.
Apple on Monday announced the new MacBook Air with the powerful M3 chip, taking its incredible combination of power-efficient performance and portability to a new level. With M3, MacBook Air is up to 60 percent faster than the model with the M1 chip and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.1 And with a faster and more efficient Neural Engine in M3, MacBook Air continues to be the world’s best consumer laptop for AI. The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air both feature a strikingly thin and light design, up to 18 hours of battery life,1 a stunning Liquid Retina display, and new capabilities, including support for up to two external displays and up to 2x faster Wi-Fi than the previous generation. With its durable aluminum unibody enclosure that’s built to last, the new MacBook Air is available in four gorgeous colors: midnight, which features a breakthrough anodization seal to reduce fingerprints; starlight; space gray; and silver. Combined with its world-class camera, mics, and speakers; MagSafe charging; its silent, fanless design; and macOS, MacBook Air delivers an unrivaled experience — making the 13-inch model the world’s bestselling laptop and the 15-inch model the world’s bestselling 15-inch laptop. Customers started ordering on Monday, with availability beginning Friday, March 8th.
Brian Heater for TechCrunch:
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The 2023 Air benefited greatly from Apple’s work on first-party silicon through the M line of chips, coupled with learning from past stumbles like faulty keyboards and the largely DOA Touch Bar. The end product felt like precisely the MacBook so many of us wanted for so long: lightweight and powerful, with great battery life and a reasonable (in Mac terms) price point… If anything, the line has cemented the Pro as a niche product by comparison, as the Air has replaced the standard MacBook as the model for most.
When it arrived last year, we declared the 13-inch the best MacBook for most. Since then, it only saw a true challenger in the form of the 15-inch model, which has since become my daily driver. The Air inherited the throne of true mainstream devices from the standard MacBook, and as they’ve flourished, Pro models have increasingly shifted to the margin. The only major change here is the upgraded chip, making the 2024 model little more than a refresh.

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MacDailyNews Take: MacBook Pro models have not “increasingly shifted to the margin.” The MacBook Pro is not “a niche product by comparison.” The latest Mac report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) reveals that in 2023, 90% of Mac sales were portable Macs with MacBook Pro dominating with 51% share over MacBook Air’s 39%. More than half of those who bought a Mac in 2023 purchased a MacBook Pro.

As a professional writer, I consider myself to be in a fairly creative field. I record and edit podcasts every week, along with the occasional video. I get to test all sorts of laptops for this gig, and I keep coming back to the Air…
For my money, the 15-inch model gracefully balances the line between screen size and portability.

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MacDailyNews Take:
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