MacBook Air M3 vs MacBook Pro M3 - Which Should You Buy? [2024]

this is the new Macbook Air M3 it's the 13in this is the 15 and this is the MacBook Pro also with the M3 and I want to figure out whether you should go for the air or the pro because Apple have just refreshed the 13 and the 15in airs for 2024 with the new M3 chip which is the same 3 nanometer Apple silicon used in the base model 14in Pro we also now get Wi-Fi 6E and now the ability to Output to two external monitors albeit with the laptop lead closed so technically still only two

screens all together than a fairly modest upgrade I'm sure you'll agree and of course the m2s had a price cut down to $999 replacing the old M1 air as the entry level MacBook with the 13-in M3 starting at 1099 but then we have the MacBook Pro this is the 14-in also with the M3 chip uh the base model MacBook Pro and this replaces the older 13-in Pro that had the touch bar and while the pro also has a bigger brother in the form of a 16-in model and you can also spec it with an M3

Pro and M3 Max chips so this can get ludicrously expensive but in this video I'm comparing the M3 a and M3 Pro so hopefully by the end you have a better idea which one's right for you so let's kick off with the price M3 air base model £1 1,99 £16.99 or 5099 actually it's $100 cheaper but that doesn't include sales tax in the US so there is some price variation around the world obviously so let's talk specs and as I say they all use the M3 chip although as I'll show you in a minute the

pro can be a fair bit quicker the pro also gets 512 gigs of storage as standard double the a 256 and also a 10 core GPU as standard versus eight on the air although you can pay 100 more or just upgrade the RAM which automatically gets you the extra Graphics cords fine what is frustrating though particularly with the Pro laptop is that these all come with 8 GB of RAM as standard 8 gigs of memory which is the same amount as we got with the M1 air from 4 years ago for the pro especially I

think it's a bit unforgivable that it still comes with 8 gigs and I would absolutely pay the 200 extra to get 16 gigs of round regardless of which one of these you go for because you can't upgrade it yourself so probably budget an extra 200 regardless of which one you go for I know I hate it to so realistically the MacBook Air has two main advantages over the pro it's cheaper and it's more compact we have lost the tapered edge of the outgoing M1 air and it does now share a very similar design with the

pro Notch and all and while it's not a like for like because the airs are 13 and 15 in and the pros are 14 and 16 the air is a good deal thinner and lighter to give you an idea this 15in air is actually 40 G lighter than this 14-in Pro and it's about 4 mm thinner does it make a big difference carrying it around putting in a backpack and opening on a train in a coffee shop I'd argue no not really although I do quite like the Starlight and midnight color options we get with

the air it is a shame that the pros just come in plain old silver or space gray unless you go for a higher Speare and unlock the midnight option more importantly though as I get confused which laptop is witch and move these around my desk is the MacBook Air is a fanless design there are no fans in this so no matter what you're doing it runs completely silent so I definitely appreciate the a form factor but in my mind the chunkier pro makes up for it in other ways firstly it does have fans when you

are gaming rendering designing 3D editing whatever more demanding thing it is you're doing then they we up and help keep the chip cool which means you get less throttling and better sustained performance and we'll come back to that in a second the pro also squeezes in more ports both laptops get two USBC Thunderball 4S a MAG safe charger and a headphone jack but the pro also gets a full-size SD card reader and an HDMI 2.1 so photographers and videographers like myself definitely appreciate having that and if your monitor like that one there I'm reviewing right

now it's the new LG 32in 4K OLED gaming monitor very very nice but it doesn't have a USBC Port I can then at least use the HDMI of course both the airs and the pro get the same fantastic touchpad and keyboard we the touch ID power button no differences there but we do have to talk about the speakers because both 14 and 16in Pros pack in six High Fidelity speakers with Force cancelling woofers and versus the air it's a much richer more Bassy and just Fuller sound however the 50 in air does actually get six

speakers to the 13 in four and it does sound noticeably better I want them [Applause] back I want them back I want them [Music] back so this is kind of a halfway house between them but certainly the pro does still sound noticeably better for me though the biggest difference between the air and the pro is the screen MacBook Air 60 HZ 500 nits LCD MacBook Pro 120 HZ 1600 nits mini LED okay taking those things in turn first the higher refresh rate or promotion as Apple like to call it means everything on the pro feels

so much smoother whether you're scrolling through websites scrubbing through a project timeline gaming I wouldn't say it's a must have feature but most Windows laptops at this price point do off of 120 HZ and it makes the laptop just feel significantly faster second the brightness and I think this is a bigger deal we get 500 nits on the Air 600 on the pro so right out of the gate it's 20% brighter no matter what you're doing however if you're watching gaming or editing in HDR say you're watching a show on Apple TV then this can

Peak at 1,600 nits and the best bit is you can use an app like Vivid which can unlock that HDR brightness across the whole desktop whatever you're doing obviously this will impact your battery life life but I use this all the time if I'm Outdoors or traveling and often it means I can actually see the screen without having to squint and get a headache it's a big plus and third this is using a mini LED backlight compared to the Air's regular LCD screen which means we get much better contrast with proper Inky blacks rather than

washed out Grays dayto day I'd argue it's not all that different and unlike an OLED screen you can sometimes see blooming but if you're watching lots of movies you're editing photos then along with being much brighter and much faster the pros screen for me is the biggest selling point the air isn't bad by any stretch but I think compared to the pro and more egregiously compared to similarly priced Windows competitors the screen is falling behind a little bit but let's move on and talk about performance is the pro actually faster well the answer is yes

but only sometimes it depends on how you use it quick caveat though because this M3 a review sample that Apple sent me it has 16 gigs of RAM and therefore the 10 core GPU by default it has 8 gigs of and an 8 call GPU whereas this is the base model MacBook Pro uh which comes with a 10 call GPU so that is the same but only 8 gigs of RAM So in theory this will perform a little bit better than the Base air so it's not quite an Apples to Apples an apples to oranges

if you will but it's pretty close and actually to start with in Gig bench 6 which only takes a couple of minutes to run there's actually nothing really in it between them and across the three tests the air I've got here comes out slightly on top although the difference is pretty negligible and as I say it does have more RAM now in cinebench which which is a more demanding 10-minute Benchmark for the processor while single core is again NY on the same the multi-core is a good 15% higher and look at this the M3 in

the air is running at 108° C versus 102 103 on the pro I actually would have thought the pro wouldn't even get that hot but with the 4,000 or so RPM fan wearing away it does allow the pro to maintain higher clock speeds giving us better performance now this is blender and I'm going to run this Ripple animation for 10 minutes to see which one renders more frames and thanks to the magic of editing let's skip forward and we're looking at 540 on the air versus 624 on the pro 15% optic and finally Old Faithful

shadow of the Tomb Raider I do realize no one's actually playing this but it's one of the few games on Mac with a benchmark tool and it's still pretty demanding and running at 1200p high settings we're looking at 31 versus 38 FPS which is a solid 22% boost for the pro so it all comes down to the pro having a fan and under sustained load crucially sustained load if you're gaming your video editing your rendering 3D design that sort of thing then you are going to see s s 15 20% uptic and performance over the

year but in everyday life just you know scrolling through websites opening apps and just using it normally if you will through bit of Netflix and Google Docs you're not really going to see a difference however having that extra performance on tap when it's needed while also offering a longer battery life that's a pretty good combination now Apple say the MacBook Air M3s will get you 18 hours of local video playback and 22 hours on the MacBook Pro so on paper according to Apple this will last about 10 15% longer but we can't take Apple's word

for it so I thought I'd run a quick test and by a quick test I mean leaving it for 10 hours overnight playing a YouTube video to see where they end up the 13in air ended on 30% the 15-in air had 36 and the pro had 39 so good better best just like the speakers whichever one you go for though definitely opt for the fast charger which does come included if you go for the extra storage so where does that leave us which one should you actually buy well on the one hand it is good

that we have so many options you've got the M2 a starting at 999 and then you've got the new M3s and then you've got the two pros and you can play with all different specs and go for M3 Pro and Max chips lots of different options on the other hand what I don't like is how they still come with 8 gigs of RAM and apple is still the master of the opell and to add 16 gigs of RAM and 512 storage a spec you probably might want is an extra £400 if you go for an

air or an extra 200 with this because you're have 512 storage so that is a bit frustrating but to answer the question of which one I would buy well assuming you're not doing anything crazy and you just want a good all round laptop that doesn't break the bank then I would probably get none of these I'd probably get the M2 a just the base model for $999 is 100 quid less than this yes it doesn't have the slightly faster M3 chip doesn't have Wi-Fi 6E and you can only output to one Monitor and you know

100 quid premium isn't that much to ask for but it's starting to creep up and I think what I would do is get an M2 air spec it with 16 G of RAM and then maybe spend 50 Quid on external SSD so you've got more storage space as well that will do you for the next 5 6 7 years to be honest in terms of the MacBook Pro well it's in the name this is a pro device yes the screen is lovely the speakers are fantastic and I do use a MacBook Pro 16 every single

as I bang the desk every single day of the week and I absolutely love it but it is so expensive and I think unless your business your company is buying it for you or you're buying it yourself at work as a bit of investment starting at ,700 you're get want to double the ram which puts you up to 1900 and really the best bit about the pro is that you can spec it with an M3 Pro or M3 Max chip so yeah my conclusion is annoyingly it depends on what you're going to use it for

and also what your budget is I'm going to stop waffling now hopefully that was helpful if you got any other questions about this drop a comment below I'll do my best to get back to you if you enjoy the video a like and a thumbs up and a subscribe on all those annoying YouTuber cliches would be lovely and I'll see you next time right here on the tech chat