Apple announces 2 MacBook Air M3: what's new?

Apple has just revealed two new MacBook Air M3s through a simple press release, which seems to confirm thatno keynote is planned for spring. The new laptops are available for pre-order today (Monday March 4) and should arrive to the first customers next Friday March 8. It is also on this date that the machines will be available in Apple Stores and third-party resellers, in stores.

Let's now take stock of the new features that have been announced. The design is identical in every way with the MacBook Air M2; we checked to the nearest millimeter. Two sizes are still offered: a compact 13.6-inch MacBook Air and a larger 15.3-inch one.

A new generation chip

The thirteen and fifteen inch MacBook Air do not benefit from a better screen, however the M2 chip that we knew on the models available until now is replaced by the processorM3. The latter now offers theAV1 decoding engineethardware-accelerated ray tracing.On the other hand, we see that in its presentation press release, Apple only takes the time to compare the chip to the M1 released in 2020. It therefore seems that the power gain is quite negligible, compared to the M2.

The volume of RAM has not changed, the same goes for the storage capacity offered or for the engine with artificial intelligence (the Neural Engine). The speed of Wi-Fi could, on the other hand, be up to twice as high (according to Apple, of course), because it is the generation6Ewhich is available with MacBook Air M3s. Cons of Wi-Fi 6 for MacBook Air M2s.

We also know, and this is one of the most notable advantages of this new version, that the MacBook Air M2 can now support up totwo monitorsexternal. It's the least we can do, when we know that the price reaches1 599 eurosfor the big model!

Changes to the sound

Apple also specifies that the new MacBook Air M3 offers:

• a “voice isolation” microphone mode
• un mode micro “large spectre”
• improved voice clarity during your audio calls
• improved voice clarity during your video calls

These four advantages are not mentioned on the corresponding technical sheet of theMacBook Air M2. On the other hand, the “ample stereo sound” of the latter has disappeared from the new models, it seems. Unless it's a simple mistake? Apple is not specifying this at the moment.

An additional gesture to protect the environment

Apple specifies that its new MacBook Air M3 offers two new advantages in terms of recycling. Here they are:

• 50% of materials are recycledacross the entire device (MacBook Air M2s are the first Apple products to reach this figure)
• in the main logic board, Apple specifies thatcopper foil is also recycled, but this time in its entirety

Here are the prices

• from 1,599 eurosfor the new fifteen-inch MacBook Air
• from 1,299 eurosfor the new thirteen-inch MacBook Air

At the same time, note that the thirteen-inch MacBook Air M2 remains available in stores for 1,199 euros, or 100 euros less than its successor.

The fifteen-inch MacBook Air with M2 chip, on the other hand, has been withdrawn from shelves.

• Apple introduced the new thirteen- and fifteen-inch MacBook Air M3
• The chip is therefore new generation, and we can finally connect two external monitors to laptops
• These new laptops are also more “eco-friendly”