Apple has 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, 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 company said.
The 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air both feature a strikingly thin and light design, up to 18 hours of battery life, a 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 aluminium unibody enclosure, the new MacBook Air is available in four colours: midnight, which features a breakthrough anodisation seal to reduce fingerprints; starlight; space grey; and silver.
Combined with its camera, mics, and speakers; MagSafe charging; its silent, fanless design; and macOS, MacBook Air delivers a memorable experience — making the 13-inch model the world’s bestselling laptop and the 15-inch model the world’s bestselling 15-inch laptop. Customers can order starting today, with availability beginning Friday, March 8.
“MacBook Air is our most popular and loved Mac, with more customers choosing it over any other laptop. And today it gets even better with the M3 chip and new capabilities,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “From college students pursuing their degrees, to business users who need powerful productivity, or anyone who simply wants the unmatched combination of performance, portability, and industry-leading battery life, all in a fanless design, the new MacBook Air continues to be the world’s best thin and light laptop.”
Built using industry-leading 3-nanometer technology, the M3 chip brings even faster performance and more capabilities to MacBook Air. Featuring a powerful 8-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU, and support for up to 24GB of unified memory, the new MacBook Air is up to 60 percent faster than the model with M1 and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.
It also features up to 18 hours of battery life, which is up to six hours longer than an Intel-based MacBook Air.
Users will feel the blazing speed of M3 in everything they do, from everyday productivity, to demanding tasks like photo and video editing, and software development. And with the next-generation GPU of M3, the new MacBook Air supports hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, offering more accurate lighting, reflections, and shadows for extremely realistic gaming experiences. It also includes the latest media engine with support for AV1 decode, providing more efficient and higher-quality video experiences from streaming services.
M3 takes MacBook Air performance even further
Game titles like No Man’s Sky run up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip.
Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator’s Super Resolution feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.
Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50 percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery life.
With the transition to Apple silicon, every Mac is a great platform for AI. M3 includes a faster and more efficient 16-core Neural Engine, along with accelerators in the CPU and GPU to boost on-device machine learning, making MacBook Air the world’s best consumer laptop for AI. Leveraging this incredible AI performance, macOS delivers intelligent features that enhance productivity and creativity, so users can enable powerful camera features, real-time speech to text, translation, text predictions, visual understanding, accessibility features, and much more.
With a broad ecosystem of apps that deliver advanced AI features, users can do everything from checking their homework with AI Math Assistance in Goodnotes 6, to automatically enhancing photos in Pixelmator Pro.
Combined with the unified memory architecture of Apple silicon, MacBook Air can also run optimised AI models, including large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation locally with great performance. In addition to on-device performance, MacBook Air supports cloud-based solutions, enabling users to run powerful productivity and creative apps that tap into the power of AI, such as Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Canva, and Adobe Firefly.
Pricing and Availability
Customers can order the new MacBook Air with M3 starting Monday, March 4, on apple.com/in/store and in the Apple Store app in 28 countries and regions, including the U.S. It will begin arriving to customers, and will be in Apple Store locations and Apple Authorised Resellers, starting Friday, March 8.
The 13-inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at INR 114,900 and INR 104,900 for education, and the 15‑inch MacBook Air with M3 starts at INR 134,900 and INR 124,900 for education. Both are available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space grey.
The 13-inch MacBook Air with M2, available in midnight, starlight, silver, and space grey, now starts at INR 99,900 and INR 89,900 for education.
