MacBook Air M3 (13 & 15): Fantastic BUT Beware... 

WIth M3 starting with 8 GB baseline basically even all Apple shills criticized or downright mocked the idea.

I agree. The claim that it's equivalent to 16GB in a Windows laptop doesn't seem right. RAM is definitely more efficient with these M chips, but efficiency is not the same as capacity.

If you're using the M3 and your workload is light enough to not need 8GB, just get the Air.

Tbf, I have M1 MacBook Air base model. The 8GB Ram is good for working on one app at a time. Till now I didn’t face any problems working on FCP, Logic Pro, OBS, and other apps… once I start using multiple apps at once I may get a notification that I have to close one app.

​@@OthMar39 My friend who is not in tech told me that his laptop starts slowing down once he opens a few chrome tabs and MS office. He also does occasional gaming for fun and has seen noticeable lags. So clearly 8GB RAM isn't enough even for normal users. Stop justifying 8GB RAM in 2024 on a $1000+ laptop, period.

I agree. Just an FYI DDR5 single stick is dual channel, so that is less of an issue than it was in the DDR4 days

I have been around since the start of PCs. And basically used 8GB over the last 40 years. And have no issues at all. I know many people that use only 8 GB and are fine. We are not all in the RU-vid bubble that uses Pro apps. I don't even think I use an app that would stretch a MacBook Air. It is hard for me to accept your conclusion that we should start at a higher config and obviously a higher price as that would mean I would have to pay extra like I would do in Windows land and that is unfair on someone like me that only needs base spec but love a premium device as I keep my laptops for 7 to 10 years and I'm willing to pay extra for quality.

​@@andyH_England Sure, if you run one application at a time and literally don't use any professional apps, then you MAY be able to get away with 8 GB for now. But for $1100? Come the hell on!

@@cameronbosch1213 the surface laptop 6 just released by Microsoft is also priced the same and also cost £200 a pop for every upgrade. So when Microsoft the founder of Windows also follows this path then we have to ask why the two biggest companies in the world have agreed? Maybe they know more than we do.

@@andyH_England while that may be true. My aim at this channel is to help people get the best deal on the best laptop for their use case. Buying a laptop for over $1k with 8g of soldered memory and 256g of soldered storage is not acceptable

Thanks Kevin

@@JustJoshTech Unlike most RU-vid reviewers, you actually seem to understand the technology behind the device, & not just see the surface level detail. I'm tempted to buy the new Spectre, but i'm holding off for the reviews of the new range of SD powered laptops.

Snapdragon can’t even make good phone chips 😂😂😂

YES

Will only have taken PC manufacurers half a decade to catch up to Apple's level of CPU efficiency 😂

Lol, your braincell needs abit of updating on the window side, bro. Just look at Ryzen latest power efficiency, or josh latest laptop review showing those efficiency. They are almost identical to those M3 chip. But but but Mac battery is a lot longerrrrr you might ask? Arm vs x86 architecture, bro. Arm can't run Cad application without lagging on their M1 chip while windows can.

And if you're talking about Arm cpu, take a look at Galaxy s22 pro vs iphone 15 pro. The S22 destroys iphone in term of continuous runs, power efficiency and heat management. And if you look at the comment section, apple fanboys are complaining that they won't ever run that much of a heavy load to justify their little reasons for buying an iphone.

Yes, it has. M3 MBA now has 2 128GB SSDs connected by a high speed bus just like M1 MBA and performance is far better than M2 MBA.

Go with M2 MacBook Pro with M2 Pro/Max chip, I have heard people getting them in good discounted deals. Definitely better than base M3 MBA and M3 MBP.

Did I say that 🤔 😉 ... make sure you're subscribed

Yes. The air is basically just a macbook without a cooling system, so low intensity use is the intended purpose. It's like an iPad pro, but with an included keyboard and macOS, making it far more useful than any ipad.

I agree this is great value for money. Only weak point is max screen brightness but otherwise it feels quite premium.

Hopefully Snapdragon Elite and other ARM based chips from AMD and Intel are going to have comparable battery life and power/wattage than Apple silicon, we can happily ignore Apple once and for all.

NO. M1 Pro 14" will still be perform better than M3 MBA for 2 reasons: fans and better SOC to handle extensive workloads. M1 Pro 14" should only be compared with M2 and M3 Pro Chips.

True. But $400 is just way way too much, I mean how on earth Apple gets away with such practices ?

@@dwight.shrute honestly...I've been a windows user my entire life (not counting iPads and macs at work) and I eventually switched to macbook because I could no longer endure the crappy windows updates, jet engine style fan noises, heating and the unreliability of the system in general. After trying out ridiculously expensive gaming laptops, ultra portable ones and military types, I still was frustrated with every single one of them. Apple ecosystems are simply reliable and robust, and better spend money on something reliable than replacing your laptops yearly as random updates eat your nerves.

If you read the review for the M3 Air, there is no difference between the M1 if you are using the laptop for basic use which is probably 80 percent of the users. I would go with the PRO for heavy intensive work, Best Buy/B&H sometimes have the PRO on sale for 1599 which is 100 dollars more than the full spec M3. Air is fanless and the machine will throttle performance while the PRO has a fan.

I wanted this configuration of MBA, but after watching these videos, I now want an M3 MBP pro 18gb. I'm a novice video editor and I need a machine that can do whatever comes to mind as i build up my skills, as I'm not a "one or two layers with minimal VFX effects" type of guy, apparently lol

The Strix Scar 18 destroys the M3 Max. Yoga Pro 9i 16 in the 16inch form factor is my favorite

I'm glad we could deliver

Thank you

No coding? No professional use, right? Go for M1 MBA with 16GB RAM as RAM is still required for basic tasks and keeping a lot of open applications will consume equal amount of RAM. You can get 16GB M1 MBA for under $800-$850 in sale.

Yes to Legion, we haven't received them yet. Re Zenbook Duo, we have it, and it is in the queue

We are still testing it. Sorry, alot of laptops here :)

@@JustJoshTech Cool sounds, no worries and looking forward for to the video when available.

Wish Xcode could be run in Windows. I would be sooo happy. Those 48GB MBPs are so darn expensive

Runs fine. I have run it on my friends laptop (16GB M1 MBA). Docker consumes around 5GB RAM in it. Don't even think about purchasing base MBA, you need at least 16GB of RAM.

Doesn't matter to me. Glossy needs to be 500 nits or higher for me, though, as it needs to combat reflections

Glossy is best for everything. Just ban matt finish. I just hate matt finish.

I love matte finish. Dirt is not spotted as easily, easier to clean as well, less reflections too. Glossy display laptops get more dirt from even the keyboard, as the glass can touch the keyboard slightly, while matte display are a bit into the bezels.

I'd only get glossy for OLED screens if it's touch screen.

@@HDRPC Most dumbest and unpopular opinion in this entire comments section.

Yes but they are tailored for a different market offering those that cannot afford a premium laptop. And of course they are not macos.

don't buy this hp crap

Based on Josh's review of the HP P+ it's pretty much the best bang for your buck in the laptop market right now. I just wished more laptops gave you a AMD's U-series chip option...

For 700 i bought intel nuc x15 laptop with 12gen intel and dedicated arc 730m 12gb vram, also nice build quality and decent screen 24 gb ram

@@Tatar_Piano bad deal 😬

well f####

@@IlyasSahnoun Nope

have a base model M3 and use it for studying and some schoolwork and it is perfectly fine

16GB RAM upgrade is a no brainer compared to 256GB SSD upgrade. RAM is shared in Apple silicon which means a portion of it is used for graphics (VRAM) and hence baseline 8GB RAM MacBook Air effectively leaves you with just 5-5.5GB of actually usable memory and this is too less even for basic tasks like MS office, browsing with multiple tabs, etc. in the long run. There is a reason why most educated and sincere tech youtubers have called out Apple for shipping a laptop with just 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD for over $1100 in 2024.

Silly- but do you think MacBook pros last longer? Just seem to be hardier(?) or something? I’ve always had pros and they last me many years ( still using a 2015 15” pro! 🫣 love it!)

@@paigeme886 You asked a question and then answered it yourself while contradicting your original opinion. Were you high?

@@dwight.shrute no, are you high? I didn’t ask a question and then answer it. I made a statement, then below it I asked a question - sometimes I’m unable to edit my comments on RU-vid if I’m on my iPhone so i just comment below it. Perhaps I should have just made a completely different comment but still… not sure why you thought i answered my own question when my first comment wasn’t a question or an answer to anything. And he didnt address my question in the video. Im usually on my phone at night watching these so if my wording isn’t perfect for you, my sincere apologies- I hope you get a life

@@paigeme886 You need a life bro, seriously and sincerely requested.

@@dwight.shrute 😂 you are the one that needs a life… you initially stupidly replied to a strangers comment on RU-vid in an attempt to put them down & somehow lift your dumbass ego up 🙃my guess is that reading and replying to strangers on RU-vid is a habit of yours. Be nice and get some manners.

16 gb will do just fine. The reason 8gb is bad is because your OS needs a large portion of the ram to function in the first place, so it gets shaky or bogs down when you try to multi-task or do heavy workloads on 8gb. With 16gb the OS now has breathing room and you're other applications do as well. I'd only recommend higher than 16gb if you do really intensive things like make very large multi-layer videos at high resolution with a lot of VFX or do 3D rendering, then the extra ram kicks in to help render speed or just give those kinds of programs more to work with , but even then 16gb of unified memory on a mac will be really decent for a long time and the swapping will be much smoother. I saw another video that compares 16gb MBA to the 24gb MBA and the low level multi-tasking performance was equal. With the heavy renders the 24gb only saves a few seconds. The heavy renders weren't very large in this test, so if you had a really big file to export then the 24gb could get it done faster. Hopefully i was able to clear up the misconception that more than 16gb of ram is needed just for every day multi tasking. You only need more than 16 for very resource intensive professional applications.

@@smittyvanjagermanjenson182 Thank you very much this is very helpful information you given i really appreciate that.

Dave2D

That is always a problem when you have soldered RAM and SSD and it is advisable to buy what you need. I wouldn't blame Apple for that as they based their M-chips on the A-chips which have both soldered RAM and storage. You will find this will be the case with Snapdragon X Elite and even now Intel uses soldered RAM as the latest fastest RAN does not come in modular form. It's a case of adapting and understanding that it is important to buy what you need and maybe a little bit more for future-proofing as the world is changing and technology always moves on.

​@andyH_England There is no reason for Apple to be soldering SSDs though. I MAY give them soldering RAM IF they put at least 16 GB on their base units. But even Microsoft has their ARM Surface Pro 9 tablets have M.2 SSDs. That's Apple saying fuck you to consumers. And when it inevitably can't be written to anymore, you'll need a motherboard replacement rather than one part.

@@cameronbosch1213 no one is saying that it is perfect having soldered RAM and storage, but there are reasons for the RAM including the fastest Ram isn't supported at the moment in modular form and there are some ridiculously fast RAM out at the moment. As for storage, it is possible for ARM chips to have modular SSDs but I assume it is to do with cost, space, and performance that persuades Apple to use soldered NAND modules. As always Apple is a small player (10% market share) and people have the choice to accept Apple's decisions or buy something else.

@@andyH_England And I did buy something else.

You do realize you could have gotten an external SSD and put the VMs on that right? I have external SSDs for specific things (1. SSD for file backup 2. SSD for my retro console emulators and their games). External SSDs can be a live saver. the Internal SSD is always for the OS and user data. VMs and such, I'd always put on an external SSD seperate from the OS. This way, if the OS needs a reinstall, I don't lose my VMs and their configs and such.

Still there but a driver update will probably fix it if it causes too much complaints.

Which ThinkPad? The X1 Carbon? Normally they are extremely quiet. Is it a T series you have?

@@JustJoshTech On the back of my device it just says ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 (Type Number: 21HM-S3PU00, if you know what to do with it - searchin in the internet leads to a "T"). It really is a disaster in terms of noise. I've had the device for a week and almost miss its predecessor. To the round: I know the MacBook Pro 14 with M3, 16/512 is not often recommended. I actually wanted to order the Air (same specs), but now I'm a bit unsure whether the fanless design could be a problem. My most intensive tasks: Parallels + Magic The Gatering Online and Magic Arena (native Mac OS). Does anyone here have any experience with this? Expect of this, just general surfing/browsing and music edition 2 times a year. Pro costs 1800 in this configuration, the Air 1400 (Europe). 400 more for just Promotion wouldt be worth it, but the missing fan on the Air confusses me... M3 Pro is sadly around 2100.

Joker.

3 hours of battery life and fan noise. what a joke

@@neugeburt1952 My ASUS S13 (AMD 6800U) can run for 15-16 hrs on light tasks. Typically 12 hrs for day to day productivity work. Not all Windows laptops have poor battery life.

I feel sad for you that you bought an overpriced yoga crap

Yoga battery life does suck but noise wise they're much better than I was expecting. Great value for money.

I hope your one lasts. I have had a crap experience with Lenovo, but that was a while back, and they may have improved since then.

It's a bad buy if you intend to keep it for several years.

Long term use? Yea. M1 14 inch macbook pros on Amazon go for about $1200 refurbished. I'd get that instead

If you had the money to go with 16GB + 1 TB M3 MBA, you made a huge mistake tbh. You should have gone with 14 inch M3 Pro MBP, way better laptop with slightly increased weight and nearly similar size.

@@dwight.shrute The huge mistake would’ve been spending hundreds more $$ for a bigger, heavier, more expensive laptop that’s built for serious video production and using it for nothing more than Word and Photoshop.

@@MadMaxx.1977 If you need nothing more than word and photoshop, why on earth did you spend $200 for 16GB RAM upgrade and $400 for SSD upgrade, are you real?

@@dwight.shrute Because that's what I wanted and my total cost was $700 with the M1 Air trade in.

@@MadMaxx.1977 it's good that you wanted to waste your money by purchasing an inferior product. I won't go to M3 MacBook Pro, let's just stick to M2 MacBook Pro still available in a lot of stores. That one at $1500-1600 offers similar if not more RAM, far far better processor and unmatched performance. 14inch MBP is just very slightly bigger than 13 inch MBA, and weight difference is hardly noticeable if you carry it in a bag pack. You got a far inferior device for the money, no matter how much you justify using a much weaker MBA (when compared to MBP) with bumped up specs.

What is your budget? I purchased a laptop this month.

Yes Apple don't really make budget laptops they are a luxury brand selling premium laptop so too expensive for many. Dell and HP offers some cheaper models that offer great value. Go to their websites.

@@HDRPC I saw you in another comment. Please save this person's hard earned money and NOT recommend him or her anything.

Look into other channels once like Dave2D. Tom's Hardware, PC Mag, The Verge have curated lists for your need, do pay a visit.

I'd only say it's fine if price of the Air is below $800

Wow really they say 8gb is ok for Logic Pro?! I see my Mac(18GB ram) easily pushing well above 8gb when using Logic Pro. That FB group is crazy.

Logic will run fine on 8GB :) But if you want to run tons of plugins and instruments, then no. Every model is for somebody, as long as one keeps that in mind, we won’t get unnecessary angry. My mom is very happy with her 8GB MacBook Air, and in 2024 even 😮. Look at some point, even if you have a 32GB machine, given enough plugins, Logic will struggle. Know thyself.

@@AZisk Can Logic work with 8GB? Yes. Will you future proof yourself if a year later you decide you want to dabble with virtual instruments/samplers or heavy plugins when buying 8GB of memory? No. My projects are hardly crazy but I can tell you the M2 Air struggles just as hard as my i7 quad core in my 2020 MBP. The 4 P-cores aren't going to give you a ton of processing power if you choose to get more into audio production.

I don't think we should recommend anyone buy a laptop for well over $1K with only 8GB. @@AZisk . Its not a sensible use of people's funds. Someone like your mother will probably not notice any difference when using the older M2 with 8GB vs the new M3 with 8GB. My advice is for use cases like hers, to buy last year's M2 and save money. There is no reason for Apple to launch an M3 version with 8GB. There isn't enough of a difference for use cases like hers to warrant that over the older M2 version.

Wow a VM of 2GB that's gutsy even for lightweight Linux distro

@@JustJoshTech Yeah. I plan to mainly use it for learning Linux system programming with gcc and neovim in the terminal. 2GB should be enough for that. Thing is, I am not sure if macosx can work well enough with the remaining 6GB. Never used a mac before.

I think it sounds extremely risky. You clearly know Computer Science. The Operating System has a fairly fixed cost in terms of memory usage. Then the excess can be used for applications and data. Your 2GB VM (plus a minimal amount for translation layer) will cut into that. Also keep in mind unified memory means that your graphics will be using the same remaining 5.9 GB. I think its too risky personally. If you are in the USA i can send you an alternate laptop to get. @@user-cl8ik9kt9e

@@JustJoshTech Fair point. I think I should wait a few more months till the real world reviews of the upcoming snapdragon laptops come out. At home, I'm well served by my Linux 'desktop' (a 5 yr old Asus ROG Strix). However, a thin and light laptop with ~18 hr battery life is really enticing, but only if I can run Linux on it in some way.

I really like the new X1 Carbon gen 12 btw. If that drops alot around Back to School or Black Friday. I'd look into that too. @@user-cl8ik9kt9e

Video out tomorrow am on this. It's around 23 minutes long!

Yes, a family member got 24GB/512GB MB Air M2 13-inch for £1200! It was secondhand.

Seriously? Let's meet some time later this year once the next MacOS comes out. Even today, open a few chrome tabs and try to do some basic video editing, baseline MBA is simply going to give up on RAM and will throttle down quite a bit (since only 5.5 GB of RAM is usable and other 2.5 is VRAM), leading to exponentially higher swaps to SSD reducing it's life and in turn longevity of your device.

@@dwight.shrute how do you know?? Did you test that out on YOUR m3 MacBook Air with 8gb ram??? Because all I know is that my MacBook works and doesn’t break a sweat plus future proofing is a scam since there is always the possibility you drop your laptop

@@ST14_109 Your MacBook works for now on video editing since you are just running one editing software on it, likely not the ones from Adobe. 8GB RAM is insufficient even today since it is a shared RAM and just 5.5GB of RAM is actually available for running all you tasks as 2.5GB is reserved for VRAM (graphics). Yes, future proofing looks like scam if people purchase an overpriced and over the top spec hardware which they don't really use, but in this case 16GB RAM is one upgrade most if not all tech youtubers and every sensible member of the tech community is recommending on MBA. Maybe you didn't have enough money when going for the purchase but don't misguide others to purchase the baseline MBA as it is useless in the long run, primarily due to the RAM.

You have either a) never used a faster computer or b) edited a very simple project that only requires decoding of basic video. I bought and returned a m3 pro macbook pro with 18GB of ram. I returned it because it was too ram starved and too slow to edit even my basic videos. But obviously it is fantastic that you have a machine that does what you need it to do. I'd say Josh is totally right about the base spec air being too ram starved to edit (well) though.

@@ST14_109 You can purchase any device and have the risk of dropping it, this is such a foolish basis of any argument related to longevity, handle with care or don't purchase- simple as that. You have to consider how much RAM is currently used by the system and basic tasks, trust me 8GB in 2024 is a JOKE esp. when the RAM is shared and part of it is utilized for graphics. You can justify for now, that's what gives Apple leverage to ship a $1200 laptop with 8GB RAM + 256GB SSD in 2024, in a world where 16GB + 512GB should be bare minimum for any sensible purchase.

Oh please 255gb, you run through those very very quickly especially for students in the programming section. My friend who bought an m1 with 8gb ram and 255gb can't even run her project because the storage is full. She doesn't even have that many projects in her Mac (1-2 project max) because most of the space is occupied by the tools that is needed to run her projects. Anaconda, python, env, etc. so no, 255gb is absolutely not enough. Same goes for ram, I used to have a 2019 MacBook pro core i7 gen 10th 32gb ram (About 2000$ during its release). I have about 20-40 Firefox tabs open and 2 emulators running at the same time (Flutter, mobile development). Guess what? The entire fucking OS shut down the moment I compile my code on both the emulators.

Arrr, matey! Let them walk the plank!@@Yayaloy9

@@Yayaloy9 You're lying. Those tools don't take up nearly as much space as you're saying. Python, for example, takes up 0 storage because it's preinstalled on all Macs. Maybe you need a special legacy version, the largest is 50 MB. Anaconda takes up just under 2 GB installed. Either you made up the whole thing, or she's filled her drive with other stuff. Regardless, I said 256 GB was not enough so you're not even disagreeing with me on that point, you're just taking an antagonistic tone for reasons I don't care to speculate about. And there is not a single piece of software that will crash a computer with 32GB of memory when compiling. You can compile the entirety of the Linux kernel, AOSP, Chrome, Firefox, whatever massive piece of software you can think of on just 4GB of memory. Will it be unbearably slow, yes, but it will work. Maybe you intentionally wrote the compilation equivalent of a zip bomb?

It is UNACCEPTABLE to ship a $1100-$1600 laptop with just 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD in 2024. Apple needs to stop taking it's customers for granted and keep milking them for spec upgrades. If you are even a semi professional, 8GB RAM is simply unusable even with all the paging, you practically get just 5.9GB out of 8GB RAM for running applications and remaining 2.1GB is reserved for graphics(VRAM). Open a few tabs here and there and one or two moderate applications and boom, your memory is full and now you are bogged down by continuous paging which is still noticeably slower but also kills the SSD (look at the stats of how much time and data is being paged), which makes one wonder why did they spend so much on a laptop in first place.

@NOTREALHARSH stop lying. Base M3 MBA is not even comparable to M2 MBP be it any demanding task, simply due to increased RAM and better processor. Who are you fooling here?

Thats true you can live stream using obs but it wont last long because MBA doesnt have fans. That put stress inside the machine.