5 things to know about Apple’s new MacBook Air laptops

Apple likes to have a lot of fanfare for its major announcements. There’s usually a massive event with the media flown in from around the world to see what the company is working on. That wasn’t the case for the latest line of Apple MacBook Air laptops, which was announced in a press release early Monday morning. There was no in-person event, not even a live stream. That won’t stop us from getting excited about the next MacBook Air, complete with Apple’s M3 processor, dual-display support, the same 18-hour battery life as last year’s models (as I write this on the previous generation MacBook Air), and Apple’s staple environmental considerations.

If you’re curious about why the new MacBook Air laptops are worth keeping an eye on, here are five things you need to know about them. This might help you decide whether it’s worth snagging one of these new laptops, available in 13 and 15-inch options, when they come out, or if you’re better off spending your money on a different laptop.

1 The Air gets Apple’s M3 processor

Who doesn’t want a faster, more efficient MacBook Air?

Apple

One of the most significant selling points of all the most recent MacBook models is the fantastic 3-nanometer M3 chip and up to 24GB of unified memory. It’s incredibly powerful and can handle just about any task you throw at it. Apple says games like No Man’s Sky run up to 60% faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip, so there’s plenty of power to go around. Compared to Intel laptops, the M3 chip is 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air, so it sounds like there’s more than enough power to go around.

If you want to save some cash and don’t mind using the still powerful M2 processor, Apple has dropped the price of the M2 MacBook Air to $999, which is a great price.

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2 The new MacBook Airs come in four colors

The Midnight color should have fewer fingerprints now, too

Both sizes of the new MacBook Air will come in four different colors. Apple says it’s using a new “breakthrough anodization seal to reduce fingerprints” for the midnight color option, while still offering starlight, space gray, and silver. If you’ve ever used a midnight color for more than a few minutes, then you know it was a fingerprint magnet. Hopefully, Apple really does have it figured out, because that color looks great, minus the fingerprints.

3 The new MacBook Air supports two external displays

It’s about time Apple figured this out

Apple

This is a significant change from the previous generation MacBook Air and other Apple Silicon devices. Previously, you could use the MacBook Air connected to an external monitor, with the lid open, to have a two display setup. Now, you can hook two external monitors to your MacBook Air at the same time. The laptop lid must be closed for this to work, so you can’t have three displays going simultaneously. Still, if you use your MacBook Air as a somewhat stationary device hooked up to external monitors, this is a big change.

4 Apple is leaning into all that AI stuff

It’s the catch phrase of 2024, so we’re not surprised

Apple

Apple says the new MacBook Air is the “World’s Best Consumer Laptop for AI.” The M3 gives it a faster and more efficient 16-core Neural Engine that powers up the on-device machine learning. As far as what experiences that brings, the AI power offers better speech-to-text, translation, text predictions, visual understanding, accessibility features, and others.

Apple also cited the App Store as expanding AI experiences, thanks to the broad ecosystem of apps. For example, it mentioned the AI Math Assistance feature in Goodnotes 6 as one that leverages the M3 chip. The company also mentioned the laptop’s ability to run large language models (LLMs) and diffusion models for image generation. These can be done locally on the MacBook with great performance.

5 It comes with faster Wi-Fi out of the box

You’ll need a Wi-Fi 6E system to take advantage, however

Apple

The pair of new MacBook Airs now come with Wi-Fi 6E, a faster and more reliable wireless internet standard over Wi-Fi 6, which is what the M2 MacBook Air lineup is equipped with. You’ll need to have a Wi-Fi system that supports Wi-Fi 6E in order to take advantage of the increased speeds, but once you do, you should see double the throughput. It’s a welcome addition, even if it’s just to future-proof your MacBook Air.

If you’re interested in the new M3 MacBook Air, they’re available for pre-order starting from March 4 with a $1,099 starting price for the 13-inch version and $1,299 for the 15-inch model. From there, it will ship to buyers starting on March 8, the same day you can expect to see the new laptops in Apple stores and retailers.