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

Which MacBook should you buy in 2024? Comparing the M3 MacBook Air vs M3 MacBook Pro!

#MacBook #MacBookAir #MacBookPro

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00:00 Air vs Pro
02:09 Design
04:06 Speakers
05:04 Display
06:49 Performance

[Thetechchap]

Hey Chaps! What laptop are you using right now??
CORRECTION: MBP M3 only has one fan (the M3 Pro/Max variants have 2 fans)

[eshimischi]

Going after M3 Pro this year, professional developer, prices are high but as i'm still using my macbook pro 2013 that works like from the first day i want an upgrade finally for the forthcoming 10 years to come lol

[golden-]

*I waited for the 15" M3 MacBook Air to see what changes had been made. It's pretty much the same except for the M3 chip. When I spec'd it up to what I wanted, the price was only $100 less than a 14" M3 MacBook Pro with similar RAM and storage. For that extra $100, the pro has a superior display, superior sound, more ports, more power, more speed, brighter screen, a fan to dissipate heat and reduce throttling, 120Hz instead of 60Hz, better mics, etc. I'm a MacBook Air kind of user, but that extra $100 (in my case) for all those features was a no brainer. Wish it came in Midnight.*

[Mad.Maxx.]

Outstanding review, mate! I got my M3 Air 13" 16GB/1TB Midnight about 2 weeks ago. Gotta say it's a gorgeous piece of tech that performs flawlessly. Can't wait to take it to Vegas in May for my next contract gig.

[Onemorechance]

I just bought an M3 MacBook Air, speced it up to 24 gigs of ram and 512 storage, I have it docked 90% of the time with 2 external monitors, I play wow, run YouTube, some safari tabs open at once and the temps are within the 82c ish area with all that going on.

[grumpyrocker]

Apple upgrade pricing for RAM and storage is utterly obscene compared to component costs.

[TheWesterosiNinja]

An important thing to note is that the MBA and base M3 MBP have only Thunderbolt 3 ports if you care about that. You don't get Thunderbolt 4 unless you go to the M3 Pro MBP. In terms of value if you upgrade all three to 16GB RAM/512GB storage, the base M3 Pro MBP 11c/14c with a better cpu, better display, three TB4 ports, and 2GB extra RAM seems like the best value (15" MBA w/16GB/512GB = $1699, base M3 MBP w/16GB/512GB = $1799, base M3 Pro MBP w/18GB/512GB = $1999). The only thing that may be able to touch the base M3 Pro MBP in terms of value would be the 13" MBA with 16GB/512GB for $1499 if you can deal with the smaller 13.6" display and 2 TB3 ports.

Personally, I was able to get a base M3 Pro MBP 11c/14gpu for $1529 on the Apple Certified Refurbished store with an educational discount =).

[justinsugay]

Your consistent way of doing things is much appreciated. Keep it up. Staying fresh on that will be the challenge. Thanks again!

[mikehawk]

Money in the bank vs No money in the bank. That pretty much decides what I buy.

[Peterstarzynskitech]

8gb of ram at that price point is just laughable.

[quickpstuts]

Coming from a 2020 Macbook, I gotta say the M3 Macbook Pro 14" (16GB) battery and performance are great. Don't miss that touchbar at all. Never got used to that thing.

[kristen-johnshearman]

I went for a basic MBP 14 inch and I was worried about 8gb ram but honestly have not ran into any issue's even when editing some video's. Battery is so good swell!

[StephenMonteith]

First time viewer. New subscriber. Enjoyed your video very much and very accessible, but like other creators, you also said if you're doing rendering, 3D work and video editing, go for the pro. Can you define 'video editing' when it comes to a hobby? I use Filmora 13 and do some editing at weekends on a very old Air 11 (struggling) or occasionally in the evening after work.Videos from trips, family events or something creative I filmed around the city. I'm looking to upgrade to FCP when I purchase a new MacBook laptop, but when you mentioned the pro for video editing, would you say my amount of work falls into that category or will a MB Air 15'' suffcie? Many thanks.

[glennsan]

I actually have a 16 inch M2 Pro with 16 giga ram and a one terabyte hard drive. It has the 12 core CPU and I think 19 core GPU. For a lot of the video work that I do, there’s no difference really between that and the M2 air that my wife uses with eight giga ram, and the 512 gig SSD. I’m now thinking that the next laptop I get is going to be whatever the most current air is with 16 gig ram and I’ll use the external storage devices and I think I’ll be happy.

[JJ-bvuz]

As much as I love the lightweightness of the Air, I can't do a fanless laptop with washed out blacks.

[henrykung]

Hi I am a first time viewer and I really enjoyed your video. I'm just curious about how you show the stats like M3 chip temperature on the menu bar, thanks!

[deanwilliams]

The base Pro with the basic M3 chip only has one fan, and, not surprisingly, doesn’t handle thermals as well as the M3 Pro Pro, which does have two fans.

[caseyleedom]

I just upgraded from the 13" M1 MacBook Air to the 15" M3 MacBook Air. Everything is better of course and I see a 2.75x speed improvement on one of the things I do (tar --c --xz ---options xz:compression-level=9). But the new 15" M3 MBA speakers sound like they have a bit less treble. Maybe this is because the old 13" M1 MBA had speaker grills facing you and the new 15" M3 MBA depended on reflected sound from the screen?

[deborahhay]

Hi tech chap 👍 - thank you for your in-depth comparative study - I am looking to buy a laptop for starting graphic design studies - I thought that perhaps the M3 MacBook Air 15 inch screen with 16gb RAM and 516 hard drive storage would be a good start. Then I had second thoughts and have thought maybe the MacBook Pro 14 inch with at least 16gb of RAM and similar storage would be better. Can you offer any advice? Thank you.

[shto]

Apple be robbing us with those memory and ram upgrade prices. I just recently bought MacBook air m2 15 and the choice of upgrade the memory or not drove me nuts