Review MacBook Air (2024) review: M3 updates come to 13 and 15-inch laptops

[Admin]

Apple's 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs with M3 are portable, light, fanless laptops with bright displays and comfortable keyboards and trackpads. But as usual, you'll have to pay quite a bit to upgrade them beyond their base models.

MacBook Air (2024) review: M3 updates come to 13 and 15-inch laptops : Read more

 

[garrett040]

*rates the new macbook air 4.5/5 stars*

it can finally run two displays at once! (with the lid closed) in 2024

lmao

 

[cknobman]

$1500 for a laptop with a crappy 60hz LCD screen and cant even do 2 external displays without closing the lid?

Man Apple customers are lemmings.

 

[Albert.Thomas]

The display support would be a dealbreaker for me.

 

[Notton]

And it still overheats?

 

[brandonjclark]

These are actually really great laptops and Apple will likely sell a ton!

 

[scottslayer]

*rates the new macbook air 4.5/5 stars*

it can finally run two displays at once! (with the lid closed) in 2024

lmao

On Ars people are treating it like Steve Jobs came back from the dead all shiny and glowing aura shit like Tech Jesus just to sell it to them.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

If you're getting these for reasons other than linux, multi-display uses, gaming and machine learning, it's a solid choice, especially for those that want a 7 year laptop that has long battery life (though I wish it was swappable by the user).

If you have the same use cases but need Linux, the slimbooks are excellent, else look at literally anything else but Apple.

 

[newtechldtech]

The review is lacking real comparison against M2 Macbook AIR 13/15 ...

 

[PEnns]

"Absurd RAM and SSD upgrade pricing"

Have you seen how much other companies are charging? HP wants about the same for extra RAM and SSDs, but I don't see reviewers here taking them to task for that!

 

[CParsons]

"Absurd RAM and SSD upgrade pricing"

Have you seen how much other companies are charging? HP wants about the same for extra RAM and SSDs, but I don't see reviewers here taking them to task for that!

That's largely because you don't have to take them up on their crappy offers. You can pick the cheaper option and do the upgrades yourself. With Apple, there is no way to do that. You get what you get.

 

[newtechldtech]

That's largely because you don't have to take them up on their crappy offers. You can pick the cheaper option and do the upgrades yourself. With Apple, there is no way to do that. You get what you get.

Sadly that is not true , for most modern laptops have soldered RAM ... only the SSD can be upgraded today

 

[CParsons]

Sadly that is not true , for most modern laptops have soldered RAM ... only the SSD can be upgraded today

Even one laptop with upgradeable RAM and SSD is more than Apple currently offers.

 

[Notton]

Even if you couldn't upgrade the RAM on modern x86 laptops, it doesn't cost an extra $200 for 8GB, and you wouldn't be limited to 24GB.
They also don't tend to come with an 8GB configuration for +$1000 models.
Like you might see an 8GB model on some crappy celeron n100/n5105 or Ryzen 7320U, but it's pretty rare for an i5 or i7 to come with 8GB that cannot be upgraded.

 

[Sam Bridges]

I didn’t read the whole article. Apologies if it was mentioned but the notch turned out to be a non issue as you can hide it by just picking the resolution that doesn’t include it. My 14” MBP now looks exactly like my old 13” MBP.

 

[Sam Bridges]

"Now with M3 and support for two external monitors!"

"Great!" Says me chilling with 6monitors(4 from GPU, 2from motherboard)
.....
😭🤦

I understand it’s not for you, and I won’t defend the choice Apple made, but most people getting an MBA obviously care more about other stuff. Like efficiency. Even aesthetics, why not. The OS, etc. Etc. The thing arguably has a lot of good going on for it. Obviously nothing that interests you personally, I’d bet.
I don’t see how that’s not reasonable unless you are one of those who thinks that people who are interested in different things than them are dumb. In which case we are wasting each other’s time.

Cheers.

 

[Sam Bridges]

The external display limitation is a marketing limitation. It's how Apple differentiate between Air vs Pro, and also between different Pro models.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571

Per above Apple support doc, the M3 MBP only supports 1 ext display. M2/M3 Pro MBP supports 2 ext displays. M2/M3 Max MBP supports 4 ext displays. The limitations are to upsell to a higher priced model.

All Apple features work like this, eg if you want more than the base 8GB/256GB configuration, you have to be willing to be price-gouged. Apple gets away with this because Apple users don't have any other choice if they want to stay in the Apple walled garden.

Yep, that’s correct. It’s a shameless upsell tactic. It got better honestly. The M1 supported only 1 external displays, even on the Pro.

The thing is, for most people. Me included, it ain’t an issue.

But yeah, the tactic is clear and I don’t blame people who think it’s gross. Hopefully the same people are as grossed out when it is NVDIA or AMD pulling smilare shenanigans.

Cheers.

Edit: I should have read more carefully. I honestly thought you could use two external monitors on M2 and M3 MBPs.