M3 MacBook Air hands-on: 3 striking things about Apple's new laptop

MacBook Air M3
(Image credit: Future)

Apple made its first hardware announcement of 2024 this week, unveiling the brand new M3 MacBook Air, available in 13 and 15-inch versions. On the face of it, this appears to be a fairly iterative update. For one thing, the design remains unchanged (except for one particular detail related to the Midnight colour – more on that below). But after using the device for a couple of days, and combing through Apple's own marketing materials, the M3 MacBook Air might mark a more significant change in direction for the Mac – and even Apple in general – than first appears. (It's certainly a shoo-in for our roundup of the best laptops for graphic design.)

Refreshing 2022's model (read our M2 MacBook Air review), the M3 MacBook Air is said to be up to 60% faster than the M1 model, with new features including the ability to connect to two external monitor (providing the laptop lid is closed). We'll share our detailed review complete with performance benchmarks soon, but in the meantime, here are the 3 most striking details we've noticed about the M3 MacBook Air after a few days with the 15-inch version of the device. 

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Design Editor

Daniel John is Design Editor at Creative Bloq. He reports on the worlds of art, design, branding and lifestyle tech (which often translates to tech made by Apple). He joined in 2020 after working in copywriting and digital marketing with brands including ITV, NBC, Channel 4 and more.