MacBook Air M3 may launch sooner than you think at Apple event — here’s what we know
Hold off on buying a MacBook Air for now
When will the M3 MacBook Air launch? Given we got the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pro at the tail end of 2023, it’s a question that has been on the lips of many. Well, if this report is to be believed, the answer is rather soon.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is “likely” to release the new MacBook Air in late March, alongside the M3 iPad Pro and a new iPad Air.
So, this goes without saying — hold off on buying a MacBook Air right now, or suffer the Apple buyers’ remorse that pains so many who buy new hardware just weeks before the new one is announced (I still have a grudge against them for dropping the iPad 2 two weeks after I bought one).
MacBook Air M3 performance boost
Rumors and leaks have been rife around the upcoming M3 MacBook Air, and according to Gurman, we may finally see it in just a few weeks time. No significant design changes are expected, which is expected given Apple is well known for only giving the aesthetics a refresh every few years.
But if the M3 MacBook Pro is anything to go by, we’re in for an impressively performant treat — the 3nm chipset has brought some big gains in speed, alongside new graphical tricks like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading.
These are starting to help a bit of a renaissance for gaming on Mac, and the potential to be playing some tasty AAA titles on something as thin and light as a MacBook Air is a very tempting prospect.
But there are two more things…
Gurman also reports on two other devices that look set to launch at this event. Well, technically it's four: M3 iPad Pros in 11- and 13-inch OLED displays, and the iPad Air that will come in both its standard 10.9-inch size alongside a new 12.9-inch option.
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Rumors surrounding the Air suggest it will come with an M2 chip, which keeps the Pro at the top of Apple’s tablet performance rankings. However, with that new OLED technology, fears are rife of quite a big price increase. Time will tell, as expectations are being set for a hardware-heavy event at the end of March.
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Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom's Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom's Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you'll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn't already.