The MacBook Air equipped with the “M3 chipset” has been on sale since last month. The “M3 chipset” is Apple’s latest internally developed PC semiconductor product. Previous products were called M1 and M2 according to the order of development. The MacBook Air 15 is opened 90 degrees and viewed from the opposite side. Reporter Jeong Ok-jae The MacBook Air 15 displays windows on one screen at the same time for multitasking. Reporter Jeong Ok-jae Playing on battery power without connecting a charging adapter. Reporter Jeong Ok-jae The goal of the M series, including the M3, is to produce low-power, high-performance products through a strategy of optimizing power and performance through in-house semiconductor design. The M3 chipset is a product that emerged as part of Apple’s semiconductor strategy aimed at the era of generative artificial intelligence. The M3 series was first released in October last year and was applied to the MacBook Pro.
The Apple laptop released this time is called “MacBook Air 13” or “MacBook Air 15”. The MacBook Air 13 has a 13-inch screen and the MacBook Air 15 has a 15-inch screen. 13 is optimized for portability and 15 is optimized for multitasking.
The reporter rented a “MacBook Air 15” from Apple Korea for about 3 weeks from the 16th of last month to the 6th of last month. The color is midnight. Product 15 was released in four colors, including Midnight, Starlight, Space Gray, and Silver. In this review, we tested the MacBook Air’s performance by editing videos and playing games.
The reporter tested an M1-equipped iPad in July 2021. An M2-equipped laptop was tested in August 2022 (https://www.kookje.co.kr/news2011/asp/newsbody.asp?key=20220803.99099000748) .
● I played
What will happen if you run high-end work with the M3 chipset on a MacBook Air that doesn’t have a fan to control heat generation? This is why I played the game. It was nice that there was no noise or throttling when operating the heat control (limiting performance when heat is generated). It worked flawlessly even in low power mode.
MacBook is not a PC used mainly for gaming, but for work use. Many gaming apps popular with home consumers are not supported on MacBooks. This time I inevitably downloaded and tried “Com2us Professional Baseball 2024”.
In this app we played a “friendly game” with the AI team. There was no slowdown and the game continued smoothly. When I played and had to work, I closed the laptop. If you cover it this way, the app goes into a “temporary pause” situation. In some PCs that used Windows, you had to turn them off one by one, but the MacBook was designed from the beginning so that all functions went into a “paused” state when the laptop was closed, so there were no big problems . In the ‘stop’ situation, battery exhaustion was not felt.
However, when I measured the temperature of the top or bottom of the laptop’s body, it was above 41 degrees Celsius. Games generate heat because they run the GPU (graphics processing unit) in addition to the CPU (central processing unit). This product does not have a built-in fan, so the heat is transmitted as it is. However, as soon as I entered the “stop” situation, the fever disappeared. The MacBook Air is made without a fan and no visible vents. There appeared to be some ventilation coming from the speaker side of the monitor connection at the top of the laptop.
Since the temperature is not lowered by a fan, it has the great advantage of being silent. It looked like there would be no problem playing in the library (laptop space). If you’re playing with the speakers on at home and open your laptop at work, game audio will be heard through the speakers, so be careful.
● Video editing
The MacBook Air is not a specialized product for video editing, but with the M3 high-end editing is possible to some extent without difficulty.
There is no separate HDMI port on the MacBook Air, so you need a separate connector to connect to a playback display such as a monitor.
The reporter used the free “iMovie” app preloaded on the MacBook Air. If you are a beginner in editing, you can use this app to perform basic tasks. Cutting and pasting was smooth, just like on the iPhone or iPad. The journalist filmed a video of approximately 2 minutes each with an Android smartphone and an iPhone. I was able to learn how to edit them one by one through various research.
The usability of the MacBook can be maximized by using a trackpad (touchpad) instead of a mouse. The 15-inch MacBook Air is optimized for multitasking, not portability, so you can edit videos while doing other work. You can also work while enjoying YouTube. By sliding the trackpad with three fingers, you can see all the windows on the screen at a glance.
During the rental period, the reporter participated in the “Today at Apple (product usage explanation program)” at a directly operated Apple store in Seoul and learned basic usage methods. If you’re using a MacBook for the first time, you should read the manual included with the product, learn basic app terminology (dock, menu bar, trackpad, etc.), and change settings frequently to get used to it faster. Since the MacBook trackpad is softer than those of other brands, satisfaction increases if you use the trackpad and fingers well (pressure, number, etc.) without a mouse.
I opened the MacBook Air 15 and took a photo from above. You can connect a 5mm audio jack. Reporter Jeong Ok-jae: View of the side ports of the MacBook Air 15. Reporter Jeong Ok-jae ● What has changed?
Apple’s official explanation is that the MacBook Air equipped with the M3 chip is 1.6 times faster than the M1 product. You can measure the speed of various components within the M3 chipset via a benchmark app, but this is meaningless. This is because the speed of a semiconductor component is not about its own speed, but rather the perceived speed with which multiple components work together.
To properly measure the speed of this product, you would have to download and use a very heavy app that uses artificial intelligence (paid), but I couldn’t go that far.
The M3 chipset used in the “MacBook Air 15” includes an 8-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. A core is an independent computational unit. The higher the number, the higher the performance.
Apple PC has a big optimization advantage because it designs key components in-house rather than purchasing them externally. In particular, the sustainability of the battery is good. The official battery life of this product is 18 hours. A person who works 8 hours a day can work without an adapter for a day or two. If you forgot the dedicated adapter, low-speed charging is possible with a 25W smartphone adapter. It was charged to about 30% in 2 hours.
If you charge your MacBook to 80% in “Settings”, battery life will be extended. Batteries are consumables. When fully charged, performance deteriorates more quickly. The same goes for smartphones. It is important to charge your phone or laptop to 80-85%.
The product used by the journalist had 8 GB of RAM (Random Access Memory). The perceived speed of the MacBook Air’s 8GB of RAM was similar to that of other companies’ 16GB products. Apple is said to use RAM capacity efficiently by spatially dividing the RAM during multitasking with “dynamic caching” technology.
Even when working with 10 programs running at the same time, including a video editing app, a YouTube app, and a photo app, uploading and downloading go smoothly.
● The weight is
The 15-inch product weighs 1.51 kg. Is heavy. The thickness is 1.15 cm. To reduce the weight of the bag, you can remove the laptop adapter and use a smartphone adapter. The flat surface is coated to reduce fingerprints.
The price of the “MacBook Air 15” with the M3 chipset ranges from 1.89 million won to 2.43 million won. The RAM can be expanded up to 24GB and the storage SSD can be expanded from 512GB to 2TB. If you only do basic web browsing or work with MS Word, the M2 product may be cheaper.
If you plan to do AI work in the future or use it by connecting it to an external monitor, the M3 module is economical. M3-equipped products can connect up to two external monitors with the laptop closed.
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