Apple MacBook Air with M3 SoC appears to be 20 percent more powerful than M2 MacBook Air, benchmarks show

Apple introduced new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models on Monday, equipped with the company’s M3 chipset. The 3nm processor was the biggest upgrade in the refreshed lineup, and Apple claims the new laptops are 60 percent faster than MacBook Air models powered by the M1 chip. However, GeekBench scores for the tech giant’s latest offerings are now here. According to the benchmarks, while it’s still a significant improvement of 20 percent over the M2 and between 30 to 40 percent over the M1, it’s not as high as Apple claims.

According to results shared by GeekBench, the MacBook Air with the M3 chipset scored 3134 in the single-core test and 12048 in the multi-core test. Notably, the processor features an octa-core processor and a 10-core GPU and is clocked at 4.05 GHz. If you’re not a performance fanatic, the benchmarks alone may not mean much. However, compared to Apple’s older silicon, they highlight how much more powerful the latest generation laptops are.

GeekBench comparison shows that the 2024 MacBook Air models scored 18 percent higher in the single-core test than the 15-inch MacBook Air with the M2 chipset released in 2023. In multi-core performance, the difference was 20 percent. The performance gap increased further when in comparison to the M1 MacBook Air released on the market in 2020. In the single-core test, the latest generation of Apple laptops achieved a 31 percent higher score than the M1 counterpart, and in the multi-core test, the difference in output performance was 37 percent.

The GPU is also noted to have received significant improvements with the M3 chipset, but GeekBench does not test GPU performance. Also, benchmark testing is done for a short period of time, which can increase further over longer periods. Given both factors, Apple’s estimate that the M3 MacBook Air is 60 percent faster than its M1 counterpart might be possible. There’s no way to say for sure, though.

Both the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models feature Liquid Retina displays with (2560 x 1664 pixels) resolution with a peak brightness of 500 nits. The laptops are paired with up to 16 GB of RAM and can be configured up to 24 GB of RAM. They also get up to 512GB of SSD onboard storage, which can be configured up to 2TB. The new MacBook Air models also come with a MagSafe 3 charging port, a 3.5mm headphone jack and two reusable Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports.