I got my 15" M3 Air today. It's my first Mac since 2012 and the last version of MacOS that I used was Mountain Lion. I had a late 2008 unibody MacBook until 2012 and when that died I bought whatever was the latest 13" Air at the time, December 2012, but I returned that (I won't get into why here). I've been wanting to return to Mac for well over a decade and this week I finally pulled the trigger!
My main computer is a beefy Windows PC so this Air is only really going to be used as a secondary machine for around the house and travelling. My use of it will be web browsing, streaming Spotify, watching YouTube/Netflix, emailing, simple excel stuff (in browser), and maybe some light photo/video editing. My main computer is where I'll do heavy workloads and gaming.
The specs of the Air I got was the 15" M3 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD in Space Grey. I've only used it for a few hours to set it up but I wanted to share my impressions and thoughts:
I've ordered myself a sleeve to keep it in because I'm worried about it getting damaged. I have 3 cats ... and nowhere is safe from them. They'll jump or sit on it! Right now I'm keeping the Air in the cardboard box the packaging came in lol. My sleeve will arrive tomorrow.
My main computer is a beefy Windows PC so this Air is only really going to be used as a secondary machine for around the house and travelling. My use of it will be web browsing, streaming Spotify, watching YouTube/Netflix, emailing, simple excel stuff (in browser), and maybe some light photo/video editing. My main computer is where I'll do heavy workloads and gaming.
The specs of the Air I got was the 15" M3 with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD in Space Grey. I've only used it for a few hours to set it up but I wanted to share my impressions and thoughts:
- I'll get the obvious one out the way first but I can't believe how thin it is! I did try an M2 Air out at the Apple Store a few months ago and got to experience it there and I was so impressed with it.
- The Space Grey is nice but I am wondering if I should've went with Midnight now. Not a big issue and not worth returning it. Speaking of the case, I did find a few tiny small marks on the body. They look like little bits of dust. Some people would not accept this but I don't think it's worth caring about or worth the hassle of returning.
- The screen is beautiful. The first thing I noticed was the pixel density. I know it's a retina display but everything looks so clean and sharp. The colours are bold and vibrant for not being an OLED/MiniLED. It's probably the best LED screen I've used and I thought my 27" PC monitor was good. Can't seem to see any faulty pixels or DSE (my PC monitor has DSE) but I did notice a little of light bleed on the bottom left of the screen. This was in a dark room, about 30-40% brightness, and on an all black screen. I'm used to 144hz refresh rate on my PC monitor so it's a little rough going to 60hz but not an issue.
- I'm so glad I went with the 15" screen. It's a good size but it does feel somewhat cramped. I'm coming from a 27" display and I need to remind myself to be fair because yes 15" is a smaller screen. This could be a 17" screen and I'd probably still feel the same way. It will take some adjusting but there is just no way I would've been happy with the 13" so the extra size, weight, and money for me is totally justified.
- Sound of the speakers is really good. It's not amazing but I'm impressed with it and it seems to have good surround/spatial sounds.
- It's been a while since I last used MacOS and I know it'll take time to learn it again but one thing that is kinda bugging me is how opening/close apps and windows works. It feels a bit clunky. I tried out Stage Manager and turned it right back off lol. I don't like how the apps are kept open on the left of the screen when I hide all the windows. Maybe I'm using it wrong but I prefer just doing the trackpad gesture (3 fingers swipe up? i think) to show all running app windows.
- They keyboard feels so satisfying to type on. I am used to a 60% mechanical keyboard which is loud and clicky. The Air keyboard obviously doesn't have as much travel but is so much quieter and just feels really good to type on. I need some time to get used to option and command keys. I was getting so frustrating trying to sign into my apple account because I couldn't figure out how to do the # key lol (I have british keyboard).
- I'm a bit disappointed about apps. I thought these Apple Silicon machines could run any iOS app but apparently not. Many of my favourite apps from iPhone are missing or not the same. For example, I use the Excel app on my phone which works fine but on Mac OS i need to actually subscribe to Microsoft 365 to use it. My safari adblock extension purchase didn't carry over so I had to buy it again. I wanted to download Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok but they don't exist so I need to use them in the browser. Not a major problem but disappointing.
- I think I'd much prefer if these had Face ID but Touch ID works really good. I also like I can use my Apple Watch to unlock some stuff but I turned it off because it was annoying me that my watch kept vibrating and I much prefer to just tap the Touch ID sensor.
- Trackpad is HUGE. I remember my old MacBook trackpad you could only click it towards the bottom and the further up it got more difficult to press. I love that I can click anywhere on the pad even in the corners. Does this actually physically click or is it just haptics? I'm a mouse person but this is the best trackpad I've ever used.
- Performance wise, I pushed the Air way harder than I'd ever use it and it didn't break a sweat. I had about 10 safari tabs open (one with YouTube streaming), spotify streaming music (muted), mail/weather/notes/reminders/app store/bitwarden/apple music/apple tv/apple maps open (I'm probably forgetting some). I think I saw one animation that didn't look smooth but otherwise it handled everything I threw at it. I know it's not a demanding load but again this is way more than I'll use it. I will do more demanding stuff later. I don't think I saw RAM go above 12GB. Out of 16GB that seems a lot but the pressure seemed to stay quite low and in the green. Even after I closed mostly everything the RAM still stuck at about 10-11GB (probably the cached memory) so I guess I won't question how MacOS works. I'm telling my self that I don't care about memory management on my iPhone so I'm not going to care about it on Mac.
- I don't know how to check temperatures on Mac but even when I was pushing it "hard" it didn't get warm at all. It's insane that this one of the most advanced processors available today and that is being passively cooled. I was worried about this but now I'm just in awe at how well designed the M3 and the Air chasis is. Well done Apple.
- The notch doesn't bother me. I thought it would but I don't even notice it.
- I want to say it came with about 85% battery life out the box and by the time I had stopped using it then it was at about 72% (maybe 3 hours usage). At one point when I checked remaining time it said 17:52 hours so yeah the 18 hour battery life claim seems to hold up.
- Do most people shut down their Mac when they aren't using it or put it in sleep? I have it in sleep just now but I am too used to shutting down my devices. I want to treat it like I do my iPhone so maybe I'll just keep it in sleep and only shutdown/restart if i need to.
I've ordered myself a sleeve to keep it in because I'm worried about it getting damaged. I have 3 cats ... and nowhere is safe from them. They'll jump or sit on it! Right now I'm keeping the Air in the cardboard box the packaging came in lol. My sleeve will arrive tomorrow.
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