Apple has started the week with a surprise by announcing a refresh for its MacBook Air series out of the blue. The line-up consists of 13-inch and 15-inch variants, equipped with the brand’s M3 chipset which was previously featured on its high-end MacBook Pro models.
Regardless of which, the new MacBook Air laptops look essentially the same as their respective predecessors, featuring the same 13.6-inch or 15.3-inch screens as well as a quad-speaker setup. The M3 chip is promised to offer a 60% increase in performance over the M1, while the onboard GPU is touted to be 15% more powerful than its M2 counterpart. In terms of battery life, Apple claims that both variants are capable of lasting up to 18 hours on a single charge.
Alongside the chipset are memory configurations of up to 24GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage via SSD, though Apple Malaysia notes that the local options will only offer up to 16GB RAM and up to 512GB storage. Apart from that, the new MacBook Air comes with Wi-Fi 6E support, an integrated Force Touch trackpad, Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports, dual external display support, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
For the Malaysian market, the 13-inch MacBook Air M3 will be available starting from RM5,199 (RM4,729 for education), while the 15-inch variant starts from RM6,199 (RM5,729 for education). Apple has yet to confirm when the new line-up will arrive locally, but promises that pre-orders will be available soon.
On a related note, a prior rumour did suggest that the brand is expected to announce new products this week, including new MacBook Air models as well as new iPads and accessories. However, it appears that the tip was only half right as we’ve yet to see Apple introduce the remaining products.
(Source: Apple Malaysia [official website])
