Pick M3 MacBook Pro Instead of M2 MacBook Air： Here's Why

Hello, welcome back to a new video. Okay,

so I actually just started the intro of

this video using the internal built-in

mics on this M3 MacBook Pro just to let

you see or hear what the sound is like

from the internal mics compared to my

regular microphone. But this video isn't

about microphone audio, it's about why I

decided to buy the M3 base model MacBook

Pro over the M2 MacBook Air. Now I'm

using the built-in webcam of the M3

MacBook Pro's built-in webcam, which

actually looks pretty good. It looks

better than my smartphone cameras. Wow.

Anyway, today we're not talking about the

MacBook's camera or the mics. I just

thought it'd be a little test that would

be fun. We're going to be talking today

about why I chose the M3 MacBook Pro model

over the M2 MacBook Air. So I was quite

tempted to get the M2 Air over the M3

MacBook Pro because the M2 Air is lighter,

comes in at 1.2 kg compared to 1.6 kg

of the M3 Pro— well, not the M3 Pro, the

M3 MacBook Pro, not to be confused with

the M3 Pro MacBook Pro. The M2 Air is

actually a lot lighter and cheaper, but

overall I decided that it's worth spending

a little bit more money to get something

that's slightly heavier but more powerful.

So the MacBook Air M2 comes in around

$1,160— well, it does for me in Thailand,

I don't know about you where you are. And

the MacBook M3 Pro— I mean, the MacBook

Pro M3 costs $1,700. So this is

about $600 more expensive. And you might

think that's a lot of money. It's nearly

double the price. But for the extra money,

you get quite a lot of added benefits,

which I don't really feel like I could go

without. I mean, the M2 Air is a lot

cheaper, but then I would miss out on all

these great thingamajigs. And if we're

talking about the weight of the laptop,

this is slightly heavier. My arm is

starting to ache a little bit. It's 1.64

kg for this laptop and then 1.2 kg for the

MacBook Air. So if you have skinny arms

like me and you're thinking this is too

heavy, trust me, as someone who has stick

arms, this is not too heavy to one-hand

hold and like move around. So you could

like move over here, sit over here to make

my video instead of over the desk, which

is one of the benefits of having the

MacBook is it's got great battery life and

it is very lightweight. I don't think I

could do this with my 17-inch Razer Blade

gaming laptop with RTX 3060 graphics card.

That would have just been so heavy. But

the M14 MacBook Pro M3 is actually

incredibly light. So one of the benefits

of the M3 MacBook Pro over the M2 MacBook

Air is the screen. So I don't know if you

can see it or not, but the screen is

really nice. It's got a mini LED screen,

not an LCD screen, and the difference

between that Basically, it has lots of

mini LEDs in the screen and they can turn

off and on when it needs to be turned off

and on. So if you've got like a very black

video playing, it won't display black like

a black color. It will just turn off the

LEDs and then just show you true

blackness. And basically what that means

is that when you're watching very high HDR

videos, it's just going to look more vivid

and look clearer, like an OLED screen kind

of, with blacker blacks and more colourful

colours. With an LCD panel, it's going to

look slightly washed out if you compare it

to a mini LED screen such as the one found

in this. So number one, you get a much

better quality, higher quality screen in

the M3 MacBook Pro than you do in the M2

MacBook Air. And also in the MacBook M3

MacBook Pro, we have much better speaker

grilles because the speaker grilles are

here, if you can see them. Instead of

being tucked away in the hinge. So in the

MacBook M2 Air, they've hidden the

speakers into the hinge, and because of

that, it doesn't sound as good as the M3

MacBook Pro's front-facing firing speakers

on the speaker grilles. Also, the MacBook

3 M3 MacBook Pro is thicker, so that means

they can fit in bigger speakers which give

off a nicer quality sound. Now you

probably can't see it, but there is

actually in fact one fan inside of the

MacBook Pro, and it's got fans on the

sides here. And what that means is when it

gets very hot, the fans turn on and it can

start blowing out the hot air, which means

you can have higher performance tasks

running with it getting hot without the

performance going down. Now the problem

with the M2 Air is it doesn't have these

fans. It's a fanless system, which is fine

if you're just doing web browsing and

tasks like messaging people, watching a

bit of YouTube. You're not going to be

generating a lot of heat. See, right now

I'm making a video And I'm editing it,

and honestly, it's not hot at all.

I feel a bit of heat around here, but it's

not so hot that the fans are switching

off. So you could probably do this on an

M2 Air and it'll be fine. But when you

play games, then the fan does come on.

And then what happens is when you're going

to do gaming, when you do gaming, the fans

are not going to exist on the M2 Air and

it's going to get very hot. And because of

that, it's going to reduce the

performance, and then your game's going to

start lagging and dropping FPS rates.

And also, if you get the M3 MacBook Pro,

obviously you get the M3 chip, which is

the latest and greatest chip from Apple

compared to the M2 chip, which is last

year's chip. That's old tech. That's old

news. I think the M2 chip is made on like

5-nanometer semiconductors, which is older

technology in the world of semiconductors.

3 nanometers is the tech that is the

latest and greatest. We don't have 2

nanometers yet. I reckon in a couple

years' time, like 2026, we'll start having

the first 2nm chips. But until then, the

M3 and the 3nm chips are the best we can

get. And I don't know why you would want

M2 when you can get M3. M3 has at least

20% boosted performance. Actually, I did

think a few times about refunding this and

then downgrading to the M2 MacBook Air

15-inch and getting 16GB of RAM. But then

it would cost about $1,550

or $1,600, which is only $100 cheaper than

this. That's the problem with Apple. You

feel like, oh, I'm gonna downgrade and get

the cheaper model, but then you start

adding things to it like bigger screen,

more RAM, bigger storage SSD, and then it

adds up and adds up to the point where,

oh, if I just spend a tiny bit extra,

like, oh, I only have to spend $150 extra

and then I can get the M3 MacBook Pro base

model. So I was thinking why get the

15-inch MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM when

I could just spend a bit more and get the

M3 MacBook Pro base model? The only thing

I'm getting with the 15-inch MacBook Air

would be slightly bigger screen, 1 inch,

15 inches over 14-inch of this one, and

I'd getting— be getting 16GB of RAM over

the 8GB in this one, which I guess could

be nice because I'm kind of using a lot of

RAM. For example, right now I'm using all

of the RAM, 7GB, plus 3GB of swap.

So I'm using like 10GB of RAM right now.

So yeah, 16GB would be a lot more useful

than having the M3 chip over the M2 chip,

which I don't really know which is more

important— having more RAM but M2 chip,

or M3 chip and having less RAM. So that's

kind of confusing, but I decided that it

was not worth refunding this to get the

cheaper the cheaper M15— I mean,

15-inch M2 MacBook Air, because it won't

really be cheaper when I spec out the RAM.

It's only going to be slightly cheaper,

and I feel like I'd rather have this than

that, unless you get the base model M2

Air, which is going to be like $1,000.

But then you get a tinier screen, only 8GB

of RAM, a worse CPU, which is M2,

no fan, no Mini LED screen,

No grill speakers that fire in your face.

You know, I actually want to get 16GB of

RAM for this, but I've only got 8GB and

I'm thinking about upgrading. But then

it's only such a tiny small amount of

extra money to get 24GB of RAM. But then

it's only a tiny bit more expensive to go

up to the M3 Pro MacBook Pro with 18GB of

RAM. Now I'm seriously thinking upgrade

from the M3 MacBook Pro to the M3 Pro

MacBook Pro with the 18GB of RAM because

then I get more RAM,

I get a better chip because it's the M3

Pro, and it's only a couple hundred

dollars more expensive. That's a bargain.

Apple is stupid because they're like

giving us these MacBooks for free almost.