Apple MacBook Basics: The Differences Between MacBook Air and MacBook ProLet’s state something obvious right from the start: The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro may have some striking similarities, but they aren’t the same machine. They use different designs, include different features, and are made for different users. In the case of the MacBook Air, it’s Apple’s general-use Mac laptop, made for mainstream productivity and peak portability at an approachable price.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is Apple’s prosumer model, made for both consumers and professionals. Some configurations may be similar in terms of CPU and price, but if you’re willing to invest a little more, you can get the MacBook Pro with more powerful processors and more ports in a build that’s designed to squeeze better performance out of the silicon inside.It’s only in the MacBook Pro’s most basic configurations that you’ll find significant overlap with the MacBook Air. But, if you’re on the fence about which one to get, we understand! They do look mighty similar, and the differences between them can be nuanced. So let’s look at both models and figure out how they differ and which is better for you.Power and Performance: It’s All Down to Fans (or No Fans)Let’s start with the most common point of comparison: performance. If the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro are using the same M3 processor, doesn’t that mean that you’ll get the same performance regardless of which model you choose?
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Well, it’s not quite that simple. The same M3 processor may be used in both models, as well as the same 10-core GPU in both of our review units, but you’ll quickly notice one major difference: the cooling schemes.The MacBook Air uses a passive cooling system, meaning that it may be well-ventilated, with enough natural airflow through the chassis to support performance for short bursts, but you’ll hear no fans inside. On the plus side, that means it runs silently, even when you’re doing demanding work like photo editing. But that silence has a downside: With no fans pushing the hot air out and drawing cool air in, the M3 chip will hit its thermal limits more quickly than if it had fan assistance.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, has two internal cooling fans, plus a more sophisticated heat-exchange system that pumps out the heat and draws in cool air, adjusting airflow to match the demands of your workload. Yes, it does mean that the MacBook Pro will emit some fan noise, and the fans add some thickness and weight to the chassis. But that difference in airflow has a direct impact on performance: The M3 MacBook Pro outperformed the M3 MacBook Air in just about every benchmark we’ve conducted on the two, namely the ones that carry out more-sustained workloads.
The MacBook Air may be able to match the Pro for short sprints of activity, but for longer, more-involved projects (or gaming sessions, for that matter), those fans will let the MacBook Pro perform better and do so for longer. The MacBook Air, on the other hand, hits its thermal limits much faster, and the system throttles the performance in response.Winner: Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2023, M3)Portability: A Slight Edge for the AirThe above all said, getting the highest possible performance isn’t the first concern for every laptop user. Schlepping around an extra pound of laptop takes its toll when you’re constantly running to work, walking across campus, or hauling a laptop bag across the airport to make that flight. That’s where Apple’s trademark portability comes in.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The MacBook Pro is by no means a chunky laptop. It measures 0.61 inch thick and weighs 3.4 pounds—lighter than half of the models found on our list (when we wrote this) of the best laptops. With a footprint of just 12.3 by 8.7 inches, it will fit comfortably into any laptop bag or backpack.But the MacBook Air isn’t named the “Air” for nothing. It’s thinner and lighter, at just 0.44 inch thick and 2.7 pounds, shaving several ounces off of the MacBook Pro’s carry weight. With the 13-incher measuring just 11.97 by 8.46 inches, it has a slightly more compact footprint.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Steve Jobs famously introduced the first MacBook Air by pulling it out of a manila envelope, highlighting how thin and light the first model was back in 2008. Today, the Air is even thinner and lighter, but enormously more capable, giving you unbeatable portability without sacrificing the performance you need for day-to-day productivity and even bursts of more intense work. Even on our list of the lightest laptops, it’s one of the lighter models. If you want unparalleled portability, the MacBook Air is the featherweight champ.Winner: Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch (2024, M3)Battery Life: Either Way, It’s All-DayJust as important to the modern user as portability is battery life. We don’t see much point in having a laptop that’s light enough to carry anywhere if you have to stay tethered to a wall outlet every time you want to use it.This is where the Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro ramp up a rivalry, because the MacBook Pro may have the added power draw of cooling fans, but it also has a larger chassis, and as a result, room for a physically larger battery. The MacBook Air has a 52.6-watt-hour (Whr) battery, rated for 18 hours of video playback or 15 hours of web browsing. The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, has a larger 70Whr battery pack inside, with an estimated 22 hours of movie playback, but the same 15 hours of web browsing.
These estimates also track pretty closely to our test results, where we saw the Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch last 21 hours in our video playback test, outperforming Apple’s rating, with the MacBook Pro 14-Inch notching 22 hours on that same test.Both MacBooks are capable of legitimate all-day battery life, with enough endurance to carry you through a full day of work or school, or a cross-country flight. Winner: TiePort Selection: The Pro Has the EdgeUsability in a laptop includes many factors and features, but one of the biggest in day-to-day convenience is port selection. The advent of Thunderbolt 4 and USB-C ports has made high-speed, high-power connectivity easier and more adaptable. You can use Thunderbolt for all sorts of things, from transferring data to external storage with minimal lag to connecting an external display while your laptop charges using the same cable. It’s a flexible and commendable connector, which is why so many thin-and-light laptops have seemingly abandoned other ports.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
But, as anyone who has tried to plug in a USB mouse or connect to more than two devices can tell you, being stuck with just two ports ain’t great!That’s one of the key differences between the MacBook Air, which has a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the 14-inch MacBook Pro, which has the same two Thunderbolt 4 ports but adds a full-size HDMI output and an SD card slot to the mix.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
That’s especially important news for anyone who shoots or edits video, since those added options let you grab data right from your camera’s memory card and then easily connect to an external monitor or TV with a standard HDMI cable—no adapter required.Sure, you can always pack along a docking station or an individual port adapter, but for sheer usability, the extra ports on the MacBook Pro make this an easy Pro win.Winner: Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2023, M3)Display: Mini LED and More FTWBoth the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air have sharp, vibrant screens. They display in better-than-full-HD resolution, they deliver excellent color, and they shine with decent brightness. Likewise, the macOS environment is optimized to look excellent on these displays whether you’re browsing the web, editing photos and video, or streaming the latest show from Apple TV. However, when we compare the displays of the two laptops, some key differences come clear.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
The MacBook Air has a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display panel, while the MacBook Pro uses a slightly larger 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR screen. Will that extra 0.6 inch of screen real estate make a lot of difference? Not much, but it’s far from the only distinction.When we talk about display quality, we’re talking about several things: resolution, color quality, and brightness, to name a few. The 13-inch MacBook Air serves up impressive specs on all three fronts, with a 2,560-by-1,664 native resolution (the “Liquid Retina” part), 500 nits of brightness, and support for a billion colors, according to Apple. In our testing, the reality isn’t quite as bright (363 nits), or as colorful (reproducing 95% of the DCI-P3 color space, instead of the 100% hyped in Apple’s product descriptions). But, all in all, a crisp and colorful display.
Apple even adds TruTone technology to “adjust the color and intensity of your display… to match the ambient light so that images appear more natural.” When it works, it’s seamless and keeps documents and graphics alike looking poppy, even as the light dims in the late afternoon.But the MacBook Pro’s Liquid Retina XDR screen has more than that going for it. For starters, it has a sharper 3,024-by-1,964 native resolution, with a slightly higher pixel density, so details look a bit sharper, and letters are just a bit more legible at smaller sizes. The system pumps out the same billion colors, but in our tests, its superior screen captures more of them, with 98% DCI-P3 reproduction, instead of 95% in the MacBook Air screen.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
While it doesn’t show up in our standard brightness tests, the MacBook Pro’s display does offer higher brightness in some circumstances, thanks to the Pro screen’s mini-LED backlighting. Using this tech, the Apple Liquid Retina XDR display shines brighter and adds high dynamic range (HDR) support on top of that, making for more vivid images and more realistic movies and games. (This is what Apple refers to as Extreme Dynamic Range, or XDR, which it claims is a step above HDR.)Panel speed is also a factor. Apple’s faster 120Hz ProMotion adaptive refresh rate is exclusive to the MacBook Pro line. ProMotion allows the display to scale the refresh rate (up to 120Hz) for smoother, more eye-friendly performance depending on whether you’re looking at a document, watching a movie, or playing a fast-paced game.The bottom line: The 14-inch MacBook Pro has a profoundly better display.Winner: Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2023, M3)External Monitor Support: They’re Equals, With the Same CaveatNow here’s a feature where the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro are exactly the same. Thanks to a recent software update, the MacBook Pro with M3 can support two external displays with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz—perfectly matching the demands of the Apple Studio Display.
(Credit: Brian Westover)
Both the Air and the Pro have this dual-display support, but only with the lid closed. Due to limitations in the processor, you can run two 5K external monitors with the lid closed, or a single Apple Studio Display with the laptop’s own display working and powered up.If you shelled out the thousands of dollars for the more intense Apple Pro Display XDR, both models will support that, too, with the ability to run, per Apple, “One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz.” (We didn’t have the opportunity to try it.) Naturally, the more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max MacBook Pro models don’t suffer these limitations.Winner: TiePrice: An Air Win, Between Base Models The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099 for the most basic model with the M3 chip. That means the eight-core CPU with an eight-core GPU, 8GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD. You can scale that up with two more GPU cores, extra memory (up to 24GB), and as much as 2TB of storage, with a top price of $2,299. Our review model was somewhere in the middle, with a 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SSD storage, selling for $1,499.The 14-inch MacBook Pro, on the other hand, starts at $1,599, a full $500 more than the base-model MacBook Air. The specs aren’t exactly the same, as the M3 base model of the Pro comes with the 10-core GPU and 512GB SSD that are step-up options for the Air, but otherwise, the two are similar: with 8GB of RAM and the same M3 CPU. Increases in memory and storage are also the same, with a max memory of 24GB and top storage of 2TB. All told you can spec up the M3 MacBook Pro to the tune of $2,599—$300 more than the peak version of the M3 Air with similar specs.However, the M3-based MacBook Pro scales higher, because you aren’t limited to the M3 chip alone. You can jump up to the M3 Pro (11- or- 12-core CPU, 14- or- 18-core GPU) or the more powerful M3 Max (14- or- 16-core CPU, 30- or- 40-core GPU) and then add even more memory and storage. You can ramp up the memory to 128GB, or the storage to 8TB with the right CPU choice, and the price can jump as high as $6,899, which gets you an extremely powerful workstation laptop.Let’s set aside those higher-priced options for this comparison, though, since nobody is weighing the MacBook Air against a MacBook Pro that’s thousands of dollars more expensive. In the case of the starter models, the difference is a few hundred dollars between the MacBook Air and a similarly equipped MacBook Pro.That being the case, the Air is cheaper, but with the caveat that you lose out on some of the high-end features and power discussed above. If you want an effective general-use laptop, that makes the Air a better deal, but it’s highly dependent on your individual needs.Winner: Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch (2024, M3)MacBook Air 13-Inch vs. MacBook Pro 14-Inch: So, Which MacBook Is the Better Pick for You?With so many similarities between the 13-inch MacBook Air and the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the question of which is better for you will largely be a question of whether you prioritize performance or portability.If it’s a question of power, along with port selection and display quality, then the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro with M3 chip is the smarter choice of the two, since it delivers better processing and graphics performance, plus more ports. The price is much higher, but the display is also bigger, brighter, faster, and sharper—so that extra few hundred dollars isn’t purely down to speed. This is why it’s found on so many of our “best laptop” lists.But that higher price can pinch when you’re on a budget, whether it’s for your bustling household or if you’re a broke college student who needs something for class. That’s a huge part of what makes the 13-inch version of the Apple MacBook Air so appealing. For a bit less than the MacBook Pro, you get the same M3 chip, with much the same general performance for daily tasks, all in a lightweight package that you can take with you as easily as you would a print magazine. If price and portability are your chief concerns, the 13-inch, M3-equipped MacBook Air is an award-winning favorite for a reason.Finally, consider one last difference between the Air and the Pro that might help you make your decision: While the 14-inch MacBook Pro is sold in just two colors (Space Grey and Silver), the 13-inch MacBook Air comes in four, adding Starlight Gold and Midnight Black to the available finishes. Do those color options change the performance or portability of their respective MacBooks? Not a bit. Of course, we won’t judge you for making a choice based on chassis color—assuming you’ve weighed everything else!
