Have started looking at Macbook Air with all the recent deals. Seems to be the cheapest price at the moment.
Same price at Officeworks.
$10 cheaper than the AOC store which is currently at A$2,159.30.
Might be able to get it for cheaper with the recent gift card deals.
Free metro delivery with Officeworks.
At this price I'd rather buy MBP 14.
at $850 more?? Not even in the same price league.
It's most likely a used 14" MBP with M1 pro 8 core 16gb/512gb on FB MP for $1800 which is still a good deal considering you're getting a pro motion mini led screen, better speakers and more ports
I just won an ebay auction on a m3 16gb 512 MBP for $1992. Been shopping around for a Air or Pro for a few weeks and seems like I got a decent deal, 3k new
M1 Pro Refurb. almost at the same price.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any more refurbs of this model on their website. Only the new m3 "Pro" with 8gb of ram
Unless you’ve found stock cheaper, you would be wrong. Bargains are made for the lowest prices, not what you think it’s worth.
frodmann
member since 2017
0 deals posted
m3 apparently is on the hotter side, whilst Macbook Air come without a fan, one could get annoyed by this…… consider previous intel m3 macbook (the name is surprisingly similar) have suffered from passively cooled CPU getting desoldered after few years of usage due to the heat, I'd buy this with cautious. I like the Macbook Pro models but that price is even more ridiculous…
I have a MacBook Air M3 15" - thing is cool as can be. I run emulated games on it and it barely warms up.
Completely silent, it's amazing.
thanks for sharing, however I did saw multiple news/ user's share about it's being hot..
for example:
Post your average MacBook Air M3 temperatures
M3 MacBook Air Overheating - What was Apple Thinking?!
quote on this video:
I also expected the m3 air to get to thigh scalding temperatures on the bottom of the laptop, but it was actually pretty well distributed…after a few minutes in Cinebench the air wound down from 114c to around 100 and at its lowest it hit about 88. but the chassis never got too hot to handle
so what I got out of this video is that, it seems to be the heat is not "well distributed to chassis" but rather somewhat thermally isolated to the chassis, in order to not distribute to where people can touch or feel.
have you ever run any monitoring software to check? if so would you mind to post some picture to proof it?
not trying to argue but interested in the actual truth.
If the result turns out good I might actually buy an MBA instead of MBP.
Max tech is often clickbaity. The M3 runs very cool and people don’t run Cinebench on a MacBook Air 24/7. Apple knows how to make efficient chips better than Intel and they been doing it since the A5.
folks doing benchmarks are not exactly reliable witness for folks using a device for daily tasks
@0jay: I most definitely agree about the discrepancy about "benchmarks vs daily tasks". Hence I didn't even include those 117c while stress test click bait.
from some link I remember one was running 3DMark, so it kinda represents heavier gaming work load (light to medium CPU load + near full GPU load) And the TT video was about Cinebench (high CPU low GPU). BOTH was hot.
video jobs are harder than this (high CPU + medium high GPU),
coding jobs are lighter (low CPU/GPU while writing code, high CPU low GPU while compiling)
daily browsing….. is fine anyway.
but given it would run over 100c, with enough thermal cycle the solder joint would crack eventually.
(note thermal cycle = heat up + cool down, just heating up without cooling down doesn't count as a full thermal cycle and is actually less vulnerable to the issue than full thermal cycle)
This is not new, xbox have suffered from this, intel m3, and some lenovo laptop from 2021 have also suffered this before.
@OMGJL: I’m not suggesting benchmarks are useless, only that they stress the system in a way that’ll rarely represent anything like realworld conditions,
As for cracking solder, Apple use lead free solder which is stronger with a higher meltpoint temp than what is standard. Worry about such things is anxiety (pathology) as distinct from insight
@0jay: it's only pathology anxiety if one worry about one thing too much, non stop, or worry about something that's made up and non-existent.
solder crack happens a lot, on different products (example above), thermal cycle + poor cooling is common factor whilst this happens.
Apple have had this issue not too long ago. Yes Intel sucks now, but back in the days those intel m3 chips aren't power hungry, passively cool made it worse. Mind you those are lead free solder too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/macbookrepair/comments/ldbye3/12_in…
read more: Rambling about chip degradation - Buildzoid, Youtube
@OMGJL: My point is you can worry about it (and I would call a concern like this an anxiety), but asserting it's something for people to consider in they purchasing decisions is just wrong.
Thermal throttling is a thing (not to mention electronic engineering and quality control) and I'd expect Apple to be fairly conservative around such things.
If there's a product recall at some point or if a particular model's failing out of warranty en mass then ok but that's not happening.
@0jay: cool, you can only warn people so much.
I remember back in the day when I was still working in a computer store, I told a guy might want to spend $10 more for a better gtx1660 that actually have heat pipe than the base model with a small piece of aluminium heatsink.
he laughed at me and said basically what you said (manufacturers knows better than me, so it must not be an issue)
guess what happened to him afterwards?
@OMGJL: ok, you are second guessing apple's engineers who're among the best in the world.
that doesn't mean they can't screw up but stressing about a fanless design with arm processor by this company in particular is just wearing out your rosary for no good reason
the sky may be falling, monsieur little, but no point losing your appetite over it
@0jay: oh wow, it's apple, it must never fail, the design is always perfect. Don't worry my friend, apple will only make design mistake after sky fall down.
Which emulator do you recommend?
Have had my m3 air since launch. Can't fault it. Excellent machine with great performance for every day productivity use. If you're doing heavy video editing perhaps consider an m3 pro but they are much heavier and bulkier and I hate fans. Thermal throttling has not been an issue and I've appreciated the slim lightweight size, no fans, great screen and performance. Really, an excellent laptop for most people!
Hate fans, why? Because of the noise?
Fan noise is annoying
But also with the exception of MacBook pros,
Windows laptop OEM's seem not to optimise thermal efficiency well. All they do is take the easy path of more forced cooling and suboptimal heat dissipation. Doesn't help that Intel in particular has also taken a lazy approach to power per watt - results in laptops that have the fans spinning at full bore to run google chrome. It's an embarrassment and makes for uncomfortably hot usage experiences. I.e. fan noise is usually associated with hot running which is really uncomfortable in some laptop usage scenarios as well as bad for the laptops longevity.
On the m3, they've found the right balance between performance and heat dissipation, without even needing a fan. It's quite impressive. The closest equivalent in the windows world is the newly launched snapdragon elite ARM laptops - they have fans but very rarely need them and only for intense sustained workloads - how it should be, but there are other issues with windows on ARM for now…
That was brilliant and very reassuring actually
Just last week I bought an M3Air with 16Gb ram, I chose that over the 8Gb ram M3Pro even though they both cost almost the same.
And I was a little concerned about the longevity of Air as I would ‘assume’ that entering Year 3/Year 4 I might start heating up a bit and the fact that it doesn’t have a cooling fan in it, might make me rue my decision.
I watched a few Yt videos beforehanr which made me lean towards the 16Gb Air mostly due to its higher ram. Now I am not technically as bright as you are ofcos.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard my MacBook Pro spin up its fans. Whisper quiet, even when playing steam games via CrossOver.
$10 cheaper than AOC but Apple will deliver free?
wait till the m4 macbooks come out then these will drop even more becaue they can't get rid of the stock.
Why stop there? May as well wait until m5/m6 for further savings.
This model can play some Windows games pretty well. It's good at Switch emulation too.
Testing 27 Windows Games on M3 MacBook Air 16GB with CrossOver Gptk2 - YouTube
I hope apple restocks m1 pro MBP 14 soon. those were $2299 for 16/512 and have much better screen and speakers
nice, didn't know about that link, thanks
yup I have the same, only 16/1TB I got there for $2539. I even posted that deal, but it's been a while since I saw them in stock. will setup a notification on the link you shared
Keep an eye on JB's mac refurbs too. They call them refurbs, they're usually returns. Last month I bought a 14" M2 Pro 1TB 16GB 19 Core GPU for $2099. Perfect condition, 1 battery cycle. I bought some 10% off vouchers from OzB classifieds so total was $1890. $1880 with JB perks $10 off 😂
not bad price. what's the warranty like?
I saw M1/M2 models at heavily discounted prices (other deals posted on Ozbargain)