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Surface Laptop 7
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 features an all-new design, complete with thinner bezels and a new haptic touchpad. Plus, this laptop also sports Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus chips, as opposed to the more familiar Intel offering you’d expect out of a traditional Surface laptop.
Pros
- Snapdragon chips
- Copilot+
- Affordable starting price
Cons
- Limited display options
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Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024)
$999 $1099 Save $100
Apple’s M3 MacBook Air packs in an extraordinarily powerful chip, a slim, lightweight design, and the great battery life that this series of laptops is well known for. If you’re looking for a portable Mac that doesn’t make power compromises, there’s nothing better than an M3 MacBook Air.
Pros
- Impressive battery life
- Light and thin design
- M3 chip
Cons
- Quickly gets expensive
When searching for a new laptop, your eye might be drawn to the top Macs or the best Surfaces, considering how popular these brands are in the laptop space. However, if you don’t have strong feelings about OS, then the choice can be tricky, especially between the new Surface Laptop 7 and Apple’s latest M3 MacBook Air. Which device may be right for you?
Luckily, we’re here to help with the ultimate Surface Laptop 7 vs M3 MacBook Air comparison.
Price, availability, and specs
Microsoft vs Apple: the fight continues
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 is available for pre-order right now and starts shipping in June. Pricing begins at $1000, scaling up depending on your model of choice. You also get a handful of different colorways to choose from, including Platinum, Sapphire, Graphite, and Dune.
Apple’s MacBook Air is available at your favorite retailer already. Pricing kicks off at $999, scaling up depending on your model of choice. You can choose between Silver, Starlight, Space Gray, and Midnight colorways. Expect to pay a premium for a fully-kitted Air.
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Surface Laptop 7 Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024) CPU Up to Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite 8-core CPU (Apple M3) GPU Qualcomm Adreno 8-core or 10-core GPU (Apple M3) Display type IPS, 60Hz, touch Liquid Retina (IPS), 60Hz Display (Size, Resolution) 13.8-inch, 2304×1536 or 15-inch, 2496×1664 13.6 or 15.3-inch, 2560×1664 RAM Up to 64GB LPDDR5x 8GB, 16GB, or 24GB Storage Up to 1TB 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB Battery Up to 22 hours of video playback Up to 18 hours Ports 2x USB4, 1x USB Type-A, 1x Surface Connect MagSafe 3 charging port, 3.5 mm headphone jack, 2x Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports Operating System Windows 11 macOS Sonoma Webcam 1080p + IR 1080p FaceTime HD camera Dimensions 13-inch: 301x220x17.5mm; 15-inch: 329x239x18.29mm 11.97 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches (13-inch model) / 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches (15-inch model) Weight 13-inch: 2.96 pounds; 15-inch: 3.67 pounds 2.7 pounds (13-inch), 3.3 pounds (15-inch) Speakers Omnisonic speakers Six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers Colors Platinum, Graphite, Sapphire, Dune Silver, Starlight, Space Gray, and Midnight Price From $1,000 Starting at $1,099
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Design and display
Sleek, minimalist machines
When it comes to esthetics, these machines are largely a match. Both are slim, sleek laptops that brim with a premium feel, from every soft corner to every trim bezel. They may not be the most ostentatious, but these are certainly some well-built, attractive computers.
The MacBook and the Surface each have 13-inch and 15-inch models, so their size is comparable, but there is some difference in weight. For both size models, the MacBook comes in at the lighter end, saving you around a third of a pound either way. However, both are still definitely portable.
Regarding display, you’re looking at 60Hz IPS displays on both, and resolutions are again quite comparable, though the MacBook does have a slightly higher pixel density across both models. Unfortunately, there are no OLED or Mini-LED options, nor 120Hz refresh rate support on either.
Both of these laptops feature 1080p webcams. Nothing too special, but more than enough to handle the occasional Zoom meeting or video call. In the area of design and display, these computers are similar, but thanks to a lighter construction and slightly more pixel-dense display, the MacBook edges out the Surface just ever so slightly.
Winner: MacBook Air
Hardware and performance
M3 vs Snapdragon X Elite
There are some key differences in these laptops when it comes to the hardware powering them.
With the MacBook, you’re getting Apple’s impressive M3 chip. Put simply, this is an astonishingly powerful CPU/GPU combination for a laptop, and it’s good enough for video editing and gaming as well as multitasking and running all your favorite apps. However, the Surface Laptop 7 includes Snapdragon X chips, which is an unusual move for Microsoft, but it’s also no less powerful a choice.
Qualcomm, in fact, claims that the Snapdragon X Plus has better multithreaded performance than even the M3. We’ll have to test it out ourselves for a full picture of its power, but suffice it to say these Snapdragon chips are meant to directly compete with a powerhouse like the M3. But that’s not all you’re getting: you also get a powerful NPU that enables Copilot+ support.
Copilot+ is a series of AI-powered features on Windows 11 that run locally on your machine, like Recall, Automatic Super Resolution, and Live Captions. The Surface is leveraging the processing might of its NPU to bring a bunch of AI features to the table, whether that means webcam effects, generating AI imagery, or anything else. Of course, Apple’s Neural Engine enables similar functionality on the MacBook, too, like camera tech, text-to-speech, and more.
Other hardware differences include up to 64GB of RAM on the Surface, whereas the MacBook has up to 24GB of unified memory. On the storage front, a MacBook can pack in up to 2TB of internal space, while the Surface caps out at 1TB. Since we haven’t had a chance to review the Surface just yet, we don’t have a full sense of its capabilities, but it’s shaping up very well.
If the Surface can, indeed, match or even outperform an M3 with its Snapdragon chips, then in addition to supporting significantly more RAM, we would have to call it the overall hardware winner in our eyes. You’ll definitely have to stay tuned for the final word here though to find out. In the here and now, the MacBook Air is a top-tier performer, making it our current winner.
Winner: MacBook Air
Battery life
No bad performers here
Both of these computers are set to impress when it comes to battery life.
In our MacBook Air review, we called its battery life “extremely good” and had no trouble getting ours to last all day. We could even get 3.5 hours of video editing done entirely on battery power, which we found to be quite impressive. However, the Snapdragon X chips are also aimed at power efficiency, much like you see from Snapdragon chips you find in mobile phones, and the Surface is rated for up to 22 hours of video playback on a single charge.
We haven’t tested the Surface just yet, but we’d expect it to easily manage all-day battery life much like the MacBook, so you won’t need to worry much about either of them dying on you.
Winner: Tie
Overall winner: MacBook Air
An incredibly close call
These laptops excel at just about the same things, so it’s difficult to say which is better, especially since we haven’t gone hands-on with the Surface 7 yet. That said, with a lighter construction, tried-and-true top-notch performance, and excellent battery life, the MacBook Air is our overall top pick.
However, if you want a Windows machine, the Surface looks to be a truly awesome choice. Depending on how the performance of its Snapdragon X chips shakes out, you may well be better off with a Surface, depending on what applications you use, and we do appreciate its support for more RAM.
Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024)
Winner
$999 $1099 Save $100
Apple’s M3 MacBook Air packs in an extraordinarily powerful chip, a slim, lightweight design, and the great battery life that this series of laptops is well known for. If you’re looking for a portable Mac that doesn’t make power compromises, there’s nothing better than an M3 MacBook Air.
Surface Laptop 7
Runner-up
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 features an all-new design, complete with thinner bezels and a new haptic touchpad. Plus, this laptop also sports Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus chips, as opposed to the more familiar Intel offering you’d expect out of a traditional Surface laptop.