All posts

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 3 vs M1 MacBook Air - WOW

22:24 video

A full comparison of Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Go 3 and Apple’s M1 MacBook Air: CPU and graphics, keyboard, design, audio and more, so you can decide which makes more sense.

Why compare them

The M1 Air is nearly three years old and the Go 3 was just announced, but they have a lot in common: both come standard with 256 GB and 8 GB, and the storage speeds are pretty similar. The Go 3 starts at $799. Apple sells the M1 Air base at $999, but you shouldn’t pay that; you can usually find it for around $750 at places like Amazon.

Design

Both have black bezels, silver aluminum lids, and a keyboard and trackpad in a slightly different color. The Surface’s bottom is an aluminum polycarbonate resin, with a slight soft-touch feel and rubber rails for a desk, and I like having something that isn’t aluminum all the way around.

The Surface is a bit smaller: just under 2.5 lb versus 2.8 lb for the Air. Both are wedge-shaped, both open one-handed, which you don’t always get on Windows laptops. The Air is classic, and the Surface feels new and novel.

Ports: the Surface has USB-A, USB-C (not Thunderbolt at all) and a headphone jack on the left, and the Surface Connect on the right (about 60 W, plus DisplayPort and USB-C if you have a Microsoft dock). The Air has two Thunderbolt 3 / USB4 ports on the left and the headphone jack on the right.

Displays

  • MacBook Air: 13.3 inches, 16:10, up to 400 nits.
  • Surface: 12.4 inches, 3:2, up to 350 nits, and it’s a touchscreen.

I like both. The Surface’s bezels are more uniform with rounded inside edges; the Air is a bit top-heavy with its bigger top bezel. The touchscreen is the biggest difference, and I like it. I wish Apple would add one to Macs, since on a couch or lap it’s more comfortable to touch than to pull your hand back for the trackpad. It isn’t always great on the Surface, though: scrolling and flicking up isn’t as smooth as on an iPad or a two-finger scroll in Safari.

Neither has HDR. In most rooms both are bright enough, though outside, the Air is a bit brighter. The backlight and color uniformity on both are pretty good, much better than the Samsung 5K display I tried, which was blotchy and a mess. Apple says the Air supports P3 wide color; Microsoft says the Surface supports sRGB and is individually calibrated at the factory.

Sharpness: the Air has a clear advantage. The Surface has 148 ppi, and The Verge’s text is clearly sharper on the MacBook. On its own, the Surface looks good, but coming from the Air, I notice the less-sharp text.

The Surface’s auto-brightness kept adjusting up and down a bit even in constant light, which was annoying, and I’ll probably turn it off.

Camera and speakers

Both are 720p, with the Mac’s image processing a bit better in color, though pretty soft. (The speakers I compared side by side in the video; there’s nothing to note beyond that.)

Keyboard and trackpad

I love Apple’s Magic Keyboard, and it’s the same on all Apple devices. The Surface’s is pretty good: it feels slightly softer, almost dampened, or needing a bit more pressure, but not bad.

Both have half-height function rows. The Air has Touch ID; the Surface has Windows Hello with a fingerprint sensor that’s almost as fast and lights up when you wake it, which looks cool. The Air has a fully backlit keyboard; the Surface has none, which is disappointing.

The MacBook’s trackpad is better in my opinion: larger, with more room for three- and four-finger gestures, and it’s pressable anywhere, since it uses haptic feedback. The Surface’s is a diving board. I have usability issues with both: Apple’s sometimes pinch-zoom doesn’t work or goes the wrong direction in Final Cut Pro, and the Surface’s is both too sensitive and not sensitive enough, sometimes ignoring me, sometimes reacting to the slightest movement. Two-finger scrolling works fine on both, and it’s one of the better PC trackpads I’ve used.

Performance

The M1 Air has an 8-core M1 (four performance, four efficiency). The Go 3 has an i5-1235U, a 10-core chip with two performance and eight efficiency cores. One catch: Windows performance changes drastically between plugged in and on battery, with three modes (battery, performance, recommended), so benchmarking is annoying. The Air performs the same either way. I set the Surface to best performance and plugged it in:

Test Surface Go 3 M1 Air
Geekbench 6 single-core 2,148 2,389
Geekbench 6 multi-core 6,664 8,688
Cinebench multi-core 4,388 6,527
Puget photo editing 404 648
OpenCL graphics 11,812 18,286

The Air is about 11% faster single-core and 30% faster multi-core, about 60% faster in the Photoshop tests, and about 54% faster in OpenCL graphics.

Games

  • Minecraft: both smooth, with the Air up to about 80 fps and the Surface about 60 fps.
  • Roblox: both fine.
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider (not native to Apple silicon, translated on the fly): Surface 12 fps, Air 43 fps. A wild difference, and I don’t know why it’s so big versus Minecraft. I’m not a huge gamer, so tell me what it means.
  • Xbox Cloud Gaming (Starfield): much smoother on the Surface (using Edge) than the Mac, which had a lot of frame drops in both Safari and Brave.

Overall, neither is built for gaming, but Xbox Cloud Gaming is pretty good, especially on the Surface.

Everyday feel

The Mac just feels smoother overall: apps load faster, scrolling is smoother, and there’s less hesitation when I do multiple things. The Surface sometimes hesitates; closing a window might take seconds after I click.

Battery and heat

Apple says up to 15 hours of web browsing for the Air; Microsoft says up to 15 hours of typical use for the Go 3. After a full hour of the same tabs, video and benchmarks, the Surface was at 69% and the Air at 89%. About two hours later: Air 82%, Surface 49%. (The Surface was in high performance mode, which is probably why, though that’s what it needs to get close to the Air’s performance.) The Surface does charge fast, up to 80% in an hour via its dock connector or USB-C, at up to 60 W versus 45 W on the Air.

Heat and fan: the Air has no fan and is silent 100% of the time. The Surface’s fan is on almost all the time, even with little use, which is the biggest annoyance for me, since I’m used to Apple’s silent laptops. During Cinebench, the Surface hit 43°C on the keyboard and about 50°C on the bottom; the Air hit 41°C and 40°C.

Verdict

First, which operating system? If you require Windows apps, that probably decides it. This is a pretty nice little laptop; I don’t know whether it’s the best or fastest at the price, but I enjoy its package, design and features. For gaming, neither is built for it.

For today, I prefer the MacBook Air: macOS, a bit faster, much better battery, and cheaper at about $750 versus $799. But I like the Surface Laptop Go’s design, weight and size, and I’m keeping it. (I’m a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and use a Windows PC every day, so I’m not completely biased toward Apple.)

In this video

  • 0:00 specs and pricing
  • 1:08 design and ports
  • 2:43 displays size
  • 3:38 touch screen and brightness
  • 4:59 backlight bleed and colors
  • 5:44 pixel density
  • 6:24 backlight
  • 6:57 speakers
  • 7:57 cameras and mics
  • 8:30 keyboard and trackpad
  • 11:25 cpu performance
  • 14:04 gpu performance
  • 14:29 gaming tests
  • 17:02 general performance
  • 14:44 battery and charging
  • 19:13 heat and fan
  • 20:13 which to get?

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

Watch on YouTube

Keep reading

Related posts