Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

I think I have to return my MBA M3

beanbaguk

beanbaguk

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 19, 2014
1,412
2,441
Europe
Just a month ago, I bought a brand-new MBA M3 and it's continually overheating to the point where it throttles to a pedestrian rate. It's near impossible to use.

I use Figma, a lot of Google Meet conversations and it regularly slows to a crawl whereby it's almost impossible to use the laptop. You literally have to try and close the tabs on the browser with a jerky cursor and pray it recovers.

The temperatures reach highs of over 100C and now that its summer (my room is about 30C), it's near impossible to use.

My previous laptop was a MBP M1 and I never had such issues with it. Even my MBA M1 was absolutely fine and never really had this lag, but this M3 is absurd and just terrible. It's my worst MacBook ever.

Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
 
  • Wow
  • Like
Reactions: N69AP and Torty
Have you looked at your CPU usage with Activity Monitor? If you're seeing heavy sustained loads you'll need active cooling.

"how can Apple allow this to happen"

They assume you have some idea what you're doing. If not, just throw your money at them and buy a high end Pro.
 
beanbaguk said:
Just a month ago, I bought a brand-new MBA M3 and it's continually overheating to the point where it throttles to a pedestrian rate. It's near impossible to use.

I use Figma, a lot of Google Meet conversations and it regularly slows to a crawl whereby it's almost impossible to use the laptop. You literally have to try and close the tabs on the browser with a jerky cursor and pray it recovers.

The temperatures reach highs of over 100C and now that its summer (my room is about 30C), it's near impossible to use.

My previous laptop was a MBP M1 and I never had such issues with it. Even my MBA M1 was absolutely fine and never really had this lag, but this M3 is absurd and just terrible. It's my worst MacBook ever.

Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
Click to expand...
It's far and away more powerful than your M1 MBA, clearly something is wrong.

Have you looked at Activity Monitor while you're running your normal stuff?

It sounds like something you're using has a memory leak or is causing a runaway process....
 
  • Like
Reactions: subjonas, SiegeDamage, TiggrToo and 2 others
Do you have iStat Menus?

If not, I would suggest installing it so you can graph your CPU/GPU usage and various temperatures over time.

This may give you a better understanding of what is going on.

apps.apple.com

‎iStat Menus

‎The most powerful system monitoring app for macOS, right in your menubar. iStat Menus covers a huge range of stats, including a CPU monitor, GPU, memory, network usage, disk usage, disk activity, date & time, battery and more. All in a highly optimised, low resource package. iStat Menus is...
apps.apple.com
 
  • Like
Reactions: KevinC, SiegeDamage and roadkill401
It's rare, but it is possible you have a faulty machine. The Air is passively cooled, but the heatsink might still not be attached properly and leading to excessive throttling.

It could also be some rogue piece of software (even part of MacOS).

I second the idea of getting iStat Menus to take a bit of a closer look as to what is happening.

Assuming you can't sort it out then I think you will find a 14 inch MacBook Pro an excellent replacement.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cape Dave, Isamilis and Arctic Moose
beanbaguk said:
Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
Click to expand...

Either something is wrong with your MacBook Air or the software you're using is highly unoptimized.

On my M2 air I ran programs like Houdini, Final Cut, Logic, Blender, Unity, etc with ease. No throttling, no overheating.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Macbookey, bhodinut and Saturn007
playtech1 said:
It's rare, but it is possible you have a faulty machine. The Air is passively cooled, but the heatsink might still not be attached properly and leading to excessive throttling.

It could also be some rogue piece of software (even part of MacOS).

I second the idea of getting iStat Menus to take a bit of a closer look as to what is happening.

Assuming you can't sort it out then I think you will find a 14 inch MacBook Pro an excellent replacement.
Click to expand...
Second this. Have you try update macOS version to the latest and install everything from fresh (instead of restoring user profile and data)? Also check frequently use apps, do they have update recently (which probably fix their app on new M3).
 
beanbaguk said:
Just a month ago, I bought a brand-new MBA M3 and it's continually overheating to the point where it throttles to a pedestrian rate. It's near impossible to use.

I use Figma, a lot of Google Meet conversations and it regularly slows to a crawl whereby it's almost impossible to use the laptop. You literally have to try and close the tabs on the browser with a jerky cursor and pray it recovers.

The temperatures reach highs of over 100C and now that its summer (my room is about 30C), it's near impossible to use.

My previous laptop was a MBP M1 and I never had such issues with it. Even my MBA M1 was absolutely fine and never really had this lag, but this M3 is absurd and just terrible. It's my worst MacBook ever.

Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
Click to expand...
How much RAM did your M3 MBA have? If your answer is 8GB then that's potentially your issue.

However, my M1 MBA only has 8GB and handles everything I throw at it with ease, so as others have said, check Activity Monitor to see what was chewing up your CPU/RAM.
 
yeah sounds like a runaway process, watch activity monitor. I have a m2 MBA 16gb that I can do tons of work on without slowdown, but sometimes the place I put it to plug into monitor, it slips into the couch and gets very hot and very slow. So see if maybe you're blocking the heat dissipation.
 
I am late to the convo here. Is the majority of your challenge occur when using Safari? If so, have you opted to try another browser? I find odd things have happened with Safari compared to a couple of other browsers that I use.
 
  • Love
Reactions: Cape Dave
Return it then and buy a Mac with active cooler. Problem solved. Air is popular for a reason. In this case it doesn't suit your needs.

beanbaguk said:
Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
Click to expand...
No, I wish my M3 Air wasn't so cold all the time. The entire body is freezing but it eventually warms up and even then it's not super warm and no where near hot. But of course we all have different usage of our devices. I have light usage and it's more than enough for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cape Dave
beanbaguk said:
Just a month ago, I bought a brand-new MBA M3 and it's continually overheating to the point where it throttles to a pedestrian rate. It's near impossible to use.

I use Figma, a lot of Google Meet conversations and it regularly slows to a crawl whereby it's almost impossible to use the laptop. You literally have to try and close the tabs on the browser with a jerky cursor and pray it recovers.

The temperatures reach highs of over 100C and now that its summer (my room is about 30C), it's near impossible to use.

My previous laptop was a MBP M1 and I never had such issues with it. Even my MBA M1 was absolutely fine and never really had this lag, but this M3 is absurd and just terrible. It's my worst MacBook ever.

Does anyone else have the same issues, and how can Apple allow this to happen? To suggest it's only for "light consumer use" is total B$!
Click to expand...

Definitely sounds like a software /background process problem.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cape Dave
Figma is a hog on many machines not just Airs. I got a M3 Max and it’s fine but on my M3 Pro MBP it makes it work. Horrible app wrapped in that crap Electron.

Install Stats - its better then iStat Menus and free/opensource > https://github.com/exelban/stats

Google Meet is insanely inefficient. Just horrible.
 
Did you try to get a laptop cooling pad and use that during heavy loads? You may not need it very often, but the extra fans can be key to helping keep your system running stable during intense operations
 
  • Like
Reactions: surf4peace and Isamilis
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back