Tim Hardwick for MacRumors: Microsoft Says New Surface Pro Is Faster Than 15" M3 MacBook Air

Microsoft is already pitting the Surface Pro against Apple's M3 MacBook Air, and in marketing materials, claims that the Surface Pro has superior processing power and battery life. Compared to the 15-inch ‌MacBook Air‌ with 8-core CPU and 10-core GPU, the Surface Pro and other Copilot+ PCs with 12-core and 10-core processors offer 58 percent better sustained multithreaded performance (based on Cinebench benchmarks).

Even though I’m an Apple fan who has enjoyed the performance and efficiency edge (massive edge) Apple computers have had for the last few years, it was inevitable that someone caught up. Apple silicon sometimes feels like magic, but as I’ve had to remind people numerous times, it’s not actually magic, it’s damn good engineering. If others have cracked the code and replicated and even surpassed Apple, then to be honest it was really just a matter of time.

Of course we’ll have to see how this plays out in the field. Will x86 emulation actually be as seamless as it is for Macs? Will the benchmarks translate to performance that feels as snappy as Apple silicon Macs? Maybe, but we’ll have to get these in our hands to know for sure.

Out of curiosity, I specced out similarly specced laptops from Apple, Microsoft, and Dell to see what you pay for this speed. All devices have a 13” display, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and the best processor possible.

• MacBook Air: $1,499
• Surface Laptop: $1,399
• Dell XPS: $1,299

Definitely all in the same ballpark, at least.