I never played games on my Mac until now - and the M3 MacBook Air is better than expected

Apple has been trying to convince customers that it's more serious about gaming, and while we've had some ambitious ports of titles like Resident Evil Village and the upcoming Assassin's Creed Shadows, you're still likely to want a games console or Windows PC to play the latest titles.

That's certainly been the case with me - I'm the editor-in-chief of a gaming site , and yet I'm highly unlikely to ever play games on the Mac I spend a fair amount of time working on.

That's recently changed, however. I wrote this month about how I've switched from a MacBook Pro to a MacBook Air , and while the change in weight means it's less of a commitment to carry in an already packed bag, I was lucky enough to grab a refurbished deal that gave me a larger SSD than my prior 512GB one.

With Apple's M3 chip offering improved graphics performance, I decided to put things to the test as I continued my playthrough of Final Fantasy XIV as I tried to catch up to the latest expansion.

Yes, the M3 can game

While the performance here naturally won't stack up a PC with a beefy GPU, or even the console versions of the game, Final Fantasy XIV's benchmarking tool awarded a 'Standard' score on the MacBook Air M3.

Given the fanless design, it did get a little warm as the benchmark wore on, but there's no issue with performance during gameplay - I've been questing, battling, and everything else just like I can on any other platform.

I'm really, genuinely impressed, and it runs great when hooked up to an external monitor, too.

I've also been digging into favorites like Stellaris and Football Manager 2024, and despite the drop from the 'Pro' chip to the base M3, I've not seen any slowdown.

In fact, with the slimmer form factor, I'm just as likely to grab my MacBook Air now as I am my Nintendo Switch or my Steam Deck when I want to play something - something which would've felt unlikely even a month ago.

So, if you're looking to play something on your Mac - give it a go. You might be surprised.

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