Yes, you're probably the only one.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Can we talk about the fanlessness
- Thread starter DanneP
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I can't help but add more analogies. Your motorbike is capable of a sustained 200mph for two hours but speed limits limit you to 70mph... should special roads be built just for you to do the maximum capability of your bike ? Or do you simply accept the limitation. I know the answer to this already, you accept the limitation because you have to. The limitation also means that more people get to their destination without dying or getting badly injured, so there's an advantage to this limitation. The MBA doesn't have a fan and this is a limitation but this limitation has some advantages:
- Smaller overall package
- Lighter machine
- completely noiseless
- No moving parts, less potential for failure.
- No fan sucking power, more battery life.
- No fan taking up space, more space for batteries and other components.
- Will possibly throttle under high workloads
- Tasks may take longer than a more powerful machine with a fan
- May warm up your lap more than another machine.
Last edited:
I hate that they removed the SD card slot. And stopped making an 11” version.
The M3 MacBook Air is about as fast as an M1 Pro on the CPU side of things. Even with throttling it's still a very fast machine. No fan is absolutely the reason why I got it. Ever since I went to fanless laptops I wouldn't want to go back!
It’s true that most people who had Intel MBAirs likely did not push them hard enough to engage the fans, however as someone who regularly heard them spool up they are not missed…
The 12” MacBook was magnificent… from a space conserving usable computer perspective (yes, keyboard issues, yes total weaksauce APU). If they made an ASi version it would probably replace my iPad.
I think that is a pretty cynical perspective on a positive feature of one of the world’s best selling laptops. I think the MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan because it does not need a fan for the purpose it was designed for: a highly portable, thin, light and comfortable low-cost laptop with long battery life for basic personal computer use cases. It does all of this very well without a fan and adding a fan would diminish overall performance relative to the design intent.
If you really believe that passive cooling is bad, do you also believe that Apple should put fans into the iPad, the Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePods and AppleTV?
Serious question.
Last edited:
Kind of seems like it, lol.
Not until we're sure that Huawei execs are willing to look at them.
So .. Apple should ditch their product design and engineering vision and follow Huawei’s and random MR armchair designer’s visions for how they should build Apple products? Why stop at Apple, perhaps Audi should ditch their “Never Follow” design ethos and instead copy BYD and defer to the ideas of random people on the internet who likely don’t buy their products? No thanks. Most of us buy Apple products because we respect and appreciate their design vision, leadership, hubris in doing things “The Apple Way” and disdain for simply copying others.
As in it’s cooled by air as opposed to a fan?
There are plenty of air cooled motorcycles, like my CT125, also most Harleys. Yes the performance is lower but it saves on weight, cost and complexity, which is exactly what I wanted
Same with the Air. If you’re trying to make the lightest, cheapest, smallest computer you can, why add a fan if 95% of the target audience doesn’t need or want one?
I don't know about external fan tray, but Linus Tech Tips ran a benchmark between the M2 Air and M2 MBP—so the same chip—and the MBP with a fan was only 6% faster in Cinebench (8191 vs 8690).
Obviously thermal throttling can get even worse if you're simultaneously running the CPU and GPU but for the most part its a waste of emotional energy even caring—since if sustained performance matters at all— you'd want to compress processing time by throwing a bunch more CPU/GPU cores at the problem.
Exactly. It's all about customer segmentation. You look at the entire market of Mac customers, you then segment (or group them) according to the various needs, and then you design computer systems that are optimized for that segment.
Each Apple product is targeting a different customer type.
The problem is many of us are solipsistic—we judge products according to our needs without considering the target customer—and so we falsely conclude that the product is objectively flawed.
Last edited:
OP, you're probably right
I'll bet the average Air buyer couldn't care either way -- nor likely even be able to tell or know if they had a fan.
I'll bet the average Air buyer couldn't care either way -- nor likely even be able to tell or know if they had a fan.
Fans (active cooling) are designed to cool an SoC over sustained workloads.
The MacBook Air is not aimed at users who are working with sustained, power hungry workloads. It can do short sprints, but not marathons at a high pace.
The MacBook Air is not aimed at users who are working with sustained, power hungry workloads. It can do short sprints, but not marathons at a high pace.
Last edited:
I think you're completely wrong.
I had an M2 Air and it handled far more workload than people realize and never overheated. I ran Houdini simulations, edited 4k video in Final Cut, I made graphics in Motion, music in Logic, created games in Godot and Unity, did plenty of Xcode work, and more. The fans just aren't necessary for the work most do on the air but they do add to thickness of the unit and also drain battery life.
It's funny - and not entirely the amusing kind - how there are those who refute the actual lived experiences of others in order to make their usually misguided or poorly informed statements of 'fact' and belief.
As I have posted before, and elsewhere, my M1 and M3 MBA systems have been used extensively in things like Final Cut and with multiple apps (though I don't usually have more than a handful of browser tabs open, because I don't need more), and even when in the process of rendering video and working with large image files, I don't get any performance issues at all.
Moreover, I can do this kind of thing in the library if I need some peace and quiet to concentrate, without fear of being asked to leave by staff when the small footprint/high pitch fans spin up and disturb everyone else.
The case does warm up sometimes, but that rather proves that passive cooling is actually working as it should, because it's supposed to do that.
Instant buy for me. I could even live with one USB-C port plus MagSafe, so long as it has a decent keyboard this time around.
My 2020 i5 Air spun its fans up all the time, even when I wasn't doing anything horribly taxing. I had to struggle to get it to draw less than 10 watts, and battery life suffered accordingly. My M1 Air draws under 5 watts almost always, and often as low as 2 or 3 watts.
I think a big problem is people tech YouTubers who don't understand tech as well as they pretend to that just run useless benchmarks and then base their opinions off of it and people suck it up like it's fact. When the M2 came out the only two people I watched that accurately reflected my experiences were Lisa from MobileTechReview and iJustine (who simply showed some real world usage of her rendering Final Cut video, nothing as in depth as Lisa).
I used the absolute heck of my M2 air.
I’ve always loved fanless machines, that’s why I liked the 2015 12” MacBook.
From someone that grew up with old and noisy PC towers (a Pentium II @333HZ and then a Pentium IV @3GHz), when I jumped to my first Mac, a 13” 2010 MBP, I was amazed by how silent it was! Even tho it had a fan.
But then, jumping to really fanless devices such as my iPad Pro, was even more amazing. Not only for the lack of noise (because my 13” 2010 MBP was pretty silent, and my Mac mini also has a fan, and I don’t hear it). But because how compact the device itself is, the sense that a compact, light block of aluminum has so much power, is almost magical. And when you try a fanless MacBook Air, the sensation you get from it reminds you to the iPad.
I’m not gonna list the benefits that not having a fan offers, because my pals already did it. But I’m gonna say that for me it’s worth the tradeoff of suffering thermal throttling when the task is too taxing for the chip.
However, there’s always room for improvement, and I would improve the heat dissipation system. I have the feeling that the M1 MacBook Air had a better passive cooling than the M2/M3. I would put a more effective heatsink on top of the SoC, and some heat pipes to move that heat towards the hinge, away from the batteries.
But I’d keep it fanless.
From someone that grew up with old and noisy PC towers (a Pentium II @333HZ and then a Pentium IV @3GHz), when I jumped to my first Mac, a 13” 2010 MBP, I was amazed by how silent it was! Even tho it had a fan.
But then, jumping to really fanless devices such as my iPad Pro, was even more amazing. Not only for the lack of noise (because my 13” 2010 MBP was pretty silent, and my Mac mini also has a fan, and I don’t hear it). But because how compact the device itself is, the sense that a compact, light block of aluminum has so much power, is almost magical. And when you try a fanless MacBook Air, the sensation you get from it reminds you to the iPad.
I’m not gonna list the benefits that not having a fan offers, because my pals already did it. But I’m gonna say that for me it’s worth the tradeoff of suffering thermal throttling when the task is too taxing for the chip.
However, there’s always room for improvement, and I would improve the heat dissipation system. I have the feeling that the M1 MacBook Air had a better passive cooling than the M2/M3. I would put a more effective heatsink on top of the SoC, and some heat pipes to move that heat towards the hinge, away from the batteries.
But I’d keep it fanless.