Comparing Mac mini M2 and MacBook Air M3 with Cinebench 2024
I bought a MacBook Air M3, so I decided to run benchmarks while I was at it. The comparison target is my Mac mini M2, which I bought at the beginning of the year.
While looking at benchmarks on various sites, I noticed that Cinebench 2024 and Cinebench R23 seem to output scores in different formats. So I was surprised to see scores that differed by about one digit even for similar machines.
First, the Mac mini M2. It has 16GB of memory. Here are the results. In all cases, the benchmark was run for 10 minutes with the default settings.
Somehow the GPU score feels a little low. Maybe that is just how it is. For the CPU, both the multi-core and single-core scores felt about as expected.
Next is the MacBook Air M3. I splurged on 24GB of memory, so that may have some effect.
The GPU score is quite high. Around the CPU, I do not feel much difference from the M2. That said, getting similar numbers from a desktop machine and an Air machine may itself be a sign of how impressive the M3 is. The scores themselves were almost the same as the benchmarks in the following CNET review.
In actual use, it feels responsive, and what surprises me most is the battery life. A Mac mini shuts down instantly if you unplug the power cable, so there is no comparison there. But my ThinkPad with roughly similar performance runs out of battery in about two to three hours, while the MacBook Air M3 still has about half its battery left even after several hours of work.
Also, it barely gets hot even when I work with it on my lap, which makes mobile work easier. Many recent PCs have fans on the bottom, and they can directly heat your thighs.
That said, it did get hot when running Cinebench 2024. As expected from Cinebench.