Apple released two laptops this year, the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air, and while they seemingly dominated the market, they surprisingly find themselves a fierce competitor when Microsoft released their budget-friendly Surface 3. Here is how the tablet/laptop hybrid compares to the 11-inch MacBook air.

Design

The MacBook Air is a fully fledged laptop so it does not need to have a kickstand, like the one present on the Surface 3, which can be adjusted to three different positions. When it comes to dimensions, the length and breadth of the MacBook is bigger. It weighs 1080 grams while the Surface 3 only weighs 887 grams even with its Type Cover keyboard attached. As for their build, the MacBook has an aluminum body while the Surface 3 sports a body crafted from magnesium. Both devices come in only one color, which is silver. A major difference between the two is that the Surface 3 has a dedicated pen, as it can be used as tablet as well.

Display

The display of the Surface 3 measures 10.8 inches and it has a resolution of 1920 x 1280 pixels with a density of 214 pixels per inch while the MacBook Air has an 11.6 inch screen with a resolution of 1366x768 pixels and a density of 135 pixels per inch. An advantage of the Surface 3 over the MacBook air is that it has a touch screen.

Specs

The Surface 3 comes with an Intel Atom x7-Z8700 processor with four cores clocked at 1.6GHz but it also has Intel Burst which can bring it up to 2.4GHz. As for the MacBook Air, it has a much more powerful Intel Core i5 processor with two cores clocked at 1.6GHz. It also comes with Turbo Boost which can bring it up to 2.7 GHz.

Memory

In terms of RAM, the 64GB Surface 3 comes with 2 GB while its 128GB version has 4 GB. As for the MacBook Air, its base model has 4 GB RAM while its higher end version has 8 GB. The Surface 3 also comes with a microSD slot for additional storage, which is not present on the MacBook Air.

Price

With its Type Cover and Pen included, the 64 GB Surface 3 costs $680 while the 128 GB MacBook Air costs $900.