Initially unveiled just a few weeks ago, it appears all variants of the M3-powered MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac will be available for purchase in Malaysia very soon. Thanks to the new M3 chip, these new Mac products promise even faster performance than their respective predecessors.
As usual, we were going through SIRIM’s database when we spotted four new Mac-related entries. Two distinct MacBook Pro variants were recently certified with the model numbers A2992 and A2991, which are designations used for the M3 Pro and M3 Max versions of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops respectively.
Of course, two different iMac models carrying the model numbers A2874 and A2873 have been registered with SIRIM too; these are the 8-core GPU and 10-core GPU models respectively.
Naturally, the biggest change to the refreshed MacBook Pro laptops (aside from the new Space Black colour) are the M3 chips. Built on a power-efficient 3nm process, the new chips bring even faster performance; Apple says that the M3 Max model is up to 11x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro model. This performance upgrade doesn’t impact battery life either, as Apple is still quoting the same (and very long) 22-hour battery life. The unified memory support has also been improved: the maximum capacity is now set at 128GB compared to 96GB.
Beyond the new M3 chips, other hardware of the updated MacBook Pros remain (almost) the same. While they still feature a bright and vibrant Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion support, offering 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, SDR content are now brighter by 20% on these new laptops – the max brightness is set at 600 nits instead of 500 nits.
As for the M3 iMac, the new chip brings some notable performance gains. Compared to the M1 iMac, the M3 iMac is said to be up to twice as fast. When you’re gaming – which is an increasingly feasible option on Macs – you can expect to see a 50% improvement in frame rate too.
Now that the M3-powered MacBook Pro and 24-inch iMac have been certified by SIRIM, we reckon they will be available for purchase in Malaysia very, very soon. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye on the local availability of these products.