Microsoft’s cringey ad boasts that Copilot+ PCs are 58% faster than the discontinued, year-old MacBook Air M3

Facepalm: It’s been nearly 20 years since Apple launched the Microsoft-mocking “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, and the two companies continue to take shots at each other in their respective ads. The latest from the Redmond giant claims that top Copilot+ PCs are more than 50% faster than a Mac – specifically, the now-discontinued MacBook Air M3 that launched in March 2024.

Microsoft’s 12-second ad, which doesn’t exactly scream high-end production values, was shown on the official Windows YouTube channel. The announcer excitedly boasts that “Top Copilot+ PCs are up to 58% faster than MacBook Air with M3.” Just to ensure the point is driven home, he adds, “That’s right, faster than a Mac.”

As most of the comments beneath the video point out, Microsoft seems to be taking an excessive amount of pride in the best Copilot+ PCs on the market being faster than an entry-level machine launched over a year ago.

The disclaimer in the ad notes that the figures are based on Cinebench 2024 multi-core CPU benchmarks. It directs viewers to a website stating that the 58%-faster claim comes from Microsoft-commissioned testing performed by Principled Technologies conducted in May 2024 and September 2024.

The tests compared the M3 MacBook Air to several Copilot+ machines, including the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Microsoft’s own Surface Laptop, both of which are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chip. They also used HP’s OmniBook Ultra 14 with AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375.

Apple released the more powerful successor to the M3 MacBook Air, the M4 model, in March this year. Apple also made the latest MacBook Airs $100 cheaper than their 13- and 15-inch M3 predecessors and made 16GB of unified memory the standard.

Part of Microsoft’s website states that in other Cinebench 2024 benchmarks carried out in April 2025, “several” Snapdragon X devices all scored higher than the 866 achieved by Apple’s M4 10-core CPU. If you’re wondering why Microsoft would choose to boast about the Copilot+ PCs being faster than an M3 MacBook Air and not an M4, it’s because the Windows devices were only slightly faster than the newer SoC, as you can see below.

Laptops carrying the Copilot+ branding still only make up a small fraction of overall laptop shipments, with most consumers not sharing Microsoft’s enthusiasm for these machines. It’s unlikely that marketing campaigns like this one, comparing the top-tier Copilot+ models to a discontinued base MacBook Air, are going to increase their popularity.