When shoppers pick between the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs these days, they're looking not only at the sleek portability but also at the improved performance of the M3 chip and the ability to connect up to two external displays.

However, YouTuber Max Tech has discovered in his testing that the M3 MacBook Air's performance can drop by nearly half when the lid is closed.

Max Tech ran the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test on the M3 MacBook Air. During the first run, the MacBook Air scored an impressive 8,083. However, during a subsequent 20-minute stress test, performance suffered due to the lack of a fan, with scores dropping down to 5,916. When Max Tech closed the lid on the MacBook Air and ran the stress test for another 20 minutes, scores plunged to just 4,198 — indicating a potential performance penalty of nearly half for users who keep the lid closed and hook up two displays.

For this issue, Max Tech experimented with a solution involving a cooling stand.

He stress tested the MacBook Air while placed vertically on a SVALT Cooling Dock, which improved the score back up to 7309.

Building on this, he added thermal pads between the MacBook Air's cooling solution and the chassis, and when paired with the SVALT Cooling Dock, he obtained an even more impressive score of 8,062.

For those who are on-the-go users who frequently need to use their MacBook Air closed but don’t want to sacrifice performance, getting a cooling stand can be a worthwhile solution.