Tested in benchmarks, the new MacBook Air maintains a decent bump up over the M1 MacBook Air. In Geekbench 5, it scores 11% higher in single-core performance and 18% higher in multi-core.
Weight isn't typically a big issue for me when dealing with 13" notebooks, but I would generally say the lighter, the better. The Surface Laptop 3 weighs 2.84 pounds, and the MacBook Air M1 weighs Amazon.com: 2020 Apple MacBook Air Laptop: Apple M1 Chip, 13” Retina Display, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD Storage, Backlit Keyboard, FaceTime HD Camera, Touch ID. Works with iPhone/iPad; Silver with AppleCare+ (3 Years)Apple M1 MacBook Air & 13" MacBook Pro Review - CPU Revolution! Source: Pocketnow Archive.org version Lisa Gade reviews both the late 2020 MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro with the new M1 Apple0lcI.