Apple 13-inch MacBook Air (M4) review

Note: This review was first published on 11 March 2025.

It was inevitable. We knew Apple was going to update the MacBook Air at some point with its new M4 chip, and that time is now. Unsurprisingly, the new MacBook Air is a spec-bump update. It gets the new M4 chip, as well as a couple of other features and a brand new colourway called Sky Blue. But perhaps what’s most intriguing is that Apple has lowered its prices. Surely this makes it the best MacBook for most people.

The TL;DR version:

It’s faster and cheaper, so what’s not to like about the new MacBook Air? If you are in the market for a new Mac, take a good long hard look at this first. It’s superb.

Note: You can find the MacBook Air on Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.

What’s new?

The big news here is the M4 chip. The M4, if you remember, made its debut in the iPad Pro. This chip is built using a second-generation 3nm process and in the MacBook Air features 10 CPU cores and up to 10 GPU cores. Happily, 16GB of memory now comes as standard, which addresses a longtime issue we’ve had with the base MacBook Air. Users who need more can spec their systems with 24GB or up to 32GB of memory. Storage options remain the same with the maximum still being 2TB.

There’s no question this new MacBook Air is more performant. Thanks to the combination of advances in process technology and more cores, the new MacBook Air is between 20% to 60% faster than last year’s model. I was most impressed by its performance in our video transcoding test where it was over 30% faster than the previous year’s M3-powered MacBook Air. In fact, it was only about 15% slower than an M1 Max MacBook Pro. Another interesting observation was that its CPU performance, at least in bursty workloads, is comparable to the M1 Max and M2 Max MacBook Pros. Graphics performance was up by 10% to 25% too. Head over to the next page to see the charts from the tests I ran.

However, because the MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan, throttling can be an issue. On workloads that tax the M4 chip continuously, like games, its performance can dip by as much as 25%. What this means is that the longer you play a game, you might find the frame rates steadily falling and gameplay becoming increasingly choppy. That said, I managed to run Baldur’s Gate 3 at acceptable frame rates, albeit at the “Low” graphics settings.

It’s probably too early to comment on battery life because I’ve only been using it for the past couple of days, but given that it has largely the same battery capacity (it’s actually 1.2Wh larger) and the M4 chip should be just as if not more efficient, battery life should be tremendous. Thus far, it has been able to last an entire day without needing a charge.

Apart from improvements in performance, the new MacBook Air has some added capabilities and features. Users who love multi-monitor setups will be happy to know that the new M4-powered MacBook Air will be able to support up to two external displays along with its built-in display – so it’s possible to have a triple display setup. Last year’s MacBook Air could only do this if you closed its lid. The move to M4 also means support for the slightly faster Thunderbolt 4 standard.

Also new is the Sky Blue colourway. I’ve always been fond of blue so Sky Blue is easily my favourite colourway. That said, the blue is really light, so much so that some people that I showed it to couldn’t tell it was blue until they looked harder. I wished Apple had used more saturated colours, like how they do for the iMacs.

The rest of the MacBook Air is unchanged. You can still get it in two sizes – 13 and 15 inches – and both versions still come with just two USB-C ports. The only other ports you’ll get are a 3.5mm headphone jack and a MagSafe port for power. The display is still an LCD Liquid Retina display with a maximum brightness of 500 nits. It still looks good, but it’s starting to show its age against newer Windows machines which are steadily transitioning to OLED displays. There’s also support for Wi-Fi 6E, which is a little disappointing because I had hoped it would support Wi-Fi 7 like Apple’s newest iPhones.

Buying advice

It’s not often that something is faster and cheaper, but that’s exactly what the MacBook Air is. It is, unquestionably, the best MacBook for most people. If you all do is browse the web, watch videos, answer emails, and stitch together the occasional family video, I can recommend the MacBook Air wholeheartedly.

The only users who should pause and reconsider are those who will be doing sustained workloads – things like 3D graphics, heavy rendering, or playing demanding games. Such workloads could face heavy throttling and these users should perhaps consider the MacBook Pro.

One of Apple’s finest

The new MacBook Air may not be as seminal a machine as the recently updated Mac Mini, but it’s easily one of the best MacBook Airs Apple has ever released. It’s powerful, well-built, thin and light, has a long battery life, and is even cheaper than the model it replaces. Furthermore, it now comes with 16GB of memory as standard, which addresses one of our longest-standing and biggest issues with Apple’s base configuration MacBooks.

However, it’s not perfect. The Liquid Retina display is starting to look outdated now given that most Windows laptops are steadily transitioning to OLED displays. Throttling can be an issue on longer or more intensive workloads. Also, having just 256GB and two USB-C ports is a bit miserly. Thankfully, none of these are dealbreakers and don’t detract from the fact that, for most people, the MacBook Air is all the MacBook they’ll need.

Note: You can find the MacBook Air on Lazada, Shopee, and the Apple Online Store.