Apple MacBook Air 13-inch M4 review: Cheaper and better

Yahoo

12-03-2025

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Apple's MacBook Air 13-inch M4 is not a perfect laptop, but at its new starting price of $999, it is the perfect laptop for many people.
Outwardly, little has changed, but internally the new M4 chip has the Air once again outpacing most of its Windows on ARM rivals with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, while still delivering over 15 hours of battery life. You also can't see the upgraded Center Stage webcam, but the difference will jump off the screen at you the first time you use it.
Some minor complaints remain, like its limited ports and wishing Apple would make the move to a 120Hz refresh rate or even new display tech, but the $100 price drop helps cover over issues that most Air buyers would likely never worry about.
Read on for a closer look at what makes the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 stand out from the crowd to earn a spot among our best laptops.
Click to view full benchmark test results
The price is arguably the biggest upgrade for the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 with all configurations dropping by $100 compared to their predecessors. This is notable not only because we are seeing prices climb on many other consumer electronics in 2025, but also because of the upgrade to 16GB of RAM on the base MacBook Air that Apple announced in October 2024, which remains in place for the new M4 models.
The base configuration of the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 returns to $999 after Apple moved to $1,099 for the base price of the Air with 2022's MacBook Air 13-inch M2. The base model includes 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and an Apple M4 with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU.
While the base price is outstanding, upgrades remain as expensive as ever. You'll want to choose your additions carefully or risk spoiling the great value offered. My review unit is a configuration I would recommend for most people, for $1,199 your storage is doubled to 512GB, and you get the slightly enhanced M4 configuration with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU.
Extra storage is almost always welcome, as a full hard drive will slow your laptop down in the future. However, there are more immediate reasons to make this choice that I'll address in the performance and heat section. If you're a power user on the edge of opting for a MacBook Pro, you may also want to consider paying the $200 to upgrade to 24GB of RAM.
It's worth noting that if you are a student, the parent of a student, a faculty member, or staff at any school, or a homeschool teacher, you are eligible to shop through Apple's Education Store, which will take another $100 off the price of any configuration.
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 still falls into the premium laptop category, but it is one of the most affordable options. Apple is no longer keeping the old MacBook Air around as a cheaper option, so outside of sales on the older models (while there is still stock), if you need something cheaper, you may want to consider one of the best Chromebooks.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the price drop we just covered, the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 design remains completely unchanged from last year, save for replacing the "Space Gray" colorway with "Sky Blue."
I recently reviewed the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which comes in what Samsung calls 'Sapphire Blue,' and I feel similarly gaslit by Apple's 'Sky Blue.' Both laptops look silver unless you place them next to a silver laptop. 'Hint of Blue' or 'Is that Blue?' would be more accurate names. Please Apple, let the iMac team share the love with one of its actually fun pastel hues.
Prosaic Pantone protests aside, the overall design of the MacBook Air remains excellent. I love intriguing new laptop designs like Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 with its rollable display, but a traditional clamshell laptop design done well is still a perfect fit for many people.
The bezels around the display aren't the smallest that I've ever seen, but they aren't distractingly large either.
At 2.7 pounds and 12 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches, the MacBook Air remains one of the thinnest and lightest laptops around, even beating the best Ultrabooks. Here's how it holds up to its closest rivals:
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: 2.8 pounds, 12.8 x 8.8 x 0.51 inches
MacBook Air 13-inch M3: 2.7 pounds, 12 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches
Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425): 3 pounds, 12.3 x 8.7 x 0.6 inches
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The MacBook Air 13 M4's port selection remains as light as the laptop itself. I remain pleased that Apple brought back MagSafe to keep its two Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 ports free, but competitors do manage to squeeze more into similarly sized laptops.
2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 Type-C
1 x MagSafe 3
1 x headphone mic/jack
It would obviously compromise the current internal design of the laptop, but it's also regrettable only the headphone jack is on the right side, the MagSafe 3 and Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 ports are all stacked up on the left side, which makes things a little crowded if you do need to make use of all the ports.
If you need more ports than the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 offers, we've tested and reviewed the best MacBook docking stations and best USB Type-C hubs to identify the perfect port partner for your Apple laptop.
Battery life stopped being a concern for the MacBook Air when Apple Silicon arrived in 2020. This remains true with the MacBook Air 13-inch M4, eclipsing the 15-hour mark like its predecessor. You will see less than that if you push the laptop at full brightness, but I'm still giving that the "all-day battery life" stamp of approval.
While the competition is stronger than ever for the laptops with the best battery life, the Air is still holding up exceptionally well, particularly when considering performance, which I'll address later.
On the Laptop Mag battery test, which involves navigating a set group of websites with video and static images while the display is set at 150 nits of brightness, the MacBook Air 13 M4 lasted an average of 15 hours and 30 minutes. Here's how that stacks up against the battery life of the Air M4's rivals.
Click to view chart data in table format
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 features a 13.6-inch 2560 x 1664 Liquid Retina LCD. It's not the most feature-packed panel, but with the Air returning to a sub-$1,000 starting price I'm willing to accept it.
I watched the trailer for The Surfer on YouTube in enhanced 1080p for my real-world testing, and the wild and highly stylized look of the Nick Cage vehicle did not disappoint on the Air's display. While the Air doesn't have the most colorful panel I've seen on a laptop, it's sharp and very color-accurate, which made it an effective canvas for the heavily filtered look of the tense thriller.
Brightness is stellar, with the Air M4 averaging 463 nits in our testing. In practical terms, you'll be fine in anything other than direct sunlight, so you have nothing to fear from that table next to the window in your local coffee shop.
Click to view chart data in table format.
While Lenovo isn't in danger of losing its crown as high ruler of the laptop keyboard kingdom, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro lines have established outstanding consistency since the dark days of the butterfly keyboard that Apple left behind in 2020.
While the key travel is still relatively shallow at 1mm, the keys spring back quickly, allowing me to type at a fast pace without sacrificing accuracy. In the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I hit 92 words per minute with 99% accuracy, beating my average of 88 words per minute with 99% accuracy.
I find the keyboard comfortable to type on all day, but if you are more sensitive to key travel, you may want to either check out our best laptops for writers or pair the MacBook Air M4 with one of the best keyboards.
The touchpad measures 5 x 3.1 inches, which is large without dominating the deck of the laptop. Apple certainly started the massive touchpad trend, but it's far from the biggest around anymore.
I think Apple found the right place to stop, there's plenty of room to navigate and use multi-finger gestures, but I'm not left wondering where to rest my hands when typing. Ultimately, I will typically opt for one of the best wireless mice over using a built-in touchpad, but Apple's is certainly one of the best.
Apple's most portable laptop still features a quad-speaker system with support for Spatial Audio. While bass remains elusive, it's an impressive feat of engineering that allows a laptop this thin-and-light to easily fill my office with clear sound and even create a surround sound effect.
Listening to one of my typical workday playlists, Relaxing Film Scores, 'Chaos Is a Ladder' from season 3 of Game of Thrones proved a suitable test for the laptop's speakers as the song starts with a swirling resonance that moved around the room and then builds to a powerful crescendo that overtook my office entirely.
The built-in speakers in the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 are better than they have any right to be, but they still can't beat the best wireless headphones or best computer speakers if you are looking for the best possible audio experience.
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 is powered by a 10-core Apple M4 CPU, which represents a fairly significant performance boost over the M3, helping the Air once again challenge some of the strong Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite laptops that arrived in mid-2024.
The most notable jump among our benchmarks was the HandBrake video transcoding test, where the Air M4 shaved a full two minutes off the time it took to convert a 4k video to 1080p, dropping from 7:40 to 5:40. While the Air isn't going to supplant the MacBook Pro on our best video editing laptops page, it's certainly capable if the need arises.
I mentioned in the price and configuration section that there was another reason to upgrade from the 256GB to 512GB SSD, and that is the speed of those respective drives. In our testing, the 512GB SSD has an 80% faster write speed than the 256GB SSD. Now if you are doing basic productivity work that isn't something you'll likely notice, but if you are doing video or photo work where you are manipulating and moving large files, it will make a perceptible difference.
When it comes to general tasks, like loading up far more Chrome tabs and windows than is wise, the Air M4 is also game and was able to handle three windows with roughly six tabs each, including three running 1080p YouTube videos. The Apple M4 will be game for as much of this kind of workload as you can throw at it, but if you are like me and have questionable windows management habits, you may want to pay to upgrade the RAM to 24 or even 32GB.
Despite this powerful performance, the Air M4 manages to keep its cool, with the hottest point on the laptop only reaching 85.2 degrees Fahrenheit in our testing. That's well below our 95-degree comfort threshold, making it a laptop-friendly laptop.
Click to view chart data in table format.
Is gaming improving on Apple laptops? Absolutely. Apple's integrated graphics performance is getting better and the company is working to bring more titles natively to macOS. With that said, if gaming is a primary interest on your laptop, you will still want to choose one of the best gaming laptops or best cheap gaming laptops over any MacBook, let alone the MacBook Air 13 M4.
Of the four gaming benchmarks we ran on the MacBook Air M4, only two achieved our 30 frames per second playability standard. Those were the Sid Meier's Civilization VI: Gathering Storm benchmark and Shadow of the Tomb Raider; those games are over 6 years old, if your plans include modern AAA titles, look elsewhere.
Click to view chart data in table format.
There are several Apple Intelligence features available on the MacBook Air 13-inch M4, but as with most of the best AI PCs, we are still in the early days of AI with the features always improving. The Air M4 is certainly well-equipped from a hardware standpoint to deliver on the promise of Apple Intelligence.
Writing Tools are one of the more universally applicable Apple Intelligence features available currently, offering editorial advice on your writing throughout macOS and summarizing long text passages and notifications.
Several image-based AI features allow you to generate images like Genmoji and Image Playground or craft memory movies from your photos and videos. Finally, Siri gains some expanded features with AI including integration with ChatGPT.
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 benefits from an upgrade to a 12MP Center Stage camera, and it is equally as impressive as the one found in the MacBook Pro 14-inch M4. The camera produces a sharp image that tolerates shifting lighting conditions better than some of the best webcams.
Even deliberately tiling it to catch the glare from the overhead lighting in my office, the camera adjusted effectively to avoid blowing out the image, a common failing of built-in webcams. Apple also added Desk View, allowing you to show your desktop and your face on camera simultaneously. This is a niche feature, but it works well for those that need it.
I hope to see other laptop manufacturers rise to the challenge now that Apple has brought a high-quality webcam to its entire laptop lineup, we still see far too many weak webcams in 2025, considering the prevalence of video calling for work and personal use.
The MacBook Air 13 M4 comes with macOS Sequoia 15.3, which means the typical assortment of Apple apps installed by default. However, Apple is good about avoiding bloatware, so you shouldn't have anything too pressing to remove. Particularly if you have other devices in the Apple ecosystem, there are benefits to using Apple's native apps like Notes, so consider giving them a try if you haven't previously.
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 ships with a typical one-year limited warranty, but it can be extended with AppleCare+ for $7.99 a month or $79.99 a year on the MacBook Air 13-inch. AppleCare+ gives you access to technical support and reduced repair costs, including a $99 fee to repair screen or external enclosure damage or $299 for other accidental damage.
Apple hit the sweet spot with this laptop, delivering an affordable option that should check all the boxes for a swath of users.
The MacBook Air 13-inch M4 feels like the return of the original M1 Air. It's an undeniable value that will give you years of excellent performance, even if you pick up the base model. My limited complaints are also similar to those of the M1 Air, there are features that the vast majority of people will never miss.
If you need one of the best 2-in-1 laptops, best Windows laptops, or best gaming laptops, then this isn't the laptop for you, but the MacBook Air 13-inch M4 is one of the best laptops and best MacBooks for most people.