Apple MacBook Air M4 | Trusted Reviews

Introduction

Apple has found its groove with the MacBook Air, and this M4 version tweaks things ever so slightly once again. While not a groundbreaking update, there are a few changes here that make this a fantastic laptop that I can easily recommend.

Apple’s laptop line-up feels as concise as it has been in a decade. There’s the MacBook Pro with either an M4 Pro or M4 Max chip for those wanting a customisable workhorse, then there’s the standard MacBook Pro M4 for those who value screen quality.

The £999/$999 MacBook Air sits at the bottom of the range. This is the laptop for most people. It’s a machine ideal for daily use, thanks to its light chassis and excellent battery life, but don’t be fooled into thinking the MacBook Air M4 can’t perform with the best laptops and best ultrabooks out there because of its entry-level price.

Design and Keyboard

• Four colour options
• Limited selection of ports
• Excellent keyboard and trackpad

The most notable design change for this year’s refresh of the MacBook Air is the addition of a new colour – Sky Blue. Hardly the most exciting change, but it is a fresh new colour that’s completely new for Apple’s laptop, so that’s nice.

There are a few things to note about this colour, which can be seen in the review images attached. For one, the body of the laptop doesn’t get too fingerprint-ridden, an issue I have found with the darker Midnight versions of the Air. Even after a week of use, I haven’t had to wipe any annoying smudges off the lid.

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a bright blue like some iPhone hues – it’s incredibly subtle, even looking silver in some instances. I like it, but I’d prefer a richer colour, like those available with the iMac M4. If the blue isn’t for you, there’s Silver and Starlight for the light options and Midnight for something darker.

The rest of the machine follows the same blueprint set by the MacBook Air M2 and MacBook Air M3. There are two size options: 13-inch and 15-inch, both of which have the same internal options and the same port selection.

It’s a slim, light machine that can slip easily into a bag. There’s been no weight reductions in a few years though, and you will find Windows machines, like the Asus ZenBook A14, that weigh less than the 1.24kg 13-inch does.

That port selection is adequate, if not standout. On the left side there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports with the USB-C housing, plus a magnetic MagSafe port for the included charger. You can use either of the Thunderbolt 4 ports for charging, but I like keeping them free for peripherals and using the MagSafe charger instead. On the right side there’s a headphone jack.

The lack of an SD Card reader, additional USB-C ports and HDMI are irritating omissions, even though they’re hardly a surprise. Apple has restricted these ports to the Pro laptops since they re-added them a few years ago, and I doubt they’re going to trickle them back down to the entry-level Air. 

The lack of HDMI is in part remedied by the influx of monitors that use Thunderbolt to output video, and there are always SD card dongles.

More irritating, at least for me, is that both ports are on the same side of the laptop, whereas having one on each side would be preferable. Now, if I have larger things to plug in I can inadvertently block both ports.

Apple’s laptop keyboard and trackpad haven’t always been the best, but they’re very good now. The keyboard here has a full-width function row, clicky keys and an embedded fingerprint sensor for secure unlocking. It’s great to type on, and has an even backlight for when it’s dark.

The trackpad is huge, super responsive and like other MacBook trackpads it doesn’t actually move; there are just small haptic responses when it is pressed down. 

Neither the keyboard nor the trackpad are new or updated for the 2025 model, so whether they’ll be seen as an upgrade will ultimately depend on which machine you’re coming from. Anyone who’s still using one of the 12-inch MacBooks, or the latter Intel machines with the Butterfly keyboard, will notice a huge difference here.

Display

• 13 and 15-inch size options
• No huge screen upgrades
• LCD, 60Hz refresh rate

If there was one aspect of the MacBook Air M4 I’d like to be slightly better, it would be the display. The 60Hz IPS panel here, with its 2560×1664 (13.6-inch) or 2880×1864 (15.3-inch) resolution, is good – but it feels outdated compared to a lot of the competition.

There’s no OLED or Mini LED tech here, no searingly high levels of brightness for HDR work and no faster ProMotion tech to pump the refresh rate to 120Hz. There’s not even the option for the nano-texture glass that adds a matte finish to the screen to reduce glare, despite the feature being commonplace on Apple products recently, even on the iMac M4.

Put the MacBook Air up against the latest MacBook Pros, and it’s not really a contest. The MacBook Pro M4 has the Air’s screen beaten in every area. Of course, I understand that Apple needs to withhold certain features to push people towards the pricier machine, but I do think that more could be done here to give the Air a boost.

Switching to an OLED panel, for instance, would at least keep the MacBook Air on parity with many of the best ultrabooks on the market, while still giving the Pro the upper hand overall with ProMotion and a higher resolution. 

Anyone who used one of the OLED-toting iPad Pros will know how wonderfully vibrant and immersive they are. The Air, in comparison, looks a little drab.

It’s still bright – I measured 450 nits in standard use, which is in line with Apple’s claims and is more than bright enough for most indoor situations. I tried to use it outdoors on a sunny day and the screen was hard to read, even with that brightness turned all the way up.

Performance

• All models start with 16GB of memory
• 256GB starting storage
• Very impressive performance for the size of machine

Apple’s latest Air laptop comes with its entry-level silicon, the M4. This is a chip that has been used in numerous products before, and many of them – including the iMac M4, Mac Mini M4, and iPad Pro – have been excellent performers. The Air M4 is no different.

For the majority of consumers, this level of power is all you need. The M4 can edit 4K video, edit photos in Lightroom and even play a growing list of compatible games at around 30fps. It’s a very complete, immensely capable chip.

While Apple made this change towards the end of the M3 model’s lifespan, all models now come with 16GB of memory as standard. The base 8GB variant is, thankfully, gone, and that’s great news for everyone. 

Hopefully, the 256GB base storage is next to go, with 512GB a far more suitable starting point for most people.

Even though the MacBook Air can only be selected with the M4 chip (no M4 Pro option here), there are some slight differences between the models.

The base £999/$999 one has a 10-core CPU but only an 8-core GPU. For an extra £200/$200 you can get the 10-core GPU and 10-core CPU model with 512GB storage and a faster, dual-port charging brick. This latter option is the model I would go for, and for £1199/$1199 it still represents excellent value. All the models have the same 16-core neural engine for AI tasks.

Some parts can be upgraded when ordering too. Memory can be maxed up to 32GB and the SSD pushed to 2TB. Apple’s upgrade prices remain high, with the jump from 16GB memory to 32GB costing £400/$400. It’s then £800/$800 to go from the 256GB SSD to the 2TB option. And as always with Apple Silicon Macs, none of these upgrades can be made by third-party retailers.

The model I have for review is the mid-tier option, so all the benchmarking stats all relevant to the 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU model with 16GB memory. 

It’s a fast, capable laptop that performs well in both real-world use and in our suite of benchmarking apps. The biggest praise I can heap upon this machine is that I don’t really ever think about performance on a day-to-day basis. There’s so rarely a spinning ball beach or a lingering app trying to open.

The M4 isn’t a huge leap forward in any metric compared to the M3, although the extra performance isn’t to be sniffed at. However, there’s a bigger difference, especially in everyday single-core tasks, compared to the MacBook Air M1. You can see our benchmark tests below.

Benchmarks are only a small part of the story, but the results do prove this is a machine that is very capable – especially at its price. It’s not going to replace a Pro machine for professionals, as the M4 Max and M4 Pro are far more capable in multi-core tasks like intensive video processing and exporting, but for everyday tasks the Air doesn’t miss a beat.

50 tabs in Chrome, 4K video editing with footage imported from an iPhone, and even gaming at roughly 30fps in titles like Shadow of the Tomb Raider are all achieved here. I still wouldn’t recommend this machine purely for gaming, even if the Mac is getting better with more titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows available on the Mac App Store and Cyberpunk 2077 arriving soon.

The MacBook Air M4 has the notch digging into the screen, however the camera itself has been upgraded with the same 12MP sensor found in the Pro MacBooks. This provides a sharp, well-lit image with good skin reproduction.

There’s a feature called Desk View enabled by the new camera. This lets you showcase both a face and a desk during a video call, making it a neat solution for product demos. It works well, even if the desk image can be a little grainy.

Wi-Fi 6E is on board, so no Wi-Fi 7, and it’s Bluetooth 5.3. The speakers don’t pack quite as much punch as those on the MacBook Pro, with a little less bass. Still, considering the size of the laptop’s chassis, they’re still good. 

Battery Life

• No huge increases, but still very good battery life
• The included plug depends on the model
• Can be charged via MagSafe or USB-C

Compared to the MacBook Air M3, the battery life of the M4 model is slightly better. In the same looped video test, my review M4 machine lasted between 45 minutes to an hour longer. 

In real-world tests, the differences are smaller – although endurance depends on how you use the machine. When I reviewed the Air M3 last year, I stated that after an intensive work day of browsing, writing documents, some light image editing and video calls, I was left with 25% left in the tank. I mirrored the same test, as much as I possibly could, with the M4 and found I ended up with around 30% left.

On more intensive days, the battery managed to last eight full hours – a good result for a laptop that’s this portable and capable.

All MacBook Air M4 options come with a MagSafe port for charging, plus a braided cable and plug. You also charge the machine with either of the USB-C ports, although you’ll need to provide a charger for this. If you have a recent iPad, that charger will work.

The cheapest 13-inch model (the £999/$999 option with the 8-core GPU) comes with a 30W USB-C power adapter. All other options, including all versions of the 15-inch model, come with a faster 35W plug with two USB-C ports. So you can charge up both an iPhone and a MacBook with a single plug. The machine also supports 70w fast charging with the correct plug.

In my tests, the battery took just under 75 minutes to go from completely depleted to 50% when using the 35w plug.

AI and Apple Intelligence

• Full support for Apple Intelligence
• Limited features are currently available
• AI features in other apps

The machine’s AI functionality is twofold. Many third-party apps can use AI, like Pixelmator Pro, to quickly edit photos. Apple also has its own AI service called Apple Intelligence, and this works similarly to how it does on iPhones and iPads.

Apple Intelligence incorporates features to help you write, such as tweaking your tone or proofreading. In Photos, you can remove errant objects with Clean Up, similar to Google’s Magic Eraser. This can work well with larger, obvious objects; however it struggles in other situations.

There’s Image Playground, a generative AI-based app that whips up cartoon-style pictures depending on your prompts. The results can be fun, although I just can’t see this app being anything more than a gimmick you might use once or twice to put a hat on your dog.

The most useful Apple Intelligence feature I’ve found so far is that the system-wide search now includes tips and how tos. So, if I search ‘how to connect my AirPods’, a handy numbered list pops up with instructions. Oddly, you can’t use natural language to search through files. If I search, ‘show me PDF files I’ve opened in the past week,’ nothing happens. This is the sort of AI functionality I want.

Like I said in my iPhone 16e review, Apple Intelligence isn’t a reason yet to upgrade or specifically buy a new Apple product. There’s nothing here in its current incarnation that I suspect anyone would use daily, and a lot of it feels gimmicky and simply just an imitation of what rivals are doing. This could change, though, and I really hope it does.

Should you buy it?