Apple's New M4 MacBook Air Offers Promising Performance at a Very Nice Price
The M4 processor and $999 starting price give you a compelling reason to upgrade
In late 2020, Apple released the M1 MacBook Air, a laptop so jam-packed with value that we continued to recommend it even after the 2022 launch of the M2 Air and the 2024 launch of the M3 Air. If you were a consumer in need of a solid, everyday laptop, you could buy the older M1 model, get comparable performance, and pocket hundreds of dollars in savings.
But with the release of the M4 MacBook Air, it may be time to revise that advice.
I say that for three reasons.
What the M4 Processor Can Do
In addition to the more-than-welcome price drop, the MacBook Air’s big selling point is, as you might have guessed, the new Apple-designed M4 processor.
Apple claims the new chip helps make the M4 Air up to two times faster than the M1 Air. In day-to-day use, that increased speed can be difficult to spot. But in certain applications, it’s abundantly clear.
I took a 60-second test video shot in 4K at 60 frames per second and, using the default settings on iMovie, re-rendered it into a 1080p, 30 fps file. Now, this might be something you never do on your laptop, but it’s a quick and easy way to see what the processor can do.
On the M4 Air, it took 13 seconds to render the 1080p file. On my M1 Air? A full 24 seconds.
And so, if you regularly edit videos for fun or for work, you’ll almost certainly appreciate the faster speed.
Photo: Nicholas De Leon/Consumer Reports Photo: Nicholas De Leon/Consumer Reports
After that, I used an AI app called Whisper to transcribe an interview featuring one of CR’s testers for a recent article on weather stations. The 26-minute clip took a little more than 2 minutes (141 seconds, to be exact) to fully transcribe on the M4 Air. On my M1? A comparatively glacial 280 seconds, which is roughly 4.6 minutes.
So, yeah, Apple isn’t kidding when it says twice as fast.
But, to be clear, those are jobs that require lots of processing power. It’s harder to appreciate the faster M4 chip while conducting routine tasks like browsing the web, trudging through email, editing work documents, conducting video calls, and streaming video (though the increase from 8 gigabytes to 16GB of base memory certainly helps with that). With these types of activities, the M4 is plenty fast, but you’d be hard-pressed to see much of a difference compared to the older Airs.
Beyond the M4 processor, the design of the new Air is largely the same as before, complete with 13- or 15-inch Liquid Retina display and a spacious keyboard with integrated Touch ID sensor. I say “largely” because the laptop is now available in one new color, a subtle metallic finish that Apple calls sky blue, presumably to the delight of Manchester City fans (known as the Sky Blues) worldwide.
Should You Buy the New MacBook Air?
The MacBook Air has long been a consumer favorite—a reliable, lightweight laptop that consistently delivers strong results in our lab testing. With the new M4 model, Apple appears to have pushed the performance even further, without sacrificing the portability and battery life that make the Air a go-to choice for everyday users.
Our testers will evaluate the M4 MacBook Air in depth, measuring its processor performance, display quality, battery life, and overall usability to ensure it meets the high standards set by its predecessors. But based on my early experience, this latest version looks to be a smart choice—especially at the $999 starting price, which brings it back to the affordability of the M1 era.
It doesn’t deliver everything on the wish list—some users may want a higher refresh rate on the display (120 hertz instead of 60) and I’d appreciate an extra USB-C port—but the M4 Air does provide an impressive balance of power, portability, and value. Pending the results of our lab testing, I’d say it’s shaping up to be another strong entry in Apple’s lineup and one of the best overall options for an everyday laptop.
