Apple has come out swinging with another line of hardware, from a new iPad Air to a new Mac Studio to its latest MacBooks, sporting Apple’s M4 chip and looking to take the next leap with new tools, increased performance and connectivity that make the MacBook Air a worthy upgrade.
The MacBook Air comes in Silver, Moonlight, Starlight and the new Sky Blue colour, which was particularly striking at the demonstration. It is available in 13-inch and 15-inch models with 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch Liquid Retina displays, respectively, with 500 nits of peak brightness. Both offer two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe 3 charging port, but the 13-inch model has only four speakers, while the 15-inch model features a six-speaker system with force-cancelling woofers. The model we are testing is the 15-inch version with 16 GB of unified memory and 512 GB of storage.
The MacBook Air’s new M4 chip supports up to a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU with up to 32 GB of unified memory. The chip’s 16-core Neural Engine provides a significant boost to the MacBook’s AI capabilities—an ideal upgrade with the laptop’s integration with Apple Intelligence, which is found throughout this computer.
“The MacBook Air with the M4 chip is a prime example of a company taking large strides forward rather than baby steps.”
The ability to generate pictures with Apple’s Image Playground, summarize and proofread text, enhance photos, and further integrate Siri into daily life with better language understanding is where Apple Intelligence shines. While Apple Intelligence is among the newer AI tools, it is clear the company has hit the ground running, with its hardware putting it in an ideal position to catch up quickly.
From a performance standpoint, we ran tests on Geekbench 6 and Cinebench, with Geekbench 6 scoring 3,745 on single-core and 14,741 on multi-core, with an OpenCL score of 36,129. The Cinebench benchmark scores were 173 for single-core, 816 for multi-core, and 3,834 for GPU—significant improvements over the M1. The M4’s GPU score tripled that of the M1, and the single-core score outperformed even the M1 Max and M1 Ultra.
The 12 MP webcam on the MacBook Air is, quite simply, the clearest built-in webcam I have seen, and it leaves many external webcams in the dust. It is crystal clear even when backlit, and with the smallest amount of lighting (I used a desk lamp), you are broadcast-ready. Its Center Stage technology uses machine learning to keep you centred in the frame, even when you adjust the tilt of your screen. Desk View, a favourite tool for those who present from their laptop, allows you to display the surface of your desk if you are showing a document, drawing, or anything else your audience needs to see.
The clarity of the MacBook Air’s speakers is impeccable, given the space they occupy in a razor-thin device. Most of my testing has taken place at home, where I have been able to take full advantage of blasting my audio as I work. It feels like a loss when I am on the go and limited to my earbuds, which, while good, lack the immersive sound of this six-speaker system.
“To have the MacBook Air—the most basic of Apple’s computers—run circles around a pretty robust PC never ceases to astound me.”
The MacBook Air’s battery life has lived up to Apple’s claims that it should last up to 15 hours for wireless browsing and up to 18 hours of video playback. I have put the MacBook Air through the wringer with editing (including rendering), streaming video, gaming, and all my daily tasks, and I have not once had to reach for the charging cable during the day. I charge it at night and have confidently taken it with me for the day without needing to charge it, bringing it home with plenty of battery left.
Gaming is still a fairly limited aspect of being a MacBook user, but Apple continues to improve in this area. I tested a couple of games—Palworld and Sid Meier’s Civilization VII—and they performed well on their highest graphics settings with no lag and spectacular detail for what these games offer. There are certainly games that are more demanding on a computer, but I am confident that for anything available on the MacBook, you should have no problem having a good experience.
Finally, we come to where I spend the bulk of my time on a computer: content creation. Streaming from a Mac has become increasingly viable since the release of the M1 chip, and the latest MacBook Air should have no problem continuing that trend. It can handle considerable stress from multiple elements, and since it is capable of connecting to two external monitors, managing a stream, sharing screens and gaming becomes far more practical.
From an editor’s standpoint, productivity skyrockets with lightning-fast renders and none of the annoying little hiccups I even experience on my PC with an RTX 4070 GPU. To have the MacBook Air—the most basic of Apple’s computers—run circles around a pretty robust PC never ceases to astound me, despite the fact that Apple has always been a consistently better tool for photo and video editing workflows.
At $1,699 USD, it is not a surprising price given Apple’s pricing history, but the performance leaps—considerable since the launch of the M1 chip—make it well worth the upgrade and an excellent entry point for a new Mac user. The MacBook Air with the M4 chip is a prime example of a company taking large strides forward rather than baby steps. It is sleek and beautiful, yet packs a huge punch.
