Apple's MacBook Air gets M4, new color, and a lower price

MacBook Air
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple's MacBook Air is one of the most popular laptops around, and soon it will be faster and, surprisingly in 2025, start at a lower price. Today, the company announced that the next iteration of our pick for best ultrabook will get bumped up to an M4 chip and feature a new color option, "sky" blue.

Outside of that new color, the M4 MacBook Air looks the same. It still comes in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, and there are still a pair of Thunderbolt ports on the left side, along with MagSafe for changing, while the right side is home to the headphone jack. (What I wouldn't do for Apple to move one of those two ports to the other side).

There are other upgrades. The M4 chip has a 10-core CPU and goes up to a 10-core GPU. Memory goes up to 32GB of RAM, rather than the 24GB max on the M3 Air. Like the M3 laptops, M4 starts at 16GB of memory.

Ahead of the launch, Apple showed demos of a MacBook Air running 32GB. Some of them were heavy on machine learning and Apple Intelligence. These included using Pixelmator to take a profile picture using the Center Stage webcam, and creating a mask to remove the background and replace it with a different one. In another, Apple Intelligence was used in the Markdown notes app Bear to organize information into a table quickly.

Perhaps the most impressive was Blender, which made a 4K render with 12 million pixels in 18 seconds, about five times faster than with an M1.

M4 will let the MacBook Air power two external monitors with the display open, which is a bump up from M3, which could only do that with the lid closed. Apple is also boosting the webcam to a 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam that we also saw on the M4 MacBook Pro, including support for Desk View.

MacBook Air

(Image credit: Apple)

The sky blue is a pretty color, and I think it'll be a hit. It's similar to a toned-down version of the sapphire color on Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. It adds a bit of a pop to the MacBook Air, which is in mostly muted tones like silver, starlight, and midnight, all of which will remain for sale. Space gray, however, has been shown the door.

Apple's new pricing is a nice touch. In the M3 generation, Apple kept the M2 MacBook Air around to hit the $999 price point, while M3 started at $1,099 in a 13-inch chassis. The 15-inch version started at $1,299 and had no M2 option. But now, Apple is doing away with keeping the previous generation around, and will simply start the 13-inch M4 at $999, while the 15-inch laptop will begin at $1,199, dropping each price $100. It's rare to see anything getting cheaper these days, so I'm very happy to see Apple pack its latest in at the $999 price. The M2 version may stick around as a budget pick in some markets, but don't expect to see it here in the US.

The new MacBook Air is available for pre-order today and will launch on March 12.

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Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.

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  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    For $1000 you get a 10 core CPU / 8 core GPU, 16GB memory, and 256GB SSD. $1200 bumps up to a 10 core GPU and 512gb storage. And you get all day battery life (Tomsguide rated the M3 at 15 hours so this one will be better no doubt) and all the other things that make the MacBook Air famous.

    Why can't we get that in Snapdragon PCs? Yes you can get some that are faster, better battery life, and/or better display when they're on sale, like the HP Omnibook X, and for around the $1200 mark you can even score RTX 4070 equipped laptops with an Intel 14900HX, but the options for a decently powerful sub $1000 Windows laptop with matching MacBook Air like performance and battery life when not on sale are few and far between.

    I'm not an Apple person, but Microsoft (and Google) needs to start actually taking Apple seriously and give people a real reason not to look at the fruit side, and things like Windows Recall and shoving ads everywhere and focusing on Ai that few use and fewer will pay for is not the answer.
    Reply
  • cyrusfox
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Why can't we get that in Snapdragon PCs? Yes you can get some that are faster, better battery life, and/or better display when they're on sale, like the HP Omnibook X, and for around the $1200 mark you can even score RTX 4070 equipped laptops with an Intel 14900HX, but the options for a decently powerful sub $1000 Windows laptop with matching MacBook Air like performance and battery life when not on sale are few and far between.

    I'm not an Apple person, but Microsoft (and Google) needs to start actually taking Apple seriously and give people a real reason not to look at the fruit side, and things like Windows Recall and shoving ads everywhere and focusing on Ai that few use and fewer will pay for is not the answer.
    I have a lunar lake laptop (Lenovo 14" yoga aura). I paid a premium as I bought it brand new at release for $1400 with 1tb/32gb of ram on the 258V chip. While it is only 8 core cpu (4P/4e). You can find it now for ~$900. The 258V chip sometimes has came down to $800. That is the 32GB version, you can find the 16GB version of lunar lake for cheaper (Sometimes as low as $550).

    I get full day battery out of it, beautiful screen, decent port selection (although I wish for micro sd and one more USB-A). The Yoga Aura has full TB4 on either side which is awesome. I only wish there was a beefier version of lunar lake (more cores). But I have found it plenty capable, and even used it in a pinch for encoding where it did surprisingly well. I would love to see a power efficiency comparison between Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake. But Intel has a real efficiency winner on Lunar lake, as prices come down I would recommend you check it out.
    Reply
  • kaalus
    What I'm waiting for is two things: (1) move one USB-C port to the other side and (2) 120Hz refresh rate.
    Reply