The MacBook Air M1 for $599 might be the best back to school laptop pick of the year

(Image credit: Future / Apple)

The Apple MacBook Air with the M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage is currently available at a discounted price of $599 at Walmart. It may not be the latest M4 version, but it still delivers plenty of value, especially for students getting ready to head back to campus.

Check out this deal on Walmart

The MacBook Air M1, launched back in 2020, was one of Apple’s earliest laptops to feature its in-house Arm-based M1 chip. It comes with a fanless design, meaning it is whisper quiet, while the eight-core CPU and seven-core GPU are capable of handling everyday tasks, whether that’s taking notes, streaming videos, or doing some light photo editing.

Its 13.3-inch Retina display delivers sharp visuals with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and a peak brightness of 400 nits. It also supports the P3 wide color gamut and Apple’s True Tone technology, which makes colors look vibrant and accurate, and the screen remains comfortable to view for long study sessions or movie nights.

Apple’s first-generation M1 chip features four high-performance and four efficiency cores, providing strong performance in a thin and light chassis. It is capable of running all the essential tools students need, and even supports many iPhone and iPad apps right on the Mac. Best of all, the laptop continues to receive macOS updates, keeping it relevant despite newer M3 and M4 models out in the market.

The M1 also packs a 16-core Neural Engine, designed to handle up to 11 trillion operations per second. This can help boost tasks like image and video processing, voice recognition, and other machine learning features. Battery life on the MacBook Air M1 is also quite impressive, with Apple claiming close to 16 hours, making it suitable for full days of classes and study sessions without the need to plug in the charger.

For students looking for a sleek notebook that offers a balance of performance, portability, and battery life at a significantly lower cost, this could be the ideal back-to-school companion.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

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Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC.

3 Comments Comment from the forums

ezst036

Support for these ends in a year or two, that is not a good recommendation.

I would give a specific date for when support ends but Apple guards that information very carefully to prevent it from being known.
Reply
cyrusfox

ezst036 said:
Support for these ends in a year or two, that is not a good recommendation.

I would give a specific date for when support ends but Apple guards that information very carefully to prevent it from being known.
who cares about official support? I am still running a macbook air that is 13 years old. still instant on and battery works great even if not plugged in for weeks.

The big issue here is 8gb of ram, no upgrade there, the ssd has been shown to be upgradeable. Bit overpriced, but they will continue to come done.
Reply
Findecanor

ezst036 said:
Support for these ends in a year or two, that is not a good recommendation.
I hope that when that happens, the price on the second-hand market will drop significantly and then I can snatch one up to install Asahi Linux on.

Not having a notch in the screen is a definite plus.
Reply