MacBook Air (M4, 2025) review: Blue skies ahead

The MacBook Air with M4 is still thin, still powerful, and still excellent. Add in a lower price point and a default 16GB of RAM, and this laptop is one of the best values Apple has offered in a long time.

Pros

• +

  Apple lowered the price!

• +

  Powerful speakers on the 15-inch laptop

• +

  Upgraded 12MP Center Stage webcam

• +

  Long battery life

• +

  M4 supports two external displays with the lid open

Cons

• -

  RAM and SSD pricing are still absurd

• -

  Display notch is still there, sans Face ID

The MacBook Air is one of those laptops that has become something of a default recommendation. Looking to spend around $1,000, and want something fast, quiet, and efficient, with great build quality? It's an easy call. That's why it tops the list of our

.

With the M4 model, Apple is in full-on refining mode. Sure, M4 is faster, but now we're getting features like an improved webcam, faster ports, and even a subtle new blue color. It's not a huge change, but they're all welcome.

That's especially the case when Apple dropped the price by $100, jettisoning previous-generation models holding the $999 starting price. With all of that in mind, the MacBook Air feels like a better deal than it has in years.

Does the MacBook Air look largely the same as it has the last three years? Is the sky blue?

Apple hasn't changed the MacBook Air’s looks, with one exception: there's a new color, "sky blue." It's a very subtle sheen that I quite like. It's similar to what we saw on the

, but far less dramatic, bordering on standard silver in some lights. I think it'll make a good alternative for those bored by silver but who don't want something as dark as the "midnight" color. Starlight and silver are also still on offer, but space gray is no longer available.

Otherwise, you get a very familiar laptop, with the same design we've seen since the 13-inch Air launched with M2 in 2022. It's a flat design with rounded corners and Apple's go-to spartan design sensibilities. Apple's logo shines in a tone-on-tone color on the lid, which lifts up to reveal the 15-inch display on our review unit, including a notch into the screen to fit the 12MP Center Stage webcam.

Years later, I haven't learned to accept the notch on a laptop the way I have on a phone, but at least it's not removing screen space. I know plenty of people who couldn't care less about the notch. I'd at least like to see it incorporate Face ID, as plenty of Windows laptops have facial recognition with IR cameras.

On Geekbench 6, the Macbook Air with M4 notched a single-core score of 3,780 and a multi-core score of 14,924, falling slightly behind the MacBook Pro with the same chip. The difference here is likely that the Pro laptop has a fan to keep the chip cool and eke out stronger performance. As you'll see when we hit Cinebench, this matters far more for extended workloads.

The Yoga Slim 7i with the Core Ultra 7 256V did the worst here, especially on multi-core, partially because it has just 8 cores. The XPS 13 has a Snapdragon X Elite in it, and that has 12 cores and came up behind M4, so the number of cores isn't everything.

The MacBook Air copied approximately 25GB of files at a rate of 1,220.35 MBps, coming in slightly faster than what we saw in the Pro (1,167.29 MBps), though that could be run-to-run variance. The Yoga was the fastest here at 1,613.44 Mbps, while the XPS also beat the Macs.

We use Handbrake to have laptops transcode a

video to

. The MacBook Air took 4 minutes and 52 seconds to complete the task, falling ever so slightly behind the Snapdragon-powered XPS 13 (4:47). Here, the Lunar Lake laptop fell far behind.

To stress test laptops, we put them through 10 runs of Cinebench 2024 nT. Unsurprisingly, the fanless MacBook Air throttled. Its first score of 844 was its highest, and from there it started to plummet to the mid-600's, with occasional bursts back up to the 700's. Using TG Pro, which lets you log your Mac's temperatures from various internal sensors, the computer average was 49.33 degrees Celsius (120.79 degrees Fahrenheit). You can read more about skin temperature in the heat section, below.

Rendering on a fanless device may not be a typical task, but M4 is capable of it. Without air cooling, the MacBook Air is much better for quick, bursty workloads, but for sustained tasks, you'll want something with a fan, like the MacBook Pro.

True Tone, which uses ambient light sensors to adjust the screen to appear more natural is enabled by default. I typically leave it on unless I'm editing photos. If you're doing work where colors need to be exact, you may want to switch it off.

The trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps used the Air's display to show off beautiful blue skies as a rocket took off and as Johnny Storm floated in the atmosphere.

On the early stage planet of Sumpanob in No Man's Sky, I was presented with a dusty, orange desert with blazing red fires and dotted with green plants. It wasn't exactly a fascinating planet to look at, at least until a green radiation storm rolled through and changed the tint of the screen to a surprising emerald followed by a sickly brown.

The 15-inch Air's screen covered 117.9% of the

color gamut and 83.5% of the more challenging

color space. That was actually slightly ahead of our MacBook Pro review unit (though not enough to notice in person), and far ahead of the 1080p panel in the Dell XPS 13. Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7i, however, was extremely vivid at 153.2% sRGB / 108.5% DCI-P3 on its marvelous screen.

On our light meter, the MacBook Air measured 475.6 nits, which is plenty bright. But it fell behind the mini-LED screen on the MacBook Pro at a whopping 556.6 nits of brightness. The Yoga was only slightly brighter than the Air at 486.6 nits.

Beyond the built-in display on the MacBook Air, the M4 brings about an important addition: the ability to use two external displays at up to 6K resolution at 60Hz with the lid open. The MacBook Air M3 could power two external displays, but the lid had to be closed. This should be a pretty big upgrade for enterprise customers, as well as for enthusiasts who don't want or need to shell out for the MacBook Pro.

If there's one part of the MacBook Air I'm glad Apple hasn't changed, it's the keyboard. It's snappy and responsive, with an excellent layout including inverted T arrow keys and full height function keys. Touch ID is built into the power button, which is extremely useful, but it's about time Apple meets the Windows world and puts facial recognition on its laptops.

The 13-inch and 15-inch laptops still have the same keyboards. Apple hasn't added extra keys to the larger laptop, but that leaves more room for speakers.

On our 15-inch review unit, I reached 121 words per minute on the monkeytype typing test with a 98% accuracy rate, which is about as good as I can do. These aren't the deepest keys on the market, but I sure can blaze through an email on them.

Apple has made a few changes to the legends on its keys. For instance, the mute toggle on the F10 key now has a line through it, where there was none on previous laptops (it looks a bit more like the icon you see on-screen when you hit the button now). Apple has moved the command, control, and option icons to the opposite corners of the buttons. On the function key, the "fn" is next to the globe icon, as opposed to diagonal from it. None of these will change your use of the computer — the keys are all in the same place!

The 15-inch MacBook Air features a six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers. That's one of its biggest upgrades over the 13-inch Air, which has four speakers. Either way, you get Dolby Atmos and support for Apple's Spatial Audio.

For a laptop this thin, the 15-inch MacBook Air's sound system is incredible. Lights' "Damage" came through loud and clear, filling my apartment with sound, including melodic guitars, pounding drums, and even a reverberating bass. The thicker MacBook Pro delivers a more impressive sound profile, but considering how svelte this is, the speakers are damn impressive.

The speakers also worked their wonders when I played No Man's Sky, easily balancing the mysterious choral music with the cacophony of my mining laser as I explored the cosmos.

Apple's M4 is a system-on-a-chip, which includes the RAM, and the SSDs are soldered to the motherboard. That means neither RAM nor storage can be replaced, so make sure the way you configure your MacBook Air will meet your needs for a few years.

I suspect that if MacBook Air owners have an Apple Store within a reasonable distance, those who need repairs will make an appointment at the Genius Bar. Enterprising enthusiasts who want to do their own repairs should be able to rent tools from Apple through the

at some point soon.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro has a larger, 72.4 WHr battery, and it lasted longer than the Air at 18:36.

The Dell XPS 13, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, was the longest-lasting out of this batch of laptops at 19:31. This laptop has a smaller, 1920 x 1200 display, though running at a higher refresh rate.

I'm not one to complain about 15 hours. But this year's laptop lasted only 11 minutes longer than last year's 15-inch Air. When we reviewed the MacBook Air last year, competing Windows laptops were running for just 11 or 12 hours. Now they're catching up both on Arm and some x86-based platforms, so Apple can't stop focusing on the efficiency front.

The MacBook Air is fanless, which means it's completely silent no matter how much you throw at it. (In the MacBook Pro, you can get the M4 under a fan, which leads to better sustained performance, but you also get fan noise.)

To see how hot the machine gets, we used our standard Cinebench 2024 gauntlet to see how it feels to the touch. It does get a bit toasty, particularly on the keyboard.

Between the G and H keys, the Macbook Air measured 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit, though the haptic touchpad stayed cooler to the touch at 91.2 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the laptop reached 107.9 F.

The new MacBook Airs are shipping with Apple's latest Mac operating system, macOS Sequoia (version 15.3 as of this writing). Sequoia launched late last year, and we already saw it in the

and

.

It includes iPhone Mirroring, which lets you use the phone from your desktop, and the ability to type to Siri. Window tiling is largely improved (but still not as good as Snap layouts in Windows 11). And of course, the OS update brought several of the first Apple Intelligence features, including ChatGPT integration, Clean Up in the Photos app, and Genmojis, though none of those are reasons to upgrade on their own. A modernized version of Siri

to sometime in "the coming year."

Preinstalled software includes the Safari browser, Mail, Messages, Calculator, Notes, Weather, Stocks, Maps, and FaceTime, along with a suite for Apple's subscription services including Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple News. Pages, Keynotes, Numbers, and Garageband are still available for free as a basic productivity bundle.

Apple is starting both the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air at new low prices. Yes, you read that right. In this economy, the price of something expensive went down.

Previously, Apple kept a prior generation around to sit at the $999 price point. But that's no longer the case. The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $999 with M4 with a 10-core CPU and a cut-down 8-core GPU, along with 16GB of memory and 256GB storage.

The 15-inch starting price also took a $100 price cut to $1,199. The entry-level configuration there has a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD.

This time around, RAM options start at 16GB and go up to a new maximum of 32GB. Each step up in memory is a whopping $200, which continues to be an absurdly high price to pay. That 32GB total could add $400 to your laptop.. Bumps up in storage between 256GB and 1TB are also $200 each, while the bump from 1TB to 2TB is an outrageous $400.

Apple sells its MacBook Airs with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of free tech support. AppleCare Plus for the 13-inch Air is $6.99 per month, $69.99 annually or $199 for three years, while the coverage for the 15-inch Air is $7.99 per month, $79.99 per year or $229 for three years. This includes extended coverage as well as accidental damage protection ($99 for screen damage or $299 for other damage).

If you're married to Windows, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition represents the pluses and minuses of competing with the MacBook Air. It has a great design and a screen better than what Apple offers here, but Intel's performance doesn't match M4 and some refinements need to be made to the keyboard and

.

With this design, Apple is in refinement mode. Adding a better webcam, faster ports, and a speedier chip while dropping the price is enough to make me overlook the lack of Wi-Fi 7. Looking to spend less than $1,500 (or possibly even $1,000)? Look at the MacBook Air first.

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.