The 2025 MacBook Air with Apple’s M4 processor comes as close as you can get to a perfect computer for just about everyone. As I found during testing for this review, Apple crammed tons of power into a svelte, lightweight design. And this combination has never been more affordable.
This latest MacBook Air might look familiar on the outside. But when you get to work, you’ll quickly discover that the M4 is a totally different beast. M3 to M4 is the biggest leap in performance since Apple’s original switch from Intel processors to Apple silicon.
I put the latest MacBook Air through its paces for this hands-on review — read what I learned below or watch our video.
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2025 MacBook Air with M4 review
Powered by Apple's M4 chip, this 13-inch laptop delivers excellent performance and extreme efficiency in the same gorgeous design as last year's model. It packs two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe connector for fast charging, with Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. It comes in four colors, including an interesting new sky blue.
- Outstanding Apple design
- 18-hour battery life
- Supports Apple Intelligence
- Limited ports
The MacBook Air is Apple’s consumer Mac laptop. Its higher-end equivalent, which gets faster processors, a brighter display and more ports, is the MacBook Pro.
If someone needs a Mac, you start with the MacBook Air. Only if they strongly reassure you that they never need to take it anywhere do you then recommend a Mac mini or iMac instead; only if they are a professional video editor, graphic designer, programmer or in another such trade do you tell them to get a MacBook Pro.
Ever since Apple began putting its own custom-designed processors in the Mac, the MacBook Air has had a sort of elevated status. It’s no longer just the lightweight or low-cost option — the MacBook Air is powerful enough for nearly everyone’s daily work. It just so happens to also weigh only 2.7 pounds and get 18 hours of battery life.
Table of contents: M4 MacBook Air review
- What I ordered
- Design
- Sky blue
- Display
- Ports and connectivity
- Performance and battery life
- Miscellaneous
- Conclusion
- Price
What I ordered
I ordered the base model MacBook Air, the one nearly everyone will be buying. For $999 ($1,073.93 after taxes, in Ohio) it comes with:
- 13.6-inch 2K Retina display
- 256 GB storage
- 16 GB unified memory
- M4 chip with a 10-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 16-core Neural Engine
- Two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports
- 30W MagSafe power adapter
- Wi-Fi 6e, Bluetooth 5.3
There’s no longer an old MacBook Air artificially lowering the entry-level price point. The $999 model is Apple’s latest and greatest. And on the Apple Education Store, it’s an even-cheaper $899.
Thankfully, all MacBook Airs now come with 16GB of memory, so it’s likely the only spec you’ll need to upgrade is storage. This base model’s 256GB of storage feels pretty cramped if you use a lot of pro desktop apps. As a bonus, bumping up to 512GB of storage for $200 also comes with a slightly nicer M4 chip. Upgrading to 24GB of memory costs another $200, but that’s not as necessary. The 15-inch model also adds an extra $200.
Design
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The M4 MacBook Air carries on the design of the prior M2 and M3 models. That is to say that it no longer has the iconic wedge shape it donned through the 2010s, but looks like a slimmer MacBook Pro.
And it is much slimmer. The body, without the feet, is thinner than an iPhone 16 Pro. The rounded body and the squared-off lid mean your hands no longer get confused about whether you’re grabbing the top or the bottom — you can feel the different edges.
It’s attractive, well-balanced and lightweight. The feet on the bottom are a little thick, raising the MacBook over a desk surface, but hopefully offer a degree of protection if a drink is spilled nearby. The hinge continues to be the best in the industry, holding the display perfectly still, while it’s easily adjustable with a single finger.
The keyboard is fine for a laptop keyboard. I feel a little clumsy typing on it since I’m used to larger keys with more travel. It’s odd that it no longer has keyboard backlight brightness controls as F5 and F6. And if you set up your MacBook Air from the backup of a desktop Mac, you won’t find the backlight control in Control Center — you must add it in System Settings before you can turn it on or off. I would certainly use keyboard brightness keys more than the Dictation and Do Not Disturb keys Apple placed there by default, but you can change things up using an app like Karabiner Elements.
The large trackpad is absolute perfection. It’s completely smooth, frictionless glass; the Force Touch feature with haptic feedback is unparalleled. I found the M4 MacBook Air’s palm rejection, which prevents your wrist from errantly tapping the trackpad while you’re typing on the keyboard, to be flawless during my testing for this review.
Sky blue
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Of course, I had to order the MacBook Air in its new color, sky blue. In the lighting of the Apple Store, it actually looked about as blue as its promotional images online. When you take it home, it’s more of a cooler silver. It has more color to it than Starlight, but only in the brightest of rooms is it ever obvious that it’s blue.
You know when you’re at a fast food restaurant and you get a cup of water, and the fountain drink machine has a combined water + lemonade dispenser? You press the water lever, but a little bit of lemonade is mixed in at first, so your water is slightly off. That’s about how blue it is.
Apple has previously stated that the reason bolder colors aren’t used on its computers is that in practice, users find the colors distracting on the display. That may be true; the iMac is super vibrant on the back but more muted on its face.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
But any parent will tell you that at some point, you just need to let the kid make the mistake for themselves. Let them eat too much sugar for dinner once, so that they get a little sick and don’t ask again.
Apple should release an obnoxiously blue MacBook Air that’s as blue as the iBook G3 — just once. Some people will buy it; some people will realize it was a terrible mistake. Then, either Apple pares the colors back down and people won’t complain anymore, or it’ll be so popular that Apple will have been proven wrong. It’s a win-win scenario.
Display
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Even on Apple’s entry-level laptop, the company can’t help but make a fantastic display.
It’s a bright 500 nits, which is plenty bright for a well-lit indoor environment. While the M4 MacBook Pro puts out a brighter 1,000 nits for outdoor use, I had no trouble using the M4 MacBook Air in broad daylight on a clear day. In fact, I wrote parts of this review outdoors on my back porch. The MacBook Pro also supports HDR, and while that’s also absent on the Air, its P3 color gamut gives you over a billion vibrant colors.
The 13.6-inch Retina display has a resolution of 2560 × 1664. While it’s a mid-sized laptop, the high resolution and slim bezels give you plenty of space. You can run it in a scaling mode to get even more space if you need it — if your eyes are sharp enough — although text will be a little fuzzy.
You have enough room to passably use those pro apps that typically demand acres of screen real estate, like Affinity Photo, Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro — but you probably won’t be bouncing between them side-by-side as you might on a desktop. If you use these apps regularly and plan on doing so on the go, I’d recommend the 15-inch model.
Ports and connectivity
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
But of course, it’s not all about the built-in display. You can plug in up to two 6K displays with the lid open as well. All I had available to test it with were two 5K displays — like some kind of filthy peasant — but running each in a scaling mode for 6K resolution gave me the gist. I was absolutely swimming in space.
And thanks to the magic of Thunderbolt 4, a single cable can connect you to both displays while charging the computer and powering extra accessories. You can keep your MagSafe cable permanently tucked away in your bag for when you’re on the go and instantly dock your MacBook when you’re at home.
My only complaint is that the headphone jack is on the wrong side. Headphones are often wired to the left ear, whereas the jack is on the right — and on the opposite side as all the other ports, no less. But it’s a mild inconvenience.
The M4 chip is capable of handling much more than the MacBook Air comes with. The Mac mini, for example, comes with three Thunderbolt 4 ports and two USB-C ports, HDMI and Ethernet. But the two ports it has offer all the connectivity you’d ever really need.
M4 MacBook Air performance and battery life review
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
With Apple silicon, the MacBook Air defies all expectations of performance. It continues to astound me what a device so impossibly thin is capable of.
I timed various tasks I do in my regular work. I rendered a video in Final Cut Pro, exported an episode of The CultCast, created an AI transcription using MacWhisper, ran a benchmark test in Xcode and ran a data mining Python script via the command line.
It seems I can now get comparable or better performance out of this thin fan-less laptop than my M2 Pro Mac mini from just two years ago, which I spent much more money on. That’s trickle-down performance.
Unlike performance PC laptops, the MacBook Air performs exactly the same on battery as it does plugged in. In fact, I completed all the speed tests unplugged over a morning, and it had only drained to about 94%. Also, it’s under three pounds and under half an inch thick. The difference could not be more stark.
Miscellaneous
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The camera is fine. It’s good enough for the occasional meeting and FaceTime call, but it’s far too smudgy and grainy for much more than that. It now features Center Stage and Desk View, both excellent features.
The speakers are plenty loud for personal use watching a video, but unsurprisingly, they’re a bit tinny with very little bass.
Apple has slightly tweaked the keyboard icons. The Mute icon now has a slash over the speaker, making it easier to differentiate from the Volume Down icon. The symbols on the Command, Option and Control keys are now aligned outwards of the spacebar, rather than inwards. Also, the Underscore symbol has been lowered relative to the ) and + symbols next to it, making it more obvious that it’s an underscore ( _ ) and not an en-dash ( — ).
Conclusion: M4 MacBook Air review
Most people, if they own anything other than a phone, keep only one additional device. If you decide that device should be a laptop, the MacBook Air is the best choice there is. It’s light as a feather and powerful enough to handle everything I could throw at it with absolute grace.
Personally, I don’t have room in my life for a MacBook. I always plan on having some manner of desktop Mac to run my Plex server and store my media libraries. I’m happy with my Apple Vision Pro headset for handling lighter work and home entertainment. If I were to add another form factor to the mix, I would sooner grab an iPad for its unique capabilities as a tablet.
Still, I was impressed by my time with the M4 Macbook Air for this review. It’s good to know that the vast majority of people who prefer laptops still have an excellent choice.
★★★★★
Price
The MacBook Air starts at $999.
Buy from: Amazon
Powered by Apple's M4 chip, this 13-inch laptop delivers excellent performance and extreme efficiency in the same gorgeous design as last year's model. It packs two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe connector for fast charging, with Wi-Fi 6E connectivity. It comes in four colors, including an interesting new sky blue.
- Outstanding Apple design
- 18-hour battery life
- Supports Apple Intelligence
- Limited ports
Apple did not provide Cult of Mac with a review unit for this article. See our reviews policy, and check out more in-depth reviews of Apple-related items.
D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been a passionate computer enthusiast since 2002, when he got his first PC — but since getting a Mac in 2008, he hasn’t turned back. His skills in graphic and web design, along with video and podcast editing, are self-taught over 20+ years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His collection of old computers is made up of 40+ desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices, dating back to the early ’80s. He brings all of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, into his work for Cult of Mac.
