15-inch MacBook Air (M4) review: A Mac rhapsody in (sky) blue

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While the MacBook Air is Apple’s most popular laptop, it’s not the first in line to get Apple’s latest M-series chip. That honor goes to Apple’s most powerful laptop, the MacBook Pro, which was updated with the M4 chip last October. The MacBook Air traditionally gets the chip update a few months afterward and right on schedule, the Air’s time has come for its M4 update.

The MacBook Air is a great laptop with an M4 or even with the older M3 chip. But even with the four major changes in the M4 MacBook Air, only one of them is a compelling reason to ditch an M3 MacBook Air that you recently bought. And if you’re still relying on an Intel-based MacBook Air, the M4 MacBook Air is an offer you can’t refuse–it has performance that will save you a significant amount of time.

15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Our model’s specifications

Apple offers three standard configurations each for the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air. The 15-inch MacBook Air in this review is customized with more RAM and storage than the top-end standard configuration, which starts at 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Here are the specs for our review unit:

• CPU: 10-core M4 (4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores)
• GPU: 10-core M4
• Neural engine: 16-core
• Memory: 16GB unified memory (120GBps memory bandwidth)
• Storage: 512TB SSD
• Display: 15.3-inch Liquid Retina LED backlit display with IPS; 2880-by-1864 native resolution at 224 pixels per inch; 500 nits brightness; P3 color; True Tone
• Ports: 2 Thunderbolt 4/USB-C; MagSafe 3; 3.5mm audio
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax); Bluetooth 5.3
• Weight: 3.3 pounds (1.51 kg)
• Dimensions: 0.45 by 13.40 by 9.35 inches (1.15 by 34.04 by 23.76 centimeters)
• Battery capacity: 66.5Wh
• Price (as tested): $1,399/£1,399/CA$1,999/AU$2,399

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15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Performance

The new MacBook Air spotlights its new M4 chip, which has a 10-core CPU (4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores), 8-core or 10-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine. Compared to the M3 it replaced, the M4 has two more efficiency cores, two more GPU cores, and general CPU tweaks to make it a better performer.

Our performance analysis starts with Geekbench 6 for a general, overall view. In both the Single-Core and Multi-Core tests, the M4 MacBook Air was 23 percent faster than the M3 MacBook Air. That’s along the lines of what we usually get from one chip generation to another.

The older the chip, the better the performance comparison gets with the M4. The M4 offers a 46 percent boost over the M2 MacBook Air; if you have an M2 Air, that boost is attractive, but you might shrug and decide you don’t need to upgrade. If you have a M1 MacBook Air, however, the M4 upgrade is a lot more attractive from a pure performance perspective.

If you have an Intel MacBook Air, well, I’ve urged you to upgrade to an M-series Air since the M2, but I understand if you’ve hedged then, even with the M3. But upgrading to an M4 will being substantial time savings no matter what you’re doing.

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Cinebench 2024 is a test that performs 3D rendering. Most people who do the kind of work tested by Cinebench are using a higher-need MacBook Pro, but the MacBook Air is up to the task. Again, as we saw with Geekbench, the results show an solid incremental 21 percent boost from the M3 to the M4.

We used HandBrake to encode the Tears of Steel video from 4K to a 1080p H.265 file. When doing the encoding completely in software using the H.265 (x265) video encoder, the M4 is a healthy 31 percent faster than the M3. When using the available hardware acceleration through HandBrake’s H.265 (VideoToolBox) encoder, the M4 was 40 percent faster.

We exported a 10-minute 4K video at two settings in iMovie to gauge CPU performance. The M4 was 16 percent faster than the M3 when exporting the file using the ProRes codec. When we changed the quality setting of the export to High, the M4 advantage shrank to 6 percent.

The SSD results between the M3 and M4 MacBook Air are practically the same. There’s a little boost from the M2 to the M4, but you need to do long, sustained disk reads and writes to tell the difference.

With the M1 and M2 MacBook Air with 256GB of storage, Apple used a single 256GB SSD chip, which adversely affected performance. The company changed that to a pair of 128GB SSD chips in the M3 MacBook Air, which improved performance. Our review unit has a 512GB SSD (presumably installed as multiple SSD chips), so we can’t verify the performance of the laptop with a 256GB SSD, but it would seem unwise for Apple to go back to its old ways. We don’t think you need to worry if you’re eyeing an Air with a 256GB SSD.

Geekbench’s Compute benchmark tests GPU performance using Metal or OpenCL APIs. If a game has been written natively for the Mac, it should be using the Metal API for the best performance. The M4 MacBook Air offers a 16 percent boost over the M3–both of these chips have a 10-core GPU, so Apple has improved the M4’s GPU.

Testing was done using the built-in benchmarks for Borderlands 3, Total War: Warhammer III, and Civilization VI. Game Mode for macOS automatically activates when a game launches to optimize performance.

Geekbench AI

^{Results are expressed as Geekbench scores. Higher scores/longer bars are faster.}

Apple Intelligence is a major marketing message from Apple. Whether you’re using the AI-based features or not, they’re part of Apple promotions going forward. Apple Intelligence started to appear in macOS Sequoia 15.1 and more features will be delivered over time.

Geekbench offers an AI benchmark that checks the performance of Apple Neural Engine in its chips. But the way Apple Intelligence is implemented now doesn’t feel super processor intensive so you’re not going to feel a difference in say, using Image Playground on an M4 than on an M1.

15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Ports, external display support, and connectivity

Apple still provides two USB Type-C ports on the M4 MacBook Air, but they’ve been upgraded from Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 4. This leads to the most compelling reason to upgrade from an M3 or older Air: the M4 Air can run up to two external displays at 6k resolution and 60Hz. That’s in addition to the laptop display, so there’s no more clamshell compromise as was with the M3 Air. That’s a big deal for a lot of users who bought a MacBook Pro instead or turned to an external hub solution.

Other than the better display support, users aren’t going to notice much of a difference between Thunderbolt 3 and 4. As usual, the Thunderbolt ports are also USB-C ports and these ports support the USB 4 specification, thus Apple calls them Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports.

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The M4 MacBook Air uses Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity. Apple has not commented on why it didn’t upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 like it did with the iPhone 16, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. You need to be connecting to Wi-Fi 7 hotspots to take advantage of the faster speed, and they’re not readily available right now.

15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Camera

The M4 MacBook Air drops the aging 1080p FaceTime camera for something more modern: a 12MP Center Stage camera. It’s the same camera that Apple offers in the MacBook Pro, and it has much-improved image quality. Center Stage is a boon, too; I only realized recently how much I shift around while recording the Macworld Podcast (excuse me for the plug), and Center Stage helps make sure I’m centered in the frame, which matters when you’re in a video with multiple users. Video conferences are now the norm, so having a high-quality camera in the MacBook Air is a great and necessary feature.

The 12MP camera on the Mac has been a long time coming. It was only four years ago that Apple introduced the 1080p camera to replace the 720p one starting with the iMac, while in the meantime, the 12MP front-facing camera has been on the iPhone since the iPhone 11 in 2019. So yeah, finally. (That also means longtime readers of Macworld can now stop hearing us harp about the Mac cameras. At least until 12MP becomes passé.)

15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Battery life & charging

The M4 MacBook Air has the same battery as before: a 66.5-watt-hour lithium polymer battery that Apple says offers 15 hours of “wireless web” and 18 hours of “video streaming.”

Our battery life test involved playing a loop of the 4K Tears of Steel video with the display set at 150 nits. The new laptop didn’t last quite as long as the M2 and M3 MacBook Airs, but it still took nearly 18 hours to drain its battery. While using the M4 Air for work all day (mostly to write this review), I never had a concern for battery life and didn’t need to plug it in until I was done for the day.

The included 35W power adapter has two USB-C ports, so you can plug in another device and charge it along with the Air. Apple includes a braided MagSafe cable that is color-matched to the laptop.

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15-inch M4 MacBook Air: Enter Sky Blue, exit Space Gray

Apple introduces a new Sky Blue color that replaces Space Gray. It almost feels like Apple introduced Sky Blue and dropped Space Gray to emphasize the color scheme it does with consumer-level products, which are offered in a “rainbow” of colors.

Sky Blue is lighter than the Blue iMac (the one I reviewed last November) and it’s a nice shade that looks fine on a laptop. It’s not the same as Ultramarine on the iPhone 16, but it’s close enough if you’re into coordinating your Apple device colors.

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If you want a darker MacBook Air, your only choice now is Midnight. I can’t say I’m going to miss Space Gray, but I didn’t hate it, either. It varied in tone over the years, and I preferred it in darker shades. Apple will probably bring it back someday; maybe they’ll spell it as “Grey” to give it new life.

15-inch M4 MacBook Air: What didn’t change

This review focuses on what Apple changed from the M3 to the M4 MacBook Air. The following components did not change but should be mentioned since they do play a role in your buying decision. I’ve included links to our original posts, in case you’re interested in more detail.

• Design: Apple introduced this design with the M2 MacBook Air. Learn more.
• Display: The Liquid Retina (LED) display still looks great. Learn more.
• Keyboard and trackpad: Other than the mute icon, which gets a slash on the M4 MacBook Air, the keyboard is the same Magic Keyboard introduced with the last Intel model in 2020 and updated with the M2 redesign. Learn more.

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Should you buy the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air?

In my M3 MacBook Air review last year, I said it was “the best laptop choice for just about anyone.” With the M4 MacBook Air, that holds, but this laptop is better. The M3 Air’s clamshell compromise with the external display support was a deal killer for a lot of users. So, the M4 Air’s expanded external display support is a more important upgrade than the performance improvements. Don’t get me wrong, though–faster is always better. The 12MP Center Stage camera is an overdue upgrade that makes Apple’s general consumer laptop feel more professional.

It’s also cheaper by $100 across the board. The model we tested that sells for $1,399 would have been $1,499 for the same specs with an M3 chip. That’s a nice and surprising discount, especially considering you get twice the RAM you got when the M3 launched in March 2024.

That all being said, if you have an M3 or M2 MacBook Air in a production environment and its external display support is a major hindrance to your productivity, then this is a no-brainer upgrade. But if that’s not the case, then it’s also likely that you are not doing the type of work where the speed difference would have a noticeable effect. The MacBook Air you have will capably serve you for years to come.

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If you have an M1 MacBook Air, well, that’s when this M4 model looks very appealing. The M4 Air isn’t just about a faster chip, it’s also a fresh design, an upgrade from a 720p FaceTime camera, and better external display support. Plus, the M1 Air was available only in a 13-inch design, and now there’s also a 15-inch model available. So there’s a lot more here to enjoy if you decide to upgrade.

And finally, my recommendation to Intel-based MacBook Air owners is the same as with the M3 MacBook Air: Make the investment. Even if you need an Intel machine becuse you’re relying on some tool or software that isn’t Apple silicon-compatible, you need to rectify that situation because you are hindering your productivity. Make the change. You won’t regret it.