Is Walmart’s $549 M1 MacBook Air too good to be true?

If you’re shopping for a MacBook this holiday season, you’ll find a few deals to save a few bucks, sometimes up to $250. But there’s one laptop for sale by a prominent retailer that looks like a deal that’s too good to be true: A MacBook Air for sale by Walmart for $549.

The Walmart MacBook Air isn’t a refurbished or used product–it’s a brand new laptop, the lowest-priced new Apple laptop you can find, in fact. It’s unclear what partnership it has with Apple, but Walmart has exclusively sold the M1 MacBook Air since 2004, when it first announced its $699 price tag. The price has been cut several times since then.

The lowest-priced MacBook at the Apple Store is the $999 MacBook Air, which you can find at third-party retailers such as Amazon for $749. But at $200 less than even that sale price, that $549 price tag for a brand-new MacBook Air is unprecedented and hard to resist, especially at a time when it feels like prices are going up for everything.

There’s got to be a catch, right? After all, it seems like a deal that’s too good to be true. Well, to say there’s a “catch” implies that there’s deception going on here, and that’s really not the case. (Though we take issue with the use of the label “Latest model” here.) But several compromises are made for a product at this price, compromises that you might be okay with, depending on your use case. Let’s take a look at what you’re getting in the $549 Walmart MacBook Air.

A five-year-old chip

The Walmart MacBook Air is the 2020 MacBook Air. It has the same components, down to the heart of the laptop, the M1 chip. The M1 chip made a thunderous debut five years ago, blowing away its Intel predecessors with its huge performance gains.

The most current M-series chip is the M5, but it has yet to debut in the MacBook Air–the current MacBook Air has an M4 chip. Compared to the M1, the M4 is 74 percent faster in multi-core tasks and 56 percent faster in single-core performance.

Maybe you just read that previous paragraph and looked at the chart and thought, “Multi-core, single-core, blah blah blah. Can’t this guy speak plain English?” Let’s put it this way:

• The M1 chip offers a vast speed improvement over any Intel-based MacBook Air and many Intel-based MacBook Pro models.
• The M1 chip is noticeably slower than the M4 in the current MacBook Air.

So, is the Walmart MacBook Air a bad deal from a processing speed standpoint? It depends. If you do a lot of tasks where you have to wait for the processor to do its thing–edit a lot of audio or videos, work on extremely detailed graphics, programming, etc.–the M1 MacBook Air takes longer to do those tasks than the M4 MacBook Air.

However, if your primary tasks involve internet access, communications, writing, basic media work, and other productivity tasks, then the Walmart MacBook Air will be fine. With these tasks, the difference between an M1 and an M4 is harder to notice.

It has only 8GB of unified memory

The Walmart MacBook Air comes with 8GB of unified memory (RAM), and it cannot be customized with more, nor can you add more memory down the road. If all you plan to do is use the laptop for Safari, FaceTime, Mail, YouTube, and basic productivity tasks, 8GB is fine. But if you constantly do demanding work on your Mac, then 8GB isn’t enough. It’ll drive you crazy.

Apple now includes 16GB of memory as its base configuration in current Macs, which was previously a $200 upgrade. There isn’t anything you can’t do with 8GB of RAM, but some Apple Intelligence tasks may take longer to run. Currently, 8GB is the minimum required for Apple Intelligence, so it’s possible that some future features will require 16GB of RAM.

A five-year-old display

The Walmart MacBook Air has a 13.3-inch Retina display, while the 13-inch M4 MacBook Air has a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display–the M4 laptop’s display has much smaller bezels around the display, giving it more usable screen space. The resolutions are basically the same, though the M4 Air’s screen has a higher maximum brightness (500 nits vs 400 nits).

Apple

The M4 Air’s display is better than the M1 Air’s, but the Walmart Air’s screen is still very good and perfectly acceptable for everyday use. But if your work as a visual element to it, you’ll appreciate the M4 Air’s display.

An old design

The Walmart MacBook Air features the wedge-shaped design that was introduced in 2008. Apple got rid of the design when it released the M2 MacBook Air, going with a more modern look and feel. If you long for the wedge design, the Walmart Air is the only way to go.

The current 13-inch MacBook Air design is about the same size as the previous one. The Walmart Air, at its thickest point, is bigger than the current air, but it also has a shorter depth and the same length. It’s also a tiny bit heavier.

Should you buy the Walmart MacBook Air?

If you need to buy a laptop now, here’s what I would tell someone who asked me whether they should buy the M1 MacBook Air: If you’re looking for a Chromebook-like Mac laptop, the Walmart Air is a great machine that will serve you well, especially for such a low price. However, if you’re going to be using your Mac for more creative applications, you should get something more powerful. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an M4 MacBook Air; it can be an M2 or M3 Air, but make sure you get at least 16GB of unified memory.

Another thing to consider is that Apple is reportedly going to release a low-cost MacBook early next year. According to rumors, it will likely use a version of the iPhone’s A19 Pro chip, which is technically faster than the M1, but not by much. It may also sport a design similar to the current MacBook lineup, and a display that’s slightly larger than the M1 Air’s. If you’re in no rush to buy, consider waiting to see what this new laptop is all about.

Be sure to check out our guide to the best Black Friday Mac deals and save some money. And to make sure you get what you paid for, be sure to read our tips to help you get the best Mac for your Black Friday budget.

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)

Price When Reviewed: £999 (256GB) | £1,249 (512GB)