Apple MacBook Air M4 Review: Feeling Ever So Blue

Taking on a new MacBook Air for review is like slipping into a warm pair of your favorite pajamas. There’s a sense of comfort in the familiar. If all you want is a solid MacBook with good performance at its lowest price, this is it. The MacBook Air M4 starts at $1,000 (the 15-inch model starts at $1,200), the price Apple set for the M2 MacBook Air in 2024. You no longer have to worry about only netting 8 GB of RAM for the stock MacBook, either. Apple has since changed the standard; now, all models sport 16 GB.

You can expect moderate gains in performance over the 2024 Air, which may be enough for some to make it worth the upgrade from an earlier M-series or Intel MacBook, just as Apple hopes you will. You will also finally be able to connect to two external monitors with the lid open for a full three-screen experience. Otherwise, you still have a choice of 13-inch or 15-inch designs. You have the same webcam cutout notch hanging like a wedge from the upper bezel. It’s the same chassis as we’ve had the past three years, which is what I wouldn’t give to see Apple stick a single blaring pink or green iPhone color on its cheapest laptop.

For the best performance on its light and thin laptops, the M4 MacBook Pro does the job. When the base MacBook Pro 14 M4 starts at $1,600, a 13-inch MacBook Air feels all the more like a solid buy. The Apple M-series still reigns supreme in benchmarks, cementing the MacBook as the quality all-rounder it’s been since the launch of the M1. If Apple had only lost the notch and given us a fun color option for once, this would be my forever MacBook. Instead, I’ll just keep staring at the cover until I’m blue in the face.

Apple MacBook Air M4 Review: Performance

There is a sizable gulf in performance between the M3 MacBook Air and the updated M4 version, though not as big as the M1 to M2. This time last year, I said the M3 MacBook Air was close in capabilities to the M3 MacBook Pro despite the price difference. The M4 MacBook Pro has a slight lead over the latest thin and light Apple laptop, though only by single-digit percentage points. Either way, this latest MacBook seems like a tempting upgrade for those sitting on an M1 MacBook. In our tests, there were some serious gains over M2 and M3.

In Geekbench 6, the MacBook Air M4 hit 3,720 in single-core and 14,891 in multi-core settings, Which is close to 600 points and 2,800 more than the MacBook Air M3. It scored 30 points over the M3 MacBook Air in Cinebench 2024’s single-core CPU rendering benchmark and 100 points more in multi-core settings. The same CPU on the MacBook Air was—at max—five points shy of the MacBook Pro 14 in these same tests. If you compare M4 to M2, some of our tests with these same benchmarks showed serious leaps in capabilities.

The 10-core GPU was also a better performer than in the past. In Geekbench 6 Metal benchmarks, the M4 did just under 10% better than the M3. As for our Blender rendering benchmark, where we ask the Mac to render a scene of a BMW, the Macbook Air M4 was 53 seconds faster than the MacBook Air with M3, finishing at 3 minutes and 1 second while relying on the CPU. The latest MacBook Air was more than 3 minutes faster than M2 rendering on the GPU.

In our Handbrake tests, where we get the Mac to transcode a 4K movie into 1080p, the M4 Macbook Air finished the task close to 1 minute and 20 seconds faster than the M3, ending the test at just over 2 minutes and 7 seconds. Simply put, the M4 MacBook Air is plenty strong for most average productivity and some more intensive rendering or graphics tasks. It won’t be the performer of an M4 Pro or M4 Max on a Mac mini or MacBook Pro, but it packs enough power in its light frame that the tradeoff is worth it.

It’s a solid performer in synthetic and non-synthetic benchmarks, but we were keen to see how well it handles gaming. Apple has continued to promote its latest Mac products as performers in gaming, but mileage may vary. In Resident Evil 4, at the highest resolution of 2560 by 1664, I could get between 50 and 60 FPS, a stable framerate, with the default mid-to-high settings with MetalFX upscaling set to performance. Fiddling with these settings could experience drops as low as 30 FPS, but the game is playable and looks fine in these circumstances. It’s about what I could get in performance on the MacBook Pro 14 with M4.

The jump from Intel to M1 CPUs was a huge leap. Then, when Apple went from M1 on MacBook Air to M2, some tests showed the newer chip could complete tasks in half the time. The performance delta has closed since then. M3 and M4 are closer in capabilities than M1 and M2, but if you had waited to jump from earlier Apple silicon to the latest, this has been the best performance gains from the past few generations of Apple laptops.

Apple MacBook Air M4 Review: Build Quality

The latest MacBook Air colorway is not “Sky Blue,” as Apple intended. The tech giant says this sheen offers a “metallic light blue” color that’s supposed to show a different color in different light. In the dark, it has a grainy exterior that seems more silver than blue. If you compare it to a cloudless sky on a bright, sunny day, at most, it’s a cool gray color with a bare hint of blue. I went around my office and found everything with a sky blue hue, including last year’s Microsoft Surface Pro. That Windows tablet laptop is certainly blue. This latest Macbook is certainly not.

The MacBook Air M4 still uses the same shell as the M2 MacBook Air. The last big color addition was the “Midnight” blue-ish black, which still has a problem picking up fingerprints. Compared to the Starlight on my M3 MacBook Air 13, the sky blue also tended to pick up scuffs just from being in my backpack. The Midnight black is anodized to the laptop shell, meaning it should protect better against scuffs, scratches, or fingerprints (though it didn’t help much with the latter, in our experience). This latest MacBook finish isn’t anodized, and I struggled to buff out any of the blemishes that appeared on the lid.

Decide for yourself. Take a look at the pictures below, and tell me if you catch more than a hint of blue.

Otherwise, it’s the same old, relatively thin, and light frame we’ve seen before. The 13-inch model is .44 inches thick from stem to stern, and it weighs 2.7 pounds. No, it’s not technically the least weighty laptop around. I’ve held devices like the Asus Zenbook A14 and wondered if there were any actual components inside.

The variant sent to me for review was the MacBook Air M4 for $1,200 with a 10-core GPU, compared to the base model, which contains an 8-core GPU. Whether you opt for the cheaper version, you can still access two Thunderbolt 4 USB ports, a headphone jack, and the MagSafe charging port. It’s disappointing we didn’t get Thunderbolt 5 on the new MacBook Air, which now remains a Pro-only feature and one you only get if you spend even more money over the base model.

MacBook Air M4 Review: Display and Sound

There’s the usual Liquid Retina IPS LCD and the love-it-or-hate-it Magic Keyboard. It’s still what we’ve come to expect, including that damn notch. At the very least, it’s bright enough for dim or bright lights. The only issue you’ll run into compared to more expensive MacBooks is the reflections on the MacBook Air, which can get a little much in certain lights. It’s not the worst, but it’s not the best either.

The big landmark update for MacBook Air M4 is the ability to use three displays at once. That includes two external monitors up to 5K resolution and the MacBook Air’s display. The M3 model forced you to keep the lid closed for the dual-screen experience. This works, but of course, you’ll be using up all your precious ports unless you have a port dock nearby.

I’m always surprised by the audio quality of the MacBook Air, especially considering the lack of speaker grating compared to the MacBook Pro. The 13-inch version includes a 4-speaker setup, while the 13-inch rounds up to 6 speakers. The sound quality is loud and clear enough for a night lounging with a partner in bed, and it’s light enough to frisbee across the room (hopefully onto a pile of cushions) when you’re done with Netflix and want to move onto the “chill.”

Apple MacBook Air M4 Review: Verdict

Hello, Mr. (Not So) Blue Sky

As much as I might complain about the MacBook Air’s misleading shell color, this latest MacBook Air promises to be the best starting place for those looking to get into Apple’s laptop ecosystem or upgrade from an age-old system. The $1,000 version comes with an 8-core GPU, and while I can’t speak to the performance on that version, the CPU capabilities are already very good for most daily productivity tasks; it seems a good choice for most potential users.

If I had the choice of buying a MacBook Air M4 or MacBook Pro with the base M4 chip, I would opt for the $1,200 model without much waffling. Of course, Apple’s upselling model means that if you want the 1 TB SSD on the 10 GB GPU model, you need to spend close to $1,400. That’s still $400 less than the specs of the MacBook Pro. You miss out on the mini-LED display, better resolution, speaker cutouts, and extra ports. However, if you’re simply looking for a MacBook for basic productivity, 2025’s rendition of the Air at its lower price point is the better choice for the average consumer.

Apple’s problem is it keeps trying to lure any lingering Intel users to the latest Apple silicon by posting numbers over and over while hoping those old-school Mac users will care. We’re a tech site, and of course, we like to see numbers go up. But not everybody cares nearly as much. The last time Apple updated the MacBook Air shell was in 2022. It was fine then, but now it feels typified. When I run from event to event, trying laptops with anodized “ceraluminum” finishes or shells that help each PC feel unique, Apple seems stuck in time.