- Apple adds M4 to its MacBook Air
- The laptop welcomes the Center Scene
- There is a new color while another nuance is retired
Apple’s MacBook Air, arguably the most popular Mac and a laptop that regularly sits near the top of our best list list, finally gets the M4 chip, a piece of Apple Silicon that first appeared in the iPad Pro last year and later MacBook Pro. It is also pretty surprising to see a price drop.
While basically the same laptop as last year’s MacBook Air M3 (and M2 from the previous year), there are a handful of upgrades and even an aesthetic change. In addition to the M4 chip, the Apple is upgrading the Facetime camera with center phase -functionality, and the laptop now has two Thunderbolt 4 ports.
These gates offer about the same flow as last year’s Thunderbolt 3 port (up to 40 Gbps), but with a noticeable difference. The MacBook Air M4 can now operate two external screens through these gates, while still driving the laptop’s most important liquid retina screen. That’s right, the laptop remains open.
There is also a new color to consider: Sky Blue. It replaces space gray and ends up for midnight, star light and silver.
These updates run over the 13-inch and 15-inch models, which now, something remarkable is $ 100 cheaper than last year. The 13-inch MacBook Air M4 starts at $ 999 with 16 GB of memory and the 15-inch model starts at $ 1,199.
Digs in
M4-CHIP brings more power in the form of a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU. You can also specify up to 32 GB of overall memory.
In practice, this makes this MacBook Air M4 a better system for creativity and business. While I didn’t try the laptops for myself, Apple showed me some impressive live demos.
We saw as photo editor Pixelmator Pro, which Apple bought last year, knocked at the 12MP Center Stage camera, took a main shot and then used backgrounds and other presets to make a passport photo quickly.
M4 supports Apple Intelligence and MacBook Air uses it well. We saw Apple Intelligence quickly pull numbers from an unorganized document and instantly create a useful table. Writing tools were used to generate a performing summary from a long document.
We saw some integrations of Apple Intelligence in third -party apps. In one case, we chose a picture playground button to quickly generate a colorful image of a backpack in a forest. Apple’s generative image work is increasingly leaning against cartoon than realism.
Apple then switched to blender, an open source 3D app, optimized to run naturally on Apple Silicon. With that, we could reproduce a complex Arctic IS SCAPE image in just 18 seconds.
M4’s powerful 16-core neural engine is not just for Apple’s AI tools. In one case, we switched to Companion from Webai, a large language model with 22 billion parameters, and using the app Intts, which connects third-party apps to Apple Intelligence capacities, began entering requests for a document we had open.
The companion answered the requests and even opened the original mail app to send a report.
Apple has worked hard to convince the world that Mac is AAA game ready, so I wasn’t surprised to watch Wuthering waves run on the MacBook Air M4. The gameplay was smooth with zero tearing, steming or visible frame loss.
Perhaps the most surprising thing was that everything Apple showed me was running at once. It was a lovely demonstration of M4’s raw power.
Apple claims 18 hours of battery life and showed us how the Demo MacBook Air wasn’t even connected, a further demonstration of how performance would not change if you are not tied to an outlet.
A fixed design
Apart from price and performance, the MacBook Air M4 13 and 15-inch are identical to the M3 devices.
In my very short time with them they looked and felt the same. 13-inch is still 2.7 lbs. And the 15-inch model is 3.3 lbs. They still feel thin and light.
Apart from the central higher resolution camera, the screen specifications are unchanged. Both offer liquid retina screens with 2560×1664 solutions and 500 niters of brightness. Chopped that accommodates the facial -id’s camera remains. It is a nice screen with lively colors and crispy images. Unfortunately, it did not get MacBook Pro’s reflection-winning nano-texturt glass.
The keyboard, which includes touch -ID -In / off button, is unchanged and feels as good as it does on the M3 MacBook Air. Oh, and the almost paste -like sky blue is lovely.
There will be a little bit of mix as the MacBook Air M4 enters the market. Both the M2 and M3 models will be interrupted where the M4 model is now the only officially available MacBook Air, but like and MacBook Air M1, some retailers can continue to sell M2 and M3 models while clearing their stock – and hopefully getting these decent price cuts.
Given the well-established and generally comfortable design, M4-grade power and a more attractive price, the MacBook Air M4 is a good chance of moving up our best laptops list.
You can pre -order the MacBook Air M4 in 13 or 15 inches today and it will be shipped on March 12.
