Apple MacBook Air with M4 Review: Thin in Size, Price, and Sometimes Performance

Mar 11, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A silver laptop is open on a wooden surface, displaying a desktop screen with app icons. The keyboard and trackpad are visible. In the corner, there is an overlay with the words "PetaPixel Reviews.

Not everyone has the need or budget to spring for Apple’s powerful MacBook Pro notebooks. Besides, some users just want their laptops to be as thin and lightweight as possible. Enter the newest, M4-powered version of the world’s most popular laptop, the MacBook Air.

The Apple MacBook Air looks the part of a premium laptop — is it ever gorgeous in the new sky blue finish — and the price is right, with the base 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 costing just $999, $100 less than the prior generation’s starting price. The MacBook Air is undoubtedly an attractive option for many reasons, including price and style, but is it powerful enough for photographers and videographers?

A laptop with a visible keyboard and a screen displaying a blue-themed desktop. The laptop is on a quilt featuring purple, blue, and black patches with a polka dot pattern.

That’s a tricky question, but I will do my best. My review unit, supplied as a short-term loaner by Apple, is a 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 in the eye-catching Sky Blue finish. All but the $999 MacBook Air configuration ship with the same M4 chip, which includes 10 CPU cores and as many GPU cores. The $999 13-inch MacBook Air has two fewer GPU cores, bringing it down to eight.

My review sample also has 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, neither of which are standard. While the SSD size has no real bearing on performance, the amount of unified memory, double the standard loadout of 16GB, does. As configured, this loaner unit is $2,399.

However, it is possible to get a 15-inch MacBook Air with 32GB of memory for $1,799, which includes 512GB of storage. The 13-inch version with the same 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage is $1,599. When you start increasing memory and storage, the MacBook Air’s impressive value proposition erodes somewhat quickly, but more on that later.

Apple MacBook Air with M4: Design and Build

While there’s nothing new about the M4 MacBook Air in terms of its overall size and shape, it does come with a novel fourth finish option, sky blue. This light blue joins the existing silver, starlight (a sort of gold), and midnight options.

Apple sent the sky blue one for review, and I was excited to see it in person.

A closed silver laptop with an Apple logo on the back, resting on a wooden surface.

Apple explains that the new sky blue is a very light, subtle blue that changes tone based on the lighting conditions, and that’s entirely accurate in my experience. In some situations, the sky blue basically looks like a slightly cool silver, while in others, it appears obviously blue. To my eyes, it seems more vibrant in direct light, while in shaded situations it is muted. In any case, it’s a classy new finish.

When shown against the Mac mini here, the sky blue finish is quite easy to see.

But would I get it? If I transported myself to my college days, when I rocked an old Intel MacBook Air for all my school work, I might have gone for this new sky blue if it had been an option. In my professional era, however, I prefer computers with neutral finishes, like silver or midnight. The new sky blue is not quite my speed, but there’s no denying it’s a lovely addition to the lineup.

While I’m reviewing the 15-inch version, that doesn’t have much bearing on the MacBook Air’s design. Each size offers the same battery life (18 hours), chip (M4), memory and storage limits (32GB and 2TB), display technology (Liquid Retina display with 500 nits of brightness and wide color (P3), albeit with slightly different resolutions), and ports (two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports).

Side view of a closed, thin laptop on a wooden surface, showing two USB-C ports and a headphone jack. The laptop is sleek and metallic, with a minimalist design. — The MacBook Air does not have many ports. Save for the 3.5mm headphone jack on the other side, this is it.

However, there are just a handful of differences between the two size options for the MacBook Air. The 13-inch MacBook Air is technically thinner, 0.44 inch (11.3 millimeters) versus 0.45 inch (11.5 millimeters). Bravo if you can tell the difference by looking at or holding them, and I also don’t believe you. The 15-inch MacBook Air has two extra speakers, bringing its total to six. Alongside this higher speaker count, the larger MacBook Air also features force-canceling woofers, which deliver entirely acceptable sound quality but not as good of audio as my daily driver, an M1 Max MacBook Pro.

Finally, if you compare the base 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Airs, which ship with different numbers of GPU cores (eight versus 10), the bigger and more powerful machine ships standard with a 35-watt dual USB-C port compact power adapter, while the $999 13-inch MacBook Air packs a 30-watt power adapter with a single USB-C port instead. You can upgrade this for $20, or opt for a 70-watt single-port charger for the same upcharge. For what it’s worth, I like the 35-watt dual USB-C port charger that shipped with my test unit. It’s convenient.

Ports and Connectivity

Those relatively minor differences aside, the rest of the MacBook Air family is unified, including its ports and connectivity. The MacBook Air has a MagSafe port flanked by two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on its left side and just a 3.5mm headphone jack on its right side.

While the array of ports is unchanged from the last MacBook Air and remains relatively ho-hum (a third USB-C port would make a big difference for photographers and video editors with many accessories, especially since there is no built-in SD card reader), there is one big upgrade. Thanks to the jump to M4, users can now use up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz alongside the built-in display, meaning that technically, the MacBook Air supports three displays. The last generation also supported two external displays, but you had to close the notebook to use them.

Users can leverage the MacBook Air’s two Thunderbolt 4 ports to use two external displays in addition to the MacBook Air’s internal panel. While the M3 MacBook Air could also power two displays, it could only do so while the laptop was clamshelled.

It is a little unfortunate that the vanilla M4, the only choice for the MacBook Air, does not support Thunderbolt 5, as that would really up the performance for connected storage devices, but alas. Rounding out connectivity, the MacBook Air features Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3.

Battery Life

Battery life is rather challenging to quantify in terms of real-world usage because everyone uses their computer differently. However, Apple’s specs promise up to 18 hours of video streaming and up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing. I have no reason to doubt these specs, but your mileage may vary.

I hit the MacBook Air with a run of PugetBench extended Adobe Premiere Pro benchmark and it held up, losing about nine percentage points off its battery life. A second test, unsurprisingly, took the total battery percentage down to 82%, like clockwork.

Display

There are no changes here, meaning the MacBook Air still ships with a Liquid Retina display, either 13.6 or 15.3 inches diagonally. The 13-inch MacBook Air’s resolution is 2,560 by 1,664 pixels, while the 15-inch Air’s panel is 2,880 by 1,864 pixels. In either case, it works to 224 pixels per inch, delivering crisp text and sharp photos and videos.

The Liquid Retina display, which supports Apple’s True Tone technology I’d recommend turning off if you’re doing color-sensitive photo or video editing, is vibrant and looks great. However, the LED-backlit display with IPS technology comes up short regarding maximum brightness. While Apple’s latest MacBook Pro’s gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display can deliver 1,000 nits of brightness across the entire screen and peak at 1,600 nits for HDR content, the MacBook Air maxes out at 500 nits no matter what content you view. The MacBook Air also lacks the MacBook Pro’s ProMotion technology that delivers adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz — the MacBook Air tops out at 60Hz.

A laptop with a dark keyboard is open on a wooden surface. The screen displays a blue and green abstract wallpaper with app icons lined up at the bottom. The desktop shows some icons on the right side. — It’s a nice screen, but it is not as nice as the one on the MacBook Pro.

Make no mistake, the MacBook Air’s display is still good, but these differences are worth keeping in mind for users who want to view or edit HDR photos and videos, those who care about 120Hz refresh rates, and those who generally use their laptop outdoors. 500 nits outside in the daytime just isn’t it.

Keyboard and Trackpad

In typical Apple fashion, the MacBook Air’s keyboard and trackpad are excellent. The Touch ID-equipped backlit keyboard is responsive and satisfying.

The Force Touch trackpad takes up about as much space as possible and is responsive and enjoyable to use. I don’t like the Force Touch features, so I disable them, but they work as advertised if you find them worthwhile.

A laptop with a dark keyboard and open screen, displaying a desktop with app icons, is on a wooden table. Next to it, there's a maroon ceramic mug with a black liquid inside. A silver box is partially visible in the background. — The MacBook Air has a great keyboard and an ample trackpad.

Center Stage Camera

The MacBook Air with M4 also sports a new 12-megapixel Center Stage camera. The image quality is acceptable.

A bald man with glasses and a beard smiles at the camera. He is wearing a gray shirt and sitting in an office chair. Behind him are a closet, an open white door, and items on the wall, including a map and artwork. Light filters in through a window. — The webcam is totally fine.

Apple MacBook Air with M4: Performance

Listen, the style is great, and I love looking at and interacting with the MacBook Air with M4. But at some point, the new laptop smell fades, the stylish sheen wears off, and you’re left with a machine you live with and use to actually do things. And that’s where performance reigns supreme. That’s also where the new MacBook Air aims to separate itself from its predecessors. After all, the highlight new feature is not the Sky Blue finish or the slightly lower entry price, it’s the move to the M4 chip.

Ultimately, the MacBook Air’s performance, even with the upgraded 32GB of unified memory, leaves something to be desired with some tests and shines in others. It’s a complicated picture.

The MacBook Air’s super-thin design means two things. One, the laptop is extremely impressive to see and touch. It makes my MacBook Pro feel bloated. And two, there is no fan. While I rarely hear the fan on my MacBook Pro kick into anything resembling high gear, it does happen occasionally during especially intensive workloads, like when performing edits on huge Photoshop files, batch exporting many images in Lightroom Classic, or rendering video. It is in these high-stress situations when the fan really matters, and the MacBook Air’s lack of one is felt acutely.

Our benchmarking tests include importing large, high-resolution photos, exporting them with heavy edits, and running Puget Systems’ industry-standard Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve tests at the highest possible settings.

More specifically, in Lightroom Classic, we import 110 61-megapixel Sony Alpha 7R IV and over 160 100-megapixel Phase One XF RAW files, generate 1:1 previews, apply a custom-made preset with heavy global edits, and then export those images as 100% JPEGs and 16-bit TIFFs. We hand-time these and present the average of three runs.

For Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and DaVinci Resolve, we rely on Puget Systems’ industry-standard PugetBench benchmark. We still use version 0.8 of the Photoshop test because it is the last version that includes the Photo Merge test, a feature particularly valuable to photographers. Concerning Premiere Pro and Resolve, we use the latest benchmark, which looks at how well computers perform high-resolution (4K and 8K) exports in LongGOP and intraframe. They also provide an RAW video and GPU effects score. The bench also tests Fusion and AI performance within Resolve.

As we will see, the lack of a fan matters in these stress tests. Once that chip gets hot, which it did during every single one of these benchmarks, performance takes a hit. A slow computer is significantly better than an overheated one, but a cool, fast one is even better than that.

Adobe Lightroom Classic

This is where the MacBook Air with M4 performed the worst. It’s the slowest Mac with Apple Silicon we’ve tested here, and the results are pretty bad.

Bar chart comparing Lightroom Classic Import times across various devices, categorized by Sony a7R IV (blue) and PhaseOne XF (red). Devices range from MSI Creator 17X Studio to M1 MacBook Air. Elapsed time in milliseconds appears on the x-axis. — The MacBook Air with M4 is just not great in our Lightroom tests.

Our standard practice is to run these tests consecutively after clearing the cache in Lightroom and restarting the app, which, by design, does not give a computer time to catch its breath. The point of this sort of testing is to see how a machine handles stress. The MacBook Air does not handle it very well. With few exceptions, each test result was slower than the last, which is not always the case on other (fan-equipped) Mac computers I’ve tested.

Bar chart comparing export times for different computers in Lightroom Classic. Categories include M2 Max MacBook Pro, M3 Ultra Mac Studio, and others. Times range from about 2.11 to 13.33 minutes, with lower times being better.

Bar chart showing Lightroom Classic Export times for 16-bit TIFF across various computers. Red bars represent Sony a7R IV, blue bars for Phase One XF. MSI Creator Z17 HX Studio is fastest, while M1 iMac (24 cores) is slowest. Lower times are better.

To satisfy my own curiosity, I did a few additional tests with a thoroughly cooled down, freshly booted machine. While these don’t count for our charts, there were occasionally better results, sometimes nearly 50% better. In other cases, it didn’t matter. The point is that the warmer the machine gets, the worse its performance.

I don’t know about you, but I am not constantly importing and exporting photos in Lightroom. I mostly dump a bunch of photos, edit my favorites, and perform intermittent exports. In this case, the MacBook Air with M4 is totally up to the task. Sure, importing isn’t that fast, but browsing and editing photos is. Masks and sliders are responsive, and the app, despite being built on aging code, is snappy on the Air.

Adobe Photoshop

While the performance in our Adobe Lightroom Classic tests left a lot to be desired, the M4 MacBook Air performed very well in Adobe Photoshop. In fact, the machine’s overall score is one of the best Mac notebooks we’ve tested, and it is the best one we’ve tested except for the latest M4 Max MacBook Pro. Heck, the MacBook Air with M4 is even better than the M2 Ultra Mac Studio desktop, an exceptionally powerful desktop computer. The MacBook Air with M4 is even better in our Photoshop tests than the Maingear MG-1 Ultimate I tested last year, which has a 24-core Intel Core i9-14900K and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 desktop GPU.

Bar chart showing Pugetbench Photoshop overall scores for various devices. MSI Creator Z17Hx ranks highest at 1375.6; MSI Titan GT77 (13th) is 1315.1. Mac Studio (Apple M1 Ultra) scores 2262.3 highest. Score scale ranges from 0 to 2500. — The MacBook Air with M4 is relatively better in Photoshop than it is in Lightroom.

Bar chart showing PugetBench Photoshop category scores for different devices. Categories include General, GPU, Filter, and Photomerge, each represented in different colors. Devices are listed vertically, and scores are along the horizontal axis. — Not bad at all for a super-thin laptop without a fan.

While the MacBook Air with M4 may not be a star in Adobe Lightroom Classic, it is in Adobe Photoshop. This makes the picture pretty murky for photographers, depending on what their workflow is like. If you’re a big batch editor and exporter, the MacBook Air with M4 is not a great choice. However, for many photo editing tasks, like actually editing photos, the MacBook Air is excellent given its price tier and size.

As I explain in our Mac Studio with M3 Ultra Review, we ran a smattering of Macs through Puget System’s new Photoshop benchmark. Our standard bench is the version 0.8 version, which offers additional categories. However, to understand the M3 Ultra’s puzzling Photoshop results, we ran Puget’s current bench.

Bar chart showing Pugetbench Photoshop v1 overall scores. Higher is better. MacBook Pro M1 Max: 7000, Mac Studio M2 Ultra: 12000, MacBook Air M4: 8000, Mac mini M4 Pro: 9000, Mac Studio M4 Max: 11000, Mac Studio M3 Ultra: 14000.

Bar chart titled "Pugetbench Photoshop v1 - Category Scores" with scores for General (blue) and Filter (red) tasks. Features various Mac models. Higher scores are better, with categories scored up to around 175.

The MacBook Air with M4 holds its own here, relatively speaking.

Adobe Premiere Pro

While the M4 MacBook Air’s proficiency for photographers depends a bit on what type of photo work someone does, the situation is nowhere near as complicated for video editors. The MacBook Air with M4 is just not that powerful. Having just 10 GPU cores and no fan really matters here.

Bar chart comparing Pugetbench DaVinci Resolve overall scores for various Apple devices. M3 Ultra Mac Studio scores highest at 11049, followed by M2 Ultra Mac Studio at 9130, and M2 Max MacBook Pro at 5816. Scores range between 3320 and 11049.

While the M4 MacBook Air bested much older Macs, notebooks and desktops alike, in Photoshop, it falls behind all of them in Adobe Premiere Pro. Looking at individual category scores, it’s easy to see why: they’re all relatively bad.

Bar chart comparing PugetBench Premiere Pro scores for various devices. Categories include LongGOP, Intraframe, RAW, and GPU Effects. Scores vary, with the MacBook Pro M1 Max leading in most categories.

DaVinci Resolve

It doesn’t really get much better in DaVinci Resolve. This is a relatively new test for us, but we are slowly but surely building our results library, and unfortunately, for now, the M4 MacBook Air is the worst one we’ve tested.

Bar chart showing PugetBench DaVinci Resolve scores for different Apple devices, comparing LongGOP, Interframe, RAW, GPU Effects, Fusion, and All Scores. Devices include M1 and M2 models, with scores ranging approximately from 10 to 180.

Apple MacBook Air with M4: Performance Takeaways

It’s a mixed bag regarding the MacBook Air and M4’s performance, reflecting the machine’s design and inherent limitations. For photographers, the M4 MacBook Air will be snappy and swift when performing many everyday editing tasks.

The MacBook Air with M4 is undeniably not Apple’s best option for video editing. The test results are very clear here, the MacBook Air with M4 falls flat in Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve.

Apple MacBook Air with M4: An Interesting Value Proposition

While the MacBook Air’s performance is not universally great, there is more to a laptop than test scores.

The MacBook Air with M4 is the first MacBook Air we’ve reviewed here at PetaPixel, and also the first Apple Silicon-powered Mac we’ve reviewed that has a “base” M-series chip in it, the rest have all been Pro, Max, or Ultra chip variants. This affects the MacBook Air’s “value.” It is Apple’s thinnest, lightest, and most affordable notebook. As the company has ditched the standard MacBook option in its lineup, there are just two series left: Air and Pro, each with two screen sizes (13/15 and 14/16).

Closed silver laptop on a wooden table, viewed from above. The laptop has a logo in the center of the lid.

The Apple MacBook Air starts at $999, while the MacBook Pro begins at $1,599, in each case shipping with an M4 chip. However, the cheapest MacBook Pro has a 10-core GPU and 512GB of storage. If you were to configure the 13-inch MacBook Air to that level, it would cost $1,199. At this point, that extra $400 for the Pro gets users a brighter and smoother display, an additional Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, better battery life, and superior speakers. Sure, the MacBook Pro is thicker and heavier, which may matter a lot to some users, but that seems like money well spent for some users.

Although we have not tested the base M4 MacBook Pro, it is also a safe bet it will, in some extreme cases, deliver better performance, given that it has a single fan to help keep the silicon cool. The more powerful MacBook Pros have a second fan, by the way.

This is all to say that for photographers, the MacBook Air with M4 is an attractive option if you must spend as little as possible on a new Mac, which is a perfectly understandable situation to be in, or if you heavily value having a compact and lightweight machine even if it means leaving some performance on the table.

For video editors on-the-go who are unconstrained by budgetary or weight concerns, there are better options in Apple’s lineup, including the M4 Pro or M4 Max MacBook Pro. Trying to find an older M2 Pro/Max or M3 Pro/Max MacBook Pro is also a viable option.

A laptop with a dark keyboard and a colorful screen displaying various icons, resting on a purple and black quilt with circular and geometric patterns. Sunlight creates diagonal shadows across the laptop.

Are There Alternatives?

Yes, many. Besides the MacBook Pro discussed above, many Windows-powered notebooks compete against the MacBook Air series in terms of general design and target user, including but not limited to the HP Pavilion series, the Lenovo Slim notebooks, HP’s Spectre machines, the Acer Swift Edge, and some of the Asus Zenbook laptops.

Should You Buy It?

Maybe. The MacBook Air with M4 is a sleek laptop powerful enough for many light and medium-duty photo workflows and very light video ones. However, it comes with limitations. It is not powerful enough to excel in high-end video editing workflows, and its fanless design poses problems during extended use. Only having two Thunderbolt 4 ports is also occasionally an issue, although one that can be overcome through a hub, even though that starts to undercut the portability and value factors of the machine.

That said, if you are not a power user, the MacBook Air could be more than enough computer for you. Plus, it is as easy on the wallet as on the eyes, which never hurts.

If I had a nice desktop at home, and wanted something cheap and simple for occasional work on the road? The MacBook Air is a great choice. But if I wanted a do-it-all machine? The MacBook Pro is the definite pick.