Reviews of the new Apple MacBook Air — powered by the new Apple M4 processor —are so crammed with superlatives and praise that it's nearly comical. "I have no notes," reads a particularly good headline on one review.
The Laptop Mag review of the 13-inch model makes it plain: "cheaper and better." We gave it five stars, something we've only done 44 times on reviews in our more than thirty-year history.
This is a laptop worth buying. It starts at $999. And right now, it's on sale for $949 at a variety of retailers, many trying to keep up with Amazon during its Big Spring Sale happening through Monday, March 31.
Let's talk about color, though.
Right now, you can get the M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of local storage for $949 on Amazon in the colors starlight (a warm golden-bronze color), midnight (black), or sky blue (an icy-grayish blue).
Meanwhile, you can get the same laptop — 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of storage — at Best Buy for $949, but only in the midnight black color.
Finally, you can buy the same spec'd model in starlight, sky blue, or midnight for $949 at B&H. Midnight isn't on sale.
We'd be remiss if we didn't remark on battery life for the M4 MacBook Air, which, during the famously rigourous Laptop Mag battery test, survived 15 hours and 30 minutes of visiting websites with video and images at 150 nits of brightness before it finally ran out of power.
In a world where everything is going up in price, the Apple M4 MacBook Air is actually going down in cost — which is definitely worth noting as you make your buying decision.
Apple did away with the version of the old MacBook Air that only had 8GB of unified memory and brought the price down, too. Experts speculate Apple decided to ditch 8GB of memory because that's not enough to run Apple Intelligence features. While there's no proof of that, it certainly seems plausible, given the demands of generative AI.
In 2022, the 13-inch MacBook (with an M2 processor) came with 8GB of memory and cost $1,199.00.
Here in 2025, the 13-inch MacBook Air with an M4 processor at 16GB of memory costs $999. Except for right now. If you're in the market for a new laptop, what are you waiting for?
