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This has to be Apple’s best laptop. It may not be the most powerful – we have the MacBook Pro for that – but there’s nothing like the 15-inch MacBook Air to make you go ‘wow’ when you get it out of the box. It feels incredibly refined, the combination of 15in width with Air slimness and the shiny Apple logo give it an undeniable X factor that sets it apart from other ultraportable PCs.

This M4 refresh of the Air brings with it the ability to connect two external displays without having to switch off the laptop’s built-in screen, Thunderbolt 4, and a MagSafe charging port. It’s also had a slight price drop compared to the M3 model, which just makes it an even more tempting proposition, as does the fact it now comes with 16GB of RAM as standard. It’s heading straight for our best laptops for graphic design list.

Key specifications

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(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Design, build and display

It’s hard to fault Apple’s build quality. The smooth aluminium casing it uses for its laptops feels lovely to touch and the new silver, almost bluish (but not actually blue) colour that’s replaced space grey has a superb sheen to it.

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Otherwise, it’s kind of tricky to criticise. The Air is the same thickness throughout (115mm, compared to the 16in MacBook Pro’s 168mm), unlike the wedge-shaped laptops of yesteryear, and has four black rubber feet underneath to keep it anchored on a polished surface. There’s a recess to hook your finger in so you can open the lid, which is an exact fit all the way round, with barely a gap between it and the bottom half of the laptop. This kind of attention to detail is what sets the best laptops apart from the rest.

The Air is passively cooled, so there are no grilles to provide fan exhaust, though there is a slight gap at the back which closes as the screen angle is changed. If we had to point out something that could be better, it would be that the keyboard doesn’t quite make it to the edges of the chassis, yet there are no speaker grilles to fill the gaps at the sides. It feels like the keyboard from a smaller laptop. The fingerprint reader built into the power button is kind of ugly too, a plain black keycap with a recessed circle on it, notably different from the rest of the keys. Though it certainly works well in the absence of FaceID.

But really, the Air is a delight to carry and open – it’s feather-light for a 15-incher, and solid as a rock.

• Solid build
• Thin and light

Design score: 5/5

(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Features

As the bottom of Apple’s laptop pile, the MacBook Air can be defined by the features it doesn’t have compared to the Pro line. So the M4 chip is the 10-core (4P, 6E) design that’s just a bit better than the one in the iPad Pro – there’s no Pro, Max or Ultra option. RAM goes up to 32GB and no higher. Thunderbolt is version 4 not 5, and there are only two ports.

Luckily, there’s a separate charging power socket using Apple’s rectangular MagSafe plug (though you can charge through USB-C if you need to), so you can use adapters to hook up external monitors, a dock, or just plug SSDs and cameras in directly. The lack of USB-A necessitates more adapters for common peripherals, but that’s been an Apple ‘feature’ for a while now and it’s unlikely the firm will take a step backward to include them.

The screen has a good resolution, but it lacks the anti-reflection coating and 120Hz refresh rate of the Pro laptops – you do get 500 nits maximum brightness and DCI-P3 colour coverage, though, which puts it ahead of many Windows machines. In our tests, this claim was exceeded, with a maximum measured brightness of 532 nits. Colour reproduction was also excellent – with the screen in P3 mode, it displayed 100% of DCI-P3 and sRGB, with 88% of AdobeRGB. We were unable to improve the AdobeRGB figure, even when changing screen modes to the Adobe 1998 profile, Wide Gamut RGB, or Apple RGB, though we found the last on to have the richest display of colours to the eye.

Sequoia, the latest version of MacOS that’s supplied with the Air M4, can be disorientating if you’re used to older versions of the operating system (or Windows). It feels complex and has a weird notch at the top to house the webcam, which the apps arrange their menus around, but it’s certainly nice to have the level of security it provides, asking for fingerprint authentication to install apps and unlock, while asking for a password the first time you start it up.

Battery life is very good. Apple has been claiming 18 hours of use from its MacBook Airs for several generations now, and while that’s perhaps a little optimistic, there’s enough juice here for a full day’s use with some left over. Charging is also a smooth operation, with the MagSafe port and USB-C ports available to accept power.

• Very good colour reproduction
• Only two USB ports

Feature score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Benchmark scores

We test every one of our laptops using the same benchmarking software suite to give you a thorough overview of its suitability for creatives of all disciplines and levels. This includes:

• Geekbench: Tests the CPU for single-core and multi-core power, and the GPU for the system’s potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing.
• Cinebench: Tests the CPU and GPU’s ability to run Cinema 4D and Redshift.
• UL Procyon: Uses UL Solutions’ Procyon software suite to test the system’s ability for AI image generation in Stable Diffusion, its Microsoft Office performance and its battery life.
• Topaz Video AI: We use Topaz Video AI to test the system’s ability to upscale video and convert video to slow-motion.
• PugetBench for Creators: We use the PugetBench for Creators benchmarking suite to test the system’s ability to run several key tasks in Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve Studio, as well as its performance when encoding/transcoding video.
• ON1 Resize AI: Tests the system’s ability to resize 5 photos to 200% in a batch process.

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(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Performance

The M4 in the MacBook Air 15in isn’t a graphics monster like you’d find in some PCs, but with its 10-core GPU is a little better than the chip found in the lowest-level 13in machine, which only has eight of them.

The M4 is a strong chip in CPU benchmarks, especially when you consider it’s passively cooled. It records a single-core score in Geekbench 6 above that of the Intel Core i9-13900KS, though its multi-core score is more modest simply due to not having as many cores as Intel’s 24-core chip. Instead, it stacks up against an Intel Core i7-13700, still not a bad result as that chip has 16 cores.

In the GPU stakes, the M4’s Geekbench OpenCL score is a little short of that posted by the GeForce GTX 1650, a card from 2019 that pulls 75W of power compared to 40W for the entire M4 package. In the Cinebench 2024 benchmark, which even discrete graphics cards can struggle with and integrated GPUs are often not compatible with, the M4 GPU scored almost 600 points (or 16.8%) higher than last year’s M3-powered MacBook Air.

The M4’s multi-core score in Cinebench (736) looks good when you compare it to the M3 (570, a 25% increase) but pales when you compare it to AMD’s latest eight-core desktop champ, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which scores 1237, or 51% higher than the M4. AMD’s 16-core X3D chip from the same generation would score higher still. Intel’s Intel Core Ultra 7 265V in the HP Omnibook Ultra scored 406 in the same test (57% of the M4’s score) but the desktop (and liquid-cooled) Core Ultra 7 265K in the HP Omen 35L gaming PC scored 1806, 84% better. Many of these comparisons are unfair on the M4, which doesn’t even have a little fan to keep it cool, and it stands up very well to the competition.

Apple has announced that the M4 GPU supports ray-tracing, so we put it to the test in 3D Mark’s Solar Bay benchmark, where it managed an average of 53fps. A GeForce RTX 5080 does 576fps in the same test, so while it’s good to see a playable framerate from Apple’s solution, it has a long way to go to catch up with Nvidia. A more useful comparison is to the MacBook Pro M4 we reviewed, which shares the same processor as this Air: in the Topaz Video AI test, which can be hard on processors, the Air scores just 28 points lower in the combined metric, a difference of just 8% in favour of a machine that costs £1,799 against our Air’s £1,599. Upgrading to M4 Pro or Max will give you a power boost, but the most expensive 16in MacBook Pro tops out at £7,349, so you’ll need to have a budget meeting before you decide.

• Almost as good as the low-end Pro
• Not as good as an Nvidia card

Performance score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Price

From £1,199, version tested £1,599.

The MacBook Air is not an expensive laptop by the standards of many of the pro machines we review on Creative Bloq. Despite this, it performs impressively well, even more so when you factor in the thinness on offer. It’s a lot of laptop for the money, though you’ll be able to find something much cheaper if you opt for a Windows machine. However, if it’s a solid combo of thin, light, well-built and performant you’re after, then the Air is the way to go.

Value score: 5/5

Who is it for?

• Hybrid workers

The Air is an excellent laptop, but it’s not going to cope as well with heavy workloads as a MacBook Pro. While it’s not that far behind, every second matters when you’re rendering to a deadline. As such, the Air is ideal for the travelling photographer or 2D designer, the presenter of pitches or the coffee shop-based writer. It’s highly portable, yet also immensely capable, and should do sterling work for anyone.

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(Image credit: Future / Ian Evenden)

Buy it if…

• Your budget doesn’t stretch to a Pro
• You need something portable
• You’re not doing heavy 3D or video editing

Don’t buy it if…

• Your power needs are greater
• You use Windows-only software
• You don’t want an excellent laptop experience

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