MacBook Air M4 ups the power, battery life and is surprisingly cheaper

(Image credit: Apple)

published 5 March 2025

Quick Summary

Apple has unveiled the latest addition to its MacBook range, the MacBook Air with M4.

Faster and with more battery life, the 13- and 15-inch models are available to pre-order now for a 12 March release date.

As teased by Tim Cook earlier this week, Apple has introduced a new MacBook Air – this time sporting the more powerful M4 chipset.

Coming in 13- and 15-inch sizes, the new MacBook Air with M4 is faster than its predecessors, but also has extended battery life, with a claimed 18 hours worth of juice in normal use. There's a new 12-megapixel Center Stage camera on board too.

In addition, the range gets a new sky blue colourway, and starts at a lower price – $999 in the US, £999 in the UK.

"MacBook Air is by far the world’s most popular laptop, and today we’re giving everyone even more reasons to love it, including a big boost in performance with the M4 chip, a new Center Stage camera, and a beautiful new sky blue colour,” said Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak.

Available for pre-order now with an on sale date of 12 March 2025, the new MacBook Air is a great contender to be one of the best laptops. It uses the same M4 chip found in the latest iPad Pro and entry MacBook Pro models, can be spec'ed up to a 10-core GPU, and supports up to 32GB of RAM.

The new model is designed with Apple Intelligence in mind, with full support for the company's AI-powered features, and that includes ChatGPT integration in Writing Tools and Siri.

The new Center Stage camera ups the video quality with its 12-megapixel sensor and also supports Desk View, so you can show a top down view of what's on your desk while remaining on screen yourself to explain it.

Apple has also added new support for multiple external displays, with this generation of MacBook Air able to output to two 6K displays simultaneously, while its screen is also being used for something else.

In terms of design, bar the new colour, the MacBook Air looks and feels much like the previous generation. It still comes with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and Magic Keyboard, and there is Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity on board.

It's available to pre-order now in 28 countries around the world.

TOPICS

Rik is T3’s news editor, which means he looks after the news team and the up-to-the-minute coverage of all the hottest gadgets and products you’ll definitely want to read about. And, with more than 35 years of experience in tech and entertainment journalism, including editing and writing for numerous websites, magazines, and newspapers, he’s always got an eye on the next big thing.

Rik also has extensive knowledge of AV, TV streaming and smart home kit, plus just about everything to do with games since the late 80s. Prior to T3, he spent 13 years at Pocket-lint heading up its news team, and was a TV producer and presenter on such shows as Channel 4's GamesMaster, plus Sky's Games World, Game Over, and Virtual World of Sport.