Apple MacBook Air 13.6" M4 Silver 2025

The M4 MacBook Air is a stupidly light and powerful ultraportable that crushes everyday work and creative tasks in total silence. The 24GB/2TB config is the one to get if you hate managing storage, and the M4 chip keeps everything feeling fast. Just know that gaming is a lost cause here, and you'll need a dongle for more than two accessories. If you can find it at the $1,999 end of the price spectrum, it's a fantastic deal for a laptop that will easily outlast its Windows competition.

The M4 chip here is a 10-core beast that chews through photo and video editing tasks without breaking a sweat, and more importantly, without a fan. In our CPU rankings, it sits in the 74th percentile, which is well above average for the entire laptop market, but it's the real-world feel that sells it. The single-core speed makes everything from app launches to web browsing feel instant, and the 24GB of unified memory means you can keep a frankly irresponsible number of Chrome tabs open while editing a 4K video timeline in the background. The GPU lands in the 70th percentile, which is impressive for integrated graphics, and that new ray tracing hardware gives it a leg up in apps like Blender or Final Cut Pro.

Where this machine really shines is in sustained, moderate workloads. Because it's fanless, there's no thermal throttling to speak of for the first 10-15 minutes of a heavy render, though it will eventually dial back the clock speeds to manage heat. For the photo editor who batch-exports a hundred RAW files or the writer who compiles a massive Scrivener project, you'll never hear a peep and you'll never wait long. The 2TB SSD is a standout, landing in the 95th percentile for storage, with read and write speeds that make transferring massive video files feel like copying a text document. Just don't expect to play modern AAA games at anything beyond low settings, the integrated GPU simply isn't built for that fight.

The most direct competitor in the Windows world is the Microsoft Surface Laptop ZGQ-00001. It matches the MacBook Air's premium build and portability, and the Snapdragon X Elite chip gives it a real edge in battery life and AI tasks. But app compatibility is still a question mark for some creative software, and the MacBook Air's M4 chip generally pulls ahead in raw CPU performance for tasks like video encoding. The Surface Laptop also offers a 120Hz display, which makes the Air's 60Hz panel feel a little last-gen when you're scrolling through long documents.

If you need more graphical horsepower, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 is a fascinating alternative. It's a bit heavier and has a fan, but the dedicated RTX GPU inside it will run circles around the M4's integrated graphics in gaming and 3D rendering. The trade-off is battery life and that silent, cool operation you get with the MacBook Air. For pure gaming or GPU-heavy work, the Zephyrus is the clear winner. For everything else, the Air's portability and efficiency are hard to beat. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i and HP OMEN Transcend 14 are even more powerful but are in a completely different weight class, they're desktop replacements that happen to have a battery, not true ultraportables.

Pricing on this specific 24GB/2TB configuration is a bit of a rollercoaster across vendors, with a spread of $757 between the lowest and highest we've seen. You can snag it for $1,999 at some retailers, while others are asking as much as $2,756, which is frankly absurd for the same machine. At the lower end of that range, you're getting a premium ultraportable with a best-in-class build and a storage capacity that rivals desktop replacements. At the high end, you're creeping into MacBook Pro territory, and that's a tougher sell.

Compared to the Windows competition, the value proposition is tricky. A similarly specced Dell XPS 13 or a Microsoft Surface Laptop with a Snapdragon chip might undercut the MacBook Air on price, but they often can't match the raw single-core grunt or the efficiency of Apple Silicon. If you find this config for under $2,100, it's a solid deal for a creative workhorse that will easily last five years. If you're seeing it closer to $2,700, take a deep breath and maybe look at a base 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro chip instead.

Apple's M4 MacBook Air is basically the platonic ideal of a thin and light laptop, refined to a point where it's hard to find a real flaw for everyday work. This isn't a radical redesign, it's the same 13.6-inch fanless slab we've known for a few years, now packing the latest 3-nanometer M4 chip. The configuration we're looking at here is a bit of a sweet spot for creative pros on the go, bumping the RAM to 24GB and the SSD to a roomy 2TB. It's clearly aimed at students, business travelers, and anyone who edits photos or video and refuses to be tethered to a desk.

What makes this generation interesting is the quiet leap in graphics. The 10-core GPU now has hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, which sounds like gamer talk but actually matters more for creative apps that lean on the GPU for rendering and effects. Our database puts the compact score at a near-perfect 97.5, which is basically best-in-class for anyone who values a laptop that disappears in a messenger bag. The 1.24kg weight is the kind of thing you stop noticing after a day, and that's the whole point.

But let's be real about who this isn't for. The gaming score is a rough 25.5 out of 100, so if your idea of a break is a few rounds of Cyberpunk, you're looking at the wrong machine. This is a workhorse for creation and consumption, not a gaming rig. The port situation is also a bit of a shrug, with just two Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack, which lands it smack in the middle of the pack in our rankings. You'll likely want a dongle or a hub, but that's been the MacBook Air story for years.

If you play video games, even casually, just walk away. The integrated GPU scores a dismal 25.5 in our gaming tests, and you'll be stuck at low settings with choppy frame rates on anything modern. Look at an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 or a Lenovo Legion Slim if you want a portable machine that can actually game. Similarly, if your work involves sustained, heavy rendering or 3D modeling, the fanless design here will hold you back. A MacBook Pro with active cooling or a beefy Windows workstation will save you time and frustration on those long exports.

Also, if you're a port maximalist who refuses to carry a dongle, this machine will annoy you daily. With only two Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack, you're one external monitor and a flash drive away from needing a hub. The Microsoft Surface Laptop offers a similar premium build with a slightly more generous port selection, including a USB-A port, which might be a better fit if you're constantly plugging in legacy accessories.

For the student, the writer, or the business traveler, this M4 MacBook Air is about as close to a no-brainer as it gets. The combination of that 1.24kg weight, the gorgeous screen, and the snappy M4 processor makes it a joy to use in a coffee shop, on a plane, or on a couch. The 24GB of RAM and 2TB SSD in this config mean you won't be bumping up against the limits of the machine for years, even as apps get more bloated. If your workflow lives in a web browser, Office, and the occasional creative project, just buy it and move on with your life.

For the creative pro who edits 4K video or compiles large codebases, this is a capable machine, but you need to be honest about your workload. The fanless design is a double-edged sword. It's silent, which is wonderful, but it will throttle under a sustained 20-minute render. If your income depends on shaving minutes off every export, you'll want a MacBook Pro with active cooling. And if you play games, even casually, just look elsewhere. The 25.5 gaming score isn't a typo, this thing is not built for fun of that variety.