MacBook Air M4: What Real Users Actually Think

you will be amazed that you don't have to plug in your 180w charging brick everywhere you go

It's pretty amazing. Here's what you'll notice: No fan noise, ever. Simply none. Dead silent operation. Oh, and no heat output, either. Using in a small room or room without an AC vent? No problem; you won't even notice. Battery life for days. Literally. Crank it up, do stuff, whatever - battery life for 10+ hours of use.

For anyone looking for a laptop for anything besides gaming, this is it. I use my MacBook M3 for everything outside of my desktop work/gaming and it's a workhorse, battery life is amazing, it's light, screen is great, and performance is better than anything you can find on a windows based laptop. It can also do some light gaming, I play LoL and Genshin impact with no issues at 60 fps+. I paid $850 for an M3 so the M4 is even better.

M4 with the baseline RAM bump to 16 gigs means you're good at least for 5-6 years. I'm not saying you'll be 100% good for a decade, but you won't be baseline RAM capped like the older 8 gig ram models.

I'm always amazed on how some people use their computers. In those 14 years I went through about 10 GPUs and two Laptops while you had literally one device. That's caring about the environment to the next level. Have fun with your new Macbook!

Think carefully if 256 GB is enough storage for your entire system in the years you'll be using this. The OS alone is more than 10% of that gone off the top right; I don't want to think about how little space will be left after it and a few apps in 2032.

16 gigs will be fine for what most will be using this laptop for... 256 gigs of storage is absolutely awful though, especially for a laptop that will be close to $800 after taxes.

I think all M series are really future proof, even the base model can last you for half a decade easily. I do suggest that if you wanna save some money, opt for the 256gb model and buy a 1TB Samsung SSD. But if you don't want all that hassle then go for the 512, you'll be set for years!

I've been bumping up against the 256G limit for years now on my M1 air. There's no reason for this to be the base spec anymore, especially with the OS and its caching and stuff taking up 100G.

They're still releasing them with 256gb? Base models should be minimum 500gb.

Next month the Apple Back to School sale will start, would personally wait for that. Apple has offered a $150 gift card with the purchase of MacBooks during June-September for the last few years. The Macbook Air M4 is $899 on the education store, and they do not verify attendance if you order online.

Whatever you do, don't listen to anyone recommending a 256gb model, unless that's all you can afford. If you want future-proof, that ain't it.

It depends on what you do with it anyway. I'm a dev and the stuff I need for work easily fits on a 256gb drive. Even with other documents, photos, etc I'm pretty sure I'd be under 256. If constrained, I think it's pretty easy to live with 256 if needed.

I just brought a MacBook Air M4 this weekend after having one that's lasted about 12-13 years. I'm not even a part of the apple "eco system", it's the only apple product I own, but after contemplating another brand I just couldn't after how much life this other one has given me.

Insane Upgrade! 14 Years. I recently moved from Windows computers to MBA M3 last year and looking forward to holding on to this machine for a decade. I bet it felt awesome having a good fast and cool machine.

Tip: don't buy direct from Apple. Many major retailers have continual discounts on Macs of like $100 or $200 on the M4 MBA — although that varies across countries.

Yes. A brilliant price.

Lunar Lake matches or even exceeds the M4 in battery life while only being slightly behind in performance. The Snapdragon X Elite also greatly exceeds both in battery life while also nearly matching M4 performance. Even AMD Zen 4 CPUs are not far off in battery life while vastly outperforming them.

Performance improvement: CPU is now 3-6x faster, GPU is now 9x faster. Of course there's a hundred other performance improvements like video transcoding and ML processing. And then there's quality of life improvements like no fans, cooler temps, better display, much longer battery life, etc. HUGE upgrade.

Just upgraded from my 2015 Macbook Pro 15 to the M4 Macbook Air 15. Loving how thin and light it is compared to the older one, and the silent operation is a breath of fresh air.

I bought an M4 16GB 512GB 2 months ago and boy, it is fast. I do web dev and never experienced any lags despite the one time the browser accumulated 4GB of RAM when one web app had faulty JavaScript and the images were too large.

Bought mine from one of those retailers, it was 250 EUR cheaper than buying directly from Apple.

256gb SSD is pretty sad for something this price even though the M4 chip is very good. Honestly wish I could get Apple chips on Windows or Linux systems.

I'm typing this on a 13" 2020 M1 16GB/512GB MacBook Air. The only reason I'd upgrade is to go to 15". Otherwise, the M1 is plenty fast. I do massive builds with the M1. Sure, those would be faster on an M4 but not lifechangingly faster. So if you take care of it, a 16GB/512GB M4 will last you 10 years.

Amazing they last that long, my windows laptops generally lasted 1 to 5 years.

I got a 512/24 M4 MBA on eBay for $1150. Apple asks for $1400.

Still boggles my mind that Apple will put out an $850 laptop with only 256gb of storage. A 1tb M.2 can be had for like $50 retail, and at $850 they can't even throw in 512?

I can't believe how long it takes to start. It's as though it hangs for half a minute before the OS begins to load. As for click responses I find it fussier too, like trying to drag corners and that kind of thing. Overall it just seems sloppy.

Movies? Get a pro because of the screen.

I moved from a 4GB RAM model 2010 MacBook Pro to the 16GB 13" 2025 MacBook Air. Honestly I never had a problem with the 4GB RAM, even though I used it in school, at home, ran code, wrote code, gamed, did designing and even did video editing. I envision myself using the 13" M4 all the way until 2035.

Yep! That's what I paid for mine and I'm very happy...

Buy it now! I did and don't regret it a minute. Great deal!!

I jumped on this deal. I don't regret it. Take advantage of no interest for 18 months.

2020 M1 Air refuses to die. I've never had any of the problems you list.

I have an M2 Air and adore the thing. Assuming these are basically the same with updated internals, you can't go wrong here.

Agree with you 100% however everything else about this device is so strong it's worth it. As a portable alternative to my gaming PC, I don't need this thing to have heaps of storage and if things get tight I can use my already existing cloud plan — but do wish 512gb was the baseline for more headroom.

Today 16 is the new 8. Apple's AI models take up roughly 8, which leaves another 8 for the system and user space. To have what used to be 16 you need 24 now.

I'd try to get something with a 120hz display, on top of 16gb of ram and 512gb storage, in order to consider it "future proof". But if you want an Air, sure, why not. Just make sure it's the 512 gigs.

You need to go PRO for the screen unless color contrast and accuracy aren't that important, better cooling, higher RAM if possible. There are very good deals in the used market. From a pure compute perspective, should be enough.

I upgraded my 13" 2015 MBA to a 15" M4 in December. CoolBlue had a deal and I got 24/512 for 1499€. That might last another 10 years.

Same for me: MBP mid 2012 to MBA M4. Don't see a lot of difference for day to day use (Firefox, Word, cloud) as the MBP 2012 is still running perfectly. In fact the only reason I made this change was to anticipate software obsolescence. The big difference is obviously the screen definition! Let's go for another 13 years!!

For shopping and watching YouTube, yes, you can probably keep this machine for the rest of your life if you keep switching the battery when it dies. For coding and video editing, that will depend on the level of support from the tools you will have to use.

I assume it is not so much the performance of the hardware as much more the very bad performance of the OS! Tahoe is probably the worst and most unresponsive operating system since 10.5. A new major release every year is probably not the best idea.