MacBook Air M4: What Real Users Say on Reddit

The fact alone that it is fanless is absolutely wild.

macOS 26 is crap. I went from 12 hours to 4 hours of battery life. I'm seriously hoping 26.3 fixes it.

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

I just swapped to an Air from a M2 Pro 16GB 1TB SSD, was a solid machine for 3 years. Purchased a 24GB Ram Air 512GB SSD and it is a brilliant machine, handling everything well and the best part? It is so freaking light to travel with!

I am still on the base model M1 air and it is still snappy as heck. It has been 4 years for me and I am still impressed by it — first Mac ever.

Same exact thing happened to me on my M3 Air, and M2 Pro issued by my company. I was able to work all day as a dev and charge at night, and I used to get about 3-4 days from the Air. Now both of them get about 4 hours after upgrading to macOS 26. WTF?

I think all M series are really future proof, even the base model can last you for half a decade easily.

Tahoe issue. Check apps you use, it sucks with any Proton apps (Slack, Discord, etc). Better switch to browser version.

Returned the M4 a few months ago. Decided to stick with my M1. M1 basic spec is still a beast.

Your CPU utility is too high. Could be because you are using Tahoe which has performance bugs. I bet if you installed Sequoia you would get your battery life back. Also keep in mind if brightness is 100% you are unlikely to get more than 7 hours.

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

Even for 3 years, I would say 256GB is too small.

I went from a G15 that sounded like an airplane during takeoff to a M4 air, it's insane! I can even hear the birds outside now. Before it was just the fan noise.

base 16/256 but works like a charm for me. I use both VMs for penetration testing setups — tools, scans, payload work, the whole kit. The wild part is the base m4 air still runs all that plus my regular workflow without even getting warm.

The fact it runs multiple messengers, multiple IDEs, more than enough browser tabs, iOS and Android emulators, and some more apps like datagrip, docker with containers running, remote desktop, notion, linear, while supporting 2 2K external screens, is crazy.

Force close chrome and use safari. I can use for 3 hours and use 30% on safari. Same thing on chrome I lose 30% in an hour. Chrome does something with high priority on the cpu and sucks battery like no tomorrow.

Don't worry about future proofing. You are better off buying the machine that you know you need today. Even still, 256GB is just too small for most people. You need to leave a chunk of your internal drive empty to keep things running smoothly, and after that and macOS and system data you are only left with about 140GB of actual usable space.

I got mine last week and I am loving it. It is a base model and makes my 2000 euro Dell work laptop look like a toy in comparison.

I abused my m1 air. 4.5 years of use and 1200 battery cycles later, the battery capacity is sitting at 69%. I am lucky to get 3 hours of use from it. My M4 air easily gets 15+ hours of battery life.

I have 32/1TB and this will last me for many years. Don't skimp now and regret.

I am running macOS Sequoia on my M4 15 inch MBA mostly on 50-60% brightness and I don't have such issues on battery life.

If you wait a few weeks it will be cheaper when the m5 releases.

Best Buy drops it to that price every other week. Just wait until it drops again or spend an extra $200 and get it now.

I never ever thought I would switch to Mac for a laptop but I just could not find any PC laptops that could compete for the same price. The battery life is insane, it turns on instantly, and can record 22 separate audio tracks at once out of our mixer on battery power!

I have had mine for about 3 months now and I absolutely love it. I was amazed at how quiet it is and I have thrown a lot at it.

I am in the same boat. Like if I could, I would exchange my M4 air with my M1 Pro any day. The Air was a gift and I thought it would be a good upgrade. Man, I was wrong. The battery drains too fast, and I checked — no apps were draining a significant amount of battery in the background.

I have got to charge my M2 more often now after installing Tahoe. I used to charge the thing after like 2 or 3 days. Now every night I must put it on charge. It is crazy how power inefficient macOS 26 is. And it is the same with iOS 26.

I went from an M1 Air to an M4 Air and get a good 7-8 hours programming in JetBrains with 2-3 docker containers running. This is about the same as I got with the M1.

I also have the M4 Macbook Air 15 inch with 24GB RAM 512GB SSD. Mine lasts me a bit more than two days of coffee shop visits with each day using about 3 hours. I am wrapping up today off a fresh charge from last night and I am at 60%. It is my first Macbook and I was pretty happy with the battery life.

The Mac architecture is amazing. I hate Apple with a passion but boy I just started using Mac and I am in love with it. It can even handle games at high resolution on BATTERY. Windows laptops cannot do this well. Also the battery life is amazing!

Probably macOS 26 fault. I am still on Sequoia and the only way for my M4 MBA to drop the battery at a quicker rate than normal is running a mobile app on the simulator while having the development environment open with Chrome tabs.

I am typing this on a 13 inch 2020 M1 16GB 512GB MacBook Air. The only reason I would upgrade is to go to 15 inches. The M1 is plenty fast. I do massive builds with the M1. Sure those would be faster on an M4 but not lifechangingly faster. If you take care of it a 16GB 512GB M4 will last you 10 years.

I do 4K video editing in Davinci Resolve, a lot of open tabs, a lot of stuff, and my MacBook Air 2025 M4 16GB 256GB does it all amazingly well. Very happy.

I suspect 16GB will feel limiting in the near future so upgrade to 24GB of RAM.

I have a 13-inch M4 Air and I last charged it 3 days ago.

Downgraded back to Sequoia and got my macbook back finally.

I personally really like my M1 Air base spec but after nearly 3 years I am running out of storage and the 8GB of RAM just is not enough for 2025 or 2026. The main thing making me think of upgrading is the 8GB of RAM. If I had the 16GB model I would ride it for several more years.

They are amazing. Even the jump from the Intel air to the M1 air was amazing. I had a base model Intel air and it would get super hot on zoom calls and choke on other apps. It would get all stuttery and burn through the battery. Got the M1 air and all that nonsense went away. The difference was night and day.

I had same experience going from M1 to M3. My suggestion is go use battery saver. You won't notice the difference and it will last long. The new chip low power mode seems like almost equal to the M1 normal power mode.

I bought a MBP M4 with 32/1TB. I was happy with my Mid 2012 MBP which lasted 8 years. I struggled with small SSD capacity the final few years. I currently have 57% of the SSD used doing basic Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, Zoom hosting and recording. I am hoping the 32GB of memory will be useful going forward.

I can confirm the latest macOS is the main issue! My M4 MB Air runs so hot even for light usage and the battery life is 5-6 hours. I installed macOS Sequoia then I got 12-14 hours of battery life with ease.

16GB works great right now, however, everyone and their mother is coming out with AI enhanced everything. I think you should upgrade to at least 24/512. I personally have an m4 24/1TB. I have about 60,000 photos and 30 GB worth of music and 20 years of documents, sitting with only 300 GB free because I started allowing iCloud to manage storage.

Just switched from PC to Mac months ago. I really don't think I will go back to Windows again.