MacBook Air (M4, Early 2025) Review

Apple releases a caller MacBook Air astir each year, and truly lone changes the SoC (system connected a chip) moving the thing. 2025 is nary different, with the caller MacBook Air 15 yet again being a chic small laptop that’s bully for powering you done bureau enactment with unthinkable artillery beingness and a gorgeous display.

Now, it’s not precisely going to grip PC games well, but it doesn’t request to. The caller MacBook Air, arsenic always, is the benignant of MacBook you transportation astir everyplace to simply get worldly done. And that’s each it needs to be.

Design

In a batch of ways, the MacBook Air has go what galore radical deliberation of erstwhile they perceive “laptop”. It’s not hard to spot why, adjacent erstwhile the caller MacBook Air looks identical to its past fewer predecessors. This is an highly bladed and airy laptop, weighing successful astatine conscionable 3.3 pounds – fundamentally thing for a 15-inch laptop.

The debased value is acknowledgment to the incredibly bladed unibody aluminum chassis, which is little than fractional an inch thick. An highly bladed chassis isn’t caller for the MacBook Air – it’s portion of wherefore the laptop has go truthful ubiquitous – but it is inactive a bully alteration to usage specified a bladed device, particularly erstwhile you see I’m usually hauling a heavy gaming laptop everyplace I go. But the MacBook Air is much than conscionable bladed – it’s an incredibly cleanable design, with adjacent the speakers disappearing down the aluminum.

Unlike the MacBook Pro, which has a talker grille connected each broadside of the keyboard, the Macbook Air alternatively has its speakers hidden distant successful the hinge, firing towards the display. On paper, this sounds similar a unspeakable idea, and a bully mode to get muted and disfigured sound, but Apple recovered a mode to marque it work. And it benignant of makes sense; due to the fact that the MacBook Air uses a fanless configuration of the M4, it doesn’t request to reserve that abstraction for airflow. That talker configuration besides allows the lid of the laptop to service arsenic a benignant of earthy amplifier, which makes the speakers dependable a batch louder than they different would.

The fanless plan besides allows for a overmuch cleaner plan than galore different laptops. Instead of needing aggregate areas of the laptop to person holes to blast aerial into the machine, this is simply a wholly closed disconnected device, and it looks incredible. On the bottommost of the laptop, each that you truly spot is the 4 small rubber feet, and those are conscionable determination truthful that the aluminum connected the bottommost doesn’t get scratched.

Back connected the apical of the device, the caller MacBook Air is inactive utilizing the aforesaid fantastic keyboard that it has for the past fewer years. It has remarkably heavy travel, considering however bladed the laptop is, and the days of Mac keyboards repeating keys look to beryllium genuinely over. Plus, successful the apical close country of the keyboard there’s a TouchID sensor, which is accelerated and accurate, and usually lets maine into the laptop wrong a 2nd of placing my digit connected it.

The touchpad is besides excellent. It’s incredibly wide, covering the abstraction betwixt some ‘Command’ keys, but has bully capable thenar rejection that I ne'er had to woody with the cursor doing weird things, adjacent during agelong penning sessions. Apple has go known for making immoderate of the champion touchpads successful laptops, and well, it’s keeping the crown for now, astatine least.

The sides of the laptops person the ports, and that’s wherever the MacBook Air’s winning streak comes to an end. On the near broadside of the laptop, you get 2 USB-C ports and the MagSafe connector, past connected the close broadside you conscionable get a headphone jack. Don’t get maine wrong, it’s bully that Apple inactive includes a headphone jack – if lone it would bash that for its phones and tablets – but it would person been bully to get an SD paper scholar oregon astatine slightest a USB-C larboard connected the close side. Apple’s reasoning for this spartan array of ports is apt that it’s a bladed laptop and determination conscionable isn’t country for the other ports, but I’ve seen the MacBook Pro, and it’s not that much thicker.

Display

While the MacBook Air doesn’t request to person the aforesaid originative bonafides arsenic the MacBook Pro, it inactive has a large display. It’s bright, colorful, and does a decent occupation astatine resisting glare – astatine slightest to a point. It’s not rather connected the aforesaid level arsenic the MacBook Pro, but it’s overmuch amended than galore Windows laptops successful the aforesaid terms range.

In my testing, I recovered the 15.3-inch, 1880p show hits 99% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, and 100% of sRGB, which is unthinkable for a jack-of-all-trades laptop. It gets bright, too, reaching a highest of 426 nits. That’s a small abbreviated of the advertised 500 nits, but it inactive gets agleam capable to beryllium disposable successful a agleam situation – though it does a batch amended indoors.

It’s not rather arsenic bully arsenic an OLED show oregon anything, but the MacBook Air’s show is inactive much than capable for astir people. I decidedly binged rather a fewer shows connected the laptop successful the 2 weeks oregon truthful I’ve spent with it, and fto maine archer you, the fantabulous colour show has been doing wonders for my rewatch of The Clone Wars.

Performance

Benchmarking a MacBook is ever a fraught experience. Most of the tests we present astatine IGN usage to trial laptops simply don’t enactment connected MacOS, truthful it’s hard to get a truly bully grasp connected however it really performs. However, due to the fact that this laptop is moving connected a fanless mentation of the Apple M4, it astir apt wouldn’t clasp up precise good against the gaming laptops we usually reappraisal present anyways.

Even successful the games that bash enactment macOS, the MacBook Air earnestly struggles astatine 1080p. In Total War: Warhammer 3, the MacBook Air struggled to deed 18 fps astatine Ultra settings. That is simply a small ambitious for this bladed and airy laptop, and you tin get up to 34 fps if you crook the settings down to medium, but I wouldn’t adjacent urge doing that.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows fared adjacent worse, getting conscionable 10 fps astatine 1080p with the Ultra preset. Changing it to mean settings astir doubled that performance, but adjacent past I got 19 fps, which isn’t precisely perfect for immoderate game. But astatine the extremity of the day, the MacBook Air isn’t a gaming laptop, and it conscionable doesn’t request to be. Instead, this is simply a airy productivity machine, and it kicks ass astatine that.

I carried this laptop astir for a while, and it’s the cleanable instrumentality for bringing to the small java store down the roadworthy and getting immoderate focused enactment done. Due to the quality of what I bash for a living, I usually person thing similar 50 Safari tabs open, portion listening to Apple Music successful the background, and the MacBook Air has nary occupation keeping up with that.

That’s acknowledgment successful ample portion to the configuration Apple sent maine for review, with its 32GB of RAM. Even with immoderate dense multitasking, I didn’t consciousness the strategy hiccup once, and that was connected artillery powerfulness astir of the time.

The MacBook Air was besides capable to support up with immoderate airy Photoshop work, though it did conflict erstwhile I tried to tally a sound filter successful Lightroom – thing adjacent my company-issued MacBook Pro runs into occupation with. It’s important to see what to expect from this benignant of laptop, nary substance who makes it. The information that thing this bladed and airy tin grip each my day-to-day enactment without breaking a sweat is huge, and truthful is its quality to past each time connected battery.

Battery

Apple makes immoderate superior claims astir the MacBook Air battery, saying it’ll past up to 18 hours portion streaming video and 15 hours browsing the internet. Now, the artillery trial I usually usage doesn’t precisely tally connected macOS, but I was capable to loop immoderate video successful VLC Media Player to get a unsmooth feeling of however agelong this laptop tin last. In that test, the MacBook Air lasted a whopping 19 hours and 15 minutes, breaking past Apple’s 18-hour video streaming claim.

There is simply a caveat though: this was based connected section video playback, which puts a spot little strain connected the artillery than streaming does, though not by much. And adjacent though I wasn’t capable to tally it done a circumstantial office-based artillery trial similar I usually would, I tin attest that I was capable to tally this happening for aggregate days without needing to plug it in, based connected respective 4-5 hr enactment sessions.

This is the nonstop benignant of laptop that’s cleanable if you question a batch – determination aren’t galore flights that past longer than 15 hours, aft all. Plus, portion the charger included successful the container is tiny, it’s bully to beryllium capable to transportation astir a laptop that doesn’t request to beryllium tethered to a partition erstwhile you’re conscionable trying to cheque your email.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor astatine IGN and the PC components queen. You tin travel her @Jackiecobra