Apple has just announced the new 2025 MacBook Air, which comes in 13- and 15-inch varieties and packs the powerful M4 chip. That means the best laptop for most people is getting a nice spec bump that will make it even better than last year’s model. Preorders are now live at Amazon, so read on if you’re in the market for a laptop refresh.
MacBook Air with M4 Chip
Once again, the new MacBook Air comes in 13-inch and 15-inch varieties, depending on how portable you want your laptop, and how much screen space you prefer. The 13-inch model starts at $999 (that’s $100 less than the previous-gen model), while the 15-inch one starts at $1199. The M4 chip gives these new MacBook Airs a step up in terms of computing power and longevity, with a new baseline of a 10-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. You can customize your Air with up to 10-core GPU, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage if you want to go all out.
But what else is new here? From the outside, the most obvious addition is a new color option: Sky Blue. It’s a nice looking hue that’s basically a lightly blue-tinted silver. The other color options are Midnight (black), Starlight (gold), and Silver (silver). Space Gray is no longer available, but it’s been around a long time, and was sort of a halfway point between Midnight and Silver, so pick one of those instead, I guess. Regardless of which color you choose, the laptop will come with a MagSafe charging cable in that same color.
The built-in webcam (or as Apple calls it, the “Center Stage camera”) is now a 12-megapixel camera, which should make the picture look better to all your FaceTime friends.
While this isn’t a necessary upgrade over last year’s MBA, Apple says it’s twice as fast as an M1 MacBook Air, so it’s a worthy upgrade if you’re rocking that hardware. It’s certainly a massive step up over the older Intel-powered MacBooks; Apple says it’s 23x faster than the most recent one of those.
Where to Buy Previous MacBook Generations on Sale
New MacBook releases are one of the best times to buy a previous laptop generation on sale. If you're not dead-set on the newest specs, you can also check out discounts on last year's MacBook Air.
Chris Reed is a deals expert and commerce editor for IGN. You can follow him on Bluesky @chrislreed.com.
Continue reading...