The best laptops will get better and cheaper

Apple has been releasing new silicon at an astonishing rate, sometimes shorter than the usual year. For example, the M4 made its debut just 10 months after the M3. As a result, Apple's computing products also see more frequent updates, as selling laptops with chips is not the latest version of the look.

So the last update started just 12 months into the new MacBook Air, which was powered by Apple's latest M4 chip. This update is purely silicon bumps (unless you calculate the new sky blue color scheme), which means the only physical change is the chip inside. Otherwise, from display resolution to memory used; the number of chassis design to ports is the same as the M3 and M2 versions.

In other words, the M4 MacBook Air is a so-called “boring” update, but that doesn't matter. I'm much more forgiving to keeping the same design/looking/hardware for years than smartphones, as these are productivity machines sitting on a desk. This is not the phone call we are with every waking moment of our lives, becoming something more personal.

Plus, Apple's MacBook is so mainstream and dominant that Apple fans are so loyal to the ecosystem that these frequent updates make sense because there will always be people trying to buy a new MacBook.

Most impressively, Apple managed to lower the price of the new MacBook Air Line as prices rose. The 13-inch model starts at $999 and the 15-inch model starts at $1,199. That's $100 less than the M3 model launched last year.

For this review, I chose a larger 15-inch machine. This is almost the perfect size for someone who does most of the work from a laptop on the go. The extra two inches in screen real estate will vary when two windows are fixed side by side in screen real estate, or when scrubbing video schedules in Final Cut Pro.

The display is an IPS LCD panel, which Apple calls “liquid retina”, meaning its resolution (2880 x 1864) is clearer than 1080p, which is beyond where human eyes can pick a single pixel. The screen really looks great, with accurate color replication, excellent viewing angles without color transfer, and a maximum brightness of 500 nits, which is good for laptops.

I do want the refresh rate to be 120Hz instead of 60Hz, and the OLED panel will produce a deeper black. I also wish I could choose to add anti-reflective nanowidth-removing matte paint like the Pro MacBook, but these are small. I think Apple added any of them and the price went up.

There are six speakers in the MacBook Air that are hidden in the seam between the body and the cover hinge. Surprisingly, for speakers that are not on the route, the MacBook Air pumps out full audio and supports spatial audio. This makes the MacBook Air a great media consumer machine for most people.

The keyboard and trackpad are great as usual: backlit keys, over 1mm travel, large trackpads that can be tapped or clicked anywhere, with huge tactile feedback. In my opinion, Apple's MacBook and iPad trackpad are the best in the business.

There are still only two USB-C ports on the left, and one MagSafe port. On the right is the headphone jack. I think Apple should give us an extra USB-C port on the right. If not an extra one, move one of the ports on the left to the right. Putting all the ports to the left can cause embarrassing situations like when you want to run an external screen on the right side of your laptop, but you need to extend the cable all the way to the left.

The hardware is great, but again, nothing new. You've seen this laptop at least 100 times in the past year. Heck, if you live in a major city like Hong Kong or New York and go to a cafe, you've seen this laptop 1000 times.

What improvements does the M4 chip bring? The M4 is not as big as the M3 on the M2. The M4 is still built on a 3NM architecture like the M3, but it is a “second generation” 3NM architecture, and it does have more transistors – in M3, it does have 28 billion to 25 billion.

Of course, this translates into more power. But it also has greater efficiency. I found that the M4 MacBook Air has a slightly longer service life than the M3 machine. Actually, I've been typing cafe words on this M4 machine for three and a half hours, 19 Safari Tabs turned on throughout the time, and have been streaming music on Spotify, and the laptop just drained 19% of its battery.

The M4 chip also allows the MacBook Air to connect to two external monitors while saving its screen (so at once, three screens). M3 cannot do this (up to two screens). In the benchmark, the M4 is 30% faster than the M3 in the GPU, which is not a small task.

I edited multiple videos entirely on the M4 MacBook Air on the battery and never had the performance of lag, lag, or any stuttering. Everything went well, exporting 12 minutes of 4K/30 video in five minutes.

On the software side, the new laptop comes with MacOS Sequoia. It brings some useful new features, such as the ability to mirror iPhones on laptop screens, and the ability to use the more powerful Apple Smart. There is also automatic window tiles – just move the window to the left or right side of the screen and insert the window into the left or right side of the screen, allowing you to multitask faster.

I prefer MacOS to Windows, which is my computing platform of choice for 6-7 years. Sequoia continues to have a refined experience.

Ultimately, the reason the MacBook Air is the world’s best-selling laptop, and with new chips and lower prices, the M4 model will continue to maintain that dominance.