The M4 MacBook Air Arrives in Sky Blue
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Apple has just unveiled the one new product we actually were expecting to show up this week: the M4 MacBook Air. Following a surprise twist yesterday, when it unveiled a new M3 iPad Air and A16-powered iPad on the anniversary of the M3 MacBook Air’s debut, the company has taken the wraps off the M4 version today.
The M4 MacBook Air is its usual incremental refresh, but it does add more to the mix than this week’s new iPads, which effectively only gained new chips in otherwise-identical designs. The MacBook Air moves from the M3 chip to an M4, but it also adds an improved front-facing camera and a new color.
Apple phased out the rose gold M1 MacBook Air in its 2022 M2 redesign, which gave us a set of relatively neutral colors that continued into the M3 era: Silver, Space Gray, Starlight, and Midnight. This year’s M4 MacBook Air brings back a splash of vibrance with a new Sky Blue shade that replaced Space Gray in the lineup. All the colors, including Sky Blue, come with a color-matched MagSafe charging cable.
In addition, the M4 MacBook Air gets a much-improved 12-megapixel (MP) front camera with support for Apple’s Center Stage feature. Many believed this would come to this year’s MacBook Air lineup after Apple added it to the M4 MacBook Pro series in October, but that was based more on speculation than evidence. Now we know for sure. On the flip side, this year’s MacBook Air didn’t get the extra Thunderbolt 4 port that many thought would come over from the base M4 MacBook Pro.
As with the iPads that have long sported this feature, the Center Stage camera helps keep everyone in the frame, automatically zooming in or out to accommodate everyone sitting in front of the MacBook. It also supports Desk View to let you simultaneously display a top-down view of whatever is on your desk. These capabilities were previously available by linking an iPhone 12 or later up to your Mac using Apple’s Continuity Camera feature, but it’s much easier to have them built-in. Continuity Camera will still undoubtedly offer better video quality if you have an iPhone 16 with its 48MP cameras, but we don’t think that’s going to be worth the effort for most folks.
While the design hasn’t changed (other than the color), the M4 MacBook Air packs in several other benefits that come courtesy of its new piece of Apple silicon, and there’s more here than just a performance boost.
For one thing, while the base RAM still starts at 16 GB (an upgrade Apple gave the M3 and even M2 models last fall when it released the M4 MacBook Pro lineup), you can now upgrade the M4 MacBook Air to 32 GB, an increase from the 24 GB cap on the M3 model.
The M4 MacBook Air also now effectively supports up to three displays — two external in addition to the built-in screen. These can both run at up to 6K resolution at 60Hz via Thunderbolt 4 digital video or native DisplayPort 1.4 over USB-C. The M3 MacBook Air could handle two displays, but only if you closed the lid, and the second screen was limited to 5K resolution at 60Hz.
MacBook Air is by far the world’s most popular laptop, and today we’re giving everyone even more reasons to love it, including a big boost in performance with the M4 chip, a new Center Stage camera, and a beautiful new sky blue color. Combined with its thin and light, fanless design, all-day battery life, and the incredible capabilities of macOS Sequoia with Apple Intelligence, MacBook Air is unlike any other laptop.
Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing
In another surprise move, Apple has also dropped the price of the entry-level model — which still includes 16 GB RAM — to $999. That lower price eliminates the need to keep last year’s model around as it did with the M2 MacBook Air, so this year’s lineup is M4 across the board.
That $999 gets you a slightly less powerful version of the M4 chip with an 8-core GPU rather than the 10 cores found on the upgraded versions. However, you still get a 10-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 256 GB of SSD storage. The 15-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,199 for the same RAM and storage configuration, but offers the full-power M4 chip with a 10-core GPU.
In both sizes, an extra $200 will get you a 512 GB SSD, while $200 on top of that will take you to 24 GB RAM. As usual, configure-to-order options are available, in this case offering up to 32 GB RAM, a 2 TB SSD, and an option to upgrade to a 35W or 70W USB-C power adapter.
The new M4 MacBook Air is available for pre-order today from Apple in 28 countries and will begin arriving to customers and in retail store locations next Wednesday, March 12.
