MacBook Air M4 Review: Still the Default Answer
The laptop we recommend to more people than any other, and the M4 has not given us any reason to stop.
Daniel Reyes
Performance without noise
There is no fan, and after two weeks of heavy use we never wanted one. Sustained multi-core work throttles eventually, but the point at which it does is far beyond what this machine is for. A ten-minute 4K export finished in 4m 12s and the chassis was warm, not hot.
Battery
Sixteen hours and twenty minutes in our mixed-use rundown. That is not a marketing figure — that is a full working day plus an evening, with brightness at a usable level.
What has not improved
Still two Thunderbolt ports on one side. Still a 1080p webcam that is merely acceptable. The base 16GB is now genuinely enough, which was the biggest complaint about previous generations.
Specifications
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| Display | 13.6in Liquid Retina, 2560 x 1664, 60Hz |
| Chip | Apple M4, 10-core CPU / 10-core GPU |
| Memory | 16GB unified, 512GB SSD |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt 4, MagSafe, 3.5mm |
| Battery | 53.8Wh |
| Weight | 1.24kg |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two working weeks as a primary machine, on battery wherever possible. Display at 150 nits, keyboard backlight off, the manufacturer’s balanced power profile, and the same browser profile with thirty tabs restored on every machine.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | A looped workday script — document editing, video calls, browsing — run to shutdown, three times, averaged. |
| Sustained CPU | A thirty-minute all-core render, reporting the settled clock speed rather than the boost figure. |
| Fan noise | Measured at 50cm from the display hinge during that render, in a room with a 28dB floor. |
| Chassis heat | Palm rest and underside temperatures after the render, since that is where it is actually felt. |
| Display | Brightness and contrast from a colorimeter, at the panel’s native setting rather than a boosted HDR mode. |
We deliberately do not report single-core burst scores, which almost nothing outside a benchmark actually produces.
The honest caveat: Sustained figures depend on ambient temperature. A warm room costs most thin laptops several percent.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED and Framework Laptop 13. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MacBook Air M4 (this review) | £1199 | 5 / 5 | Exceptional battery life | Only two ports, both on one side |
| ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED | £1099 | 4 / 5 | A superb OLED panel for the money | A shallow keyboard |
| Framework Laptop 13 | £1399 | 4 / 5 | Genuinely repairable, with labelled parts and captive screws | Poor speakers |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the MacBook Air M4.
Is it worth the money?
At £1199 the MacBook Air M4 undercuts the category average of £1482 by £283, against an average score of 3.9 out of 5 across the laptops we have tested. Its own 5 works out at roughly £240 per point. That is the straightforward case: above-average result, below-average price.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Acer Aspire 14 AI at £649 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Living with it
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 13.6in Liquid Retina, 2560 x 1664, 60Hz is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that only two ports, both on one side, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, exceptional battery life turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
What we liked
- Exceptional battery life
- Silent under load
- Excellent build and trackpad
- 16GB base memory at last
What we did not
- Only two ports, both on one side
- 60Hz display
- Webcam is unremarkable
Verdict
If you do not have a specific reason to buy something else, buy this.
Score: 5 / 5 · £1,199 as reviewed (16GB / 512GB)
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the laptops we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are MacBook Air M4 Review: The One to Beat and MacBook Air M4 vs ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED: Where the MacBook Air M4 Pulls Ahead.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
