The Best Laptop For Most People for 2025

The M3 MacBook Air was one of the best laptops of 2024. With the M4 MacBook Air, Apple has again focused primarily on a chip upgrade, but the basic premise stays the same and as a result, the MacBook Air is unequivocally the best consumer laptop in its category.

Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4, 2025)

The M4 MacBook Air keeps the same slim, lightweight design and vibrant display as its predecessors, but now sports the upgraded M4 chip and a new 12MP Center Stage camera for improved performance and video call experiences. The performance boost is most noticeable in media handling and AI-driven tasks, while battery life and sound quality remain stellar. It also introduces new features like support for two external displays, Wi-Fi 6E, and a new Sky Blue color option, all at a lower starting price. Overall, while current Apple Silicon users may not see a generational jump, those on older models or new buyers will find the M4 MacBook Air a compelling upgrade.

Pros & Cons

• Excellent Performance
• All-day battery life
• Upgraded base RAM to 16GB

• Pricey upgrade options
• Limited port selection

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Price and Availability

The M4 MacBook Air starts at $999, and is available in Midnight, Starlight, Silver, and Sky Blue. It’s sold through most electronics retailers, including directly from Apple. You can pick it up in either 13-inch or 15-inch sizes, and both models start at 16GB of unified memory paired with 256GB of base storage. You can configure them with up to 32GB of unified memory and 2TB of storage.

What’s the Same?

In terms of design, the M4 MacBook Air retains the same overall aesthetic as the M3 model and the M2 Air before it. This laptop is still incredibly thin and light, with the 13-inch model being really easy to stash in my bag in between classes. Technically speaking, the new M4 MacBook Air is two grams lighter than the M3 model, but that is as negligible of a difference as they come. The aluminum unibody enclosure continues to be really well-built, with the keyboard deck, hinge, and display all having excellent fit and finish.

There’s also a new Sky Blue option that is genuinely one of my favorite finishes on any laptop; it’s not as saturated as I would’ve liked, especially compared to something like the iPad Mini Blue, but it reminds me of the Sierra Blue iPhone 13 Pro series, which I quite like. Of course, the Midnight, Starlight, and Silver options are still available too. Unfortunately, we don’t get any new ports outside of the two USB-C ports and headphone jack, but they do now support Thunderbolt 4.

The display remains identical to the M3 model, with the 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch Liquid Retina displays offering P3 wide color support and capable of displaying 1 billion colors. Content continues to look vibrant, and the text on web pages appears razor-sharp as you’d expect.

Coming from my M4 MacBook Pro and ASUS’ Zenbook S14, the main difference here remains the absence of higher refresh rate, higher brightness, and deeper contrast. This correlates to a slightly weaker viewing experience for media consumption as the display doesn’t achieve the same contrast levels and deep blacks as the mini-LED and OLED panels on the other laptops, but the screen gets decently bright for most environments, and the color accuracy remains excellent for photo and video work.

The speaker systems also remain unchanged—four speakers on the 13-inch and six speakers on the 15-inch model—both of which support Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. The sound quality continues to surpass most laptops in this class, with clear vocals, a surprising amount of bass, and good stereo separation. Maximum volume is impressive with minimal distortion, which is great to see.

What might surprise you is just how much base the speakers can deliver in this thin design. I listened to a couple of songs like Niagara Falls by the Weeknd, at 75% volume, and the bass was excellent.

What’s New?

The headline changes with this generation are the M4 chip and a new 12MP Center Stage camera. The M4 chip features a 10-core CPU and up to 10-core GPU, along with a 16-core Neural Engine, which Apple claims is up to two times faster than the M1 MacBook Air and up to 23 times faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.

The other major addition is the 12MP Center Stage camera, which replaces the 1080p webcam from the previous two generations.

This camera uses an ultrawide lens and machine learning to keep you centered in the frame as you move around during video calls and also introduces Desk View, which lets you share what’s on your desk while on a video call. In my experience, this webcam is identical to the M4 iMac and MacBook Pro from November, which is to say, it delivers decent image quality and sharpness. Of course, this also means that if you’re coming from a different M-series Mac aside from the original M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, the difference in quality is going to be negligible.

Center Stage can be convenient if you find yourself needing to move around while you’re on a FaceTime or Zoom call, but I usually leave it off on most of my calls since it hunts my face even with subtle movements, which can be disorienting on call.

As for Desk View, it’s the same story as my experience on the MacBook Pro. It has really mixed results in practical applications and the inherent limitations of the camera’s positioning create somewhat of an awkward perspective of the items on your desk. It also doesn’t help that the quality deteriorates noticeably when ambient lighting diminishes, which results in significant noise and reduced clarity.

Beyond these changes, the MacBook Air now supports up to two external displays when the lid is open and features Wi-Fi 6E for faster wireless connectivity. And perhaps most interestingly, the M4 MacBook Air starts at 16GB of base RAM, and is now $100 cheaper than its predecessor, starting at $999 in the US for the 13-inch model and $1299 for the 15-inch model.

Apple did upgrade the base M3 MacBook Air to have 16GB last November, but this wasn’t available at launch, which means you would’ve needed to dish out an additional $200 just to upgrade your RAM. Now that it’s standard across both base models, Apple effectively fixed the biggest criticism of last year’s laptop.

The M4 Advantage

The most substantial difference between the M3 MacBook Air and this year’s model is, of course, the M4 chip. My review unit is equipped with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, and it’s just a pleasure to use.

The M4 features a 10-core CPU and up to 10-core GPU, along with a 16-core Neural Engine, which provides a decent boost in processing power and efficiency compared to previous generations, but what you’ll really notice is the improvements in more specific tasks. One of the key enhancements to the M4 chip is its updated media engine, which now has AV1 decode for more efficient video streaming, meaning that the MacBook Air can better handle high-resolution 4K video editing… in a fanless design.

For testing, I used this laptop as I would my MacBook Pro, where I got through my day-to-day tasks, both for university and work. I did some media consumption on the Apple TV app, browsed on the Arc Browser, used Notion, did some photo-editing for this review on Lightroom and Photoshop, and ended with running some of my current Python projects for class, and this laptop did not slow down.

Like last year, I also ran a PyGame program that generates over a million vertices as a visualization through PyCharm, and this kind of sustained workload is a good indicator of how well the chip handles itself, because even with my M1 MacBook Pro, it can cause the system to spin up the fans. The fanless M4 Air handled the program really well with only the chassis getting mildly warm, but the actual program completed the visualization faster than even the M3 MacBook Air.

The unified memory architecture also gets a 17% bandwidth increase, now providing 120GB/s with support for up to 32GB of RAM, which is clearly aimed at AI-driven workflows. Much like my experience with the M4 MacBook Pro, I had some fun running Llama 3.2 through Olama on the M4 MacBook Air, and this laptop shows noticeable improvement in output speed compared to even last year’s M3 laptop.

As I said in my MacBook Pro review, for the vast majority of non-technical people buying this laptop who don’t have the time or the effort to scope out how to run local LLMs, the chip feels limited in the current AI suite of features Apple is currently able to offer, which is a shame given how well it can handle itself.

Overall, if you’re coming from an M2 or M3 MacBook Air, the performance gains probably won’t justify an upgrade unless you really need that higher bandwidth memory and improved NPU. However, for anyone using an M1 Air or older, the jump to M4 represents a pretty substantial improvement that will be noticeable across most workloads.

In terms of battery life, the M4 MacBook Air maintains the excellent endurance of its predecessor with some modest improvements. Apple claims up to 18 hours of video playback and 15 hours of wireless web browsing, and in my testing I was able to get just shy of nine hours of screen-on-time.

For a real-world test, I charged the laptop to 100% and used it for a full day. I started with a 30-minute FaceTime call, ran a couple benchmarks, edited photos in Lightroom and Photoshop, and drafted portions of this review in Notion. After about five hours of mixed-use, the battery was still at about 63%.

I then took it to my university, used PyCharm and CLion to work on two programming assignments, continued writing in Notion, and finished the day watching Severance with speakers at 75% and brightness at maximum. After a total of over eight hours of screen-on time, I still had around 15% battery remaining.

This incredible battery life in such a slim package remains one of the MacBook Air’s strongest selling points, and I don’t doubt that on more typical days with fewer resource-intensive tasks, this laptop can easily last well into a second day of use.

Should You Buy The M4 MacBook Air?

If you’re currently using a relatively recent Apple Silicon Mac, upgrading to the M4 MacBook Air might still be a hard sell. The performance gains, while noticeable, may not be substantial enough to warrant an immediate upgrade, especially if your current laptop is still serving you well.

However, the M4 MacBook Air is an exceptional entry point into macOS and the Apple ecosystem. For those looking to switch from Windows or upgrade from an older Intel-based MacBook, this laptop offers a compelling package that embodies Apple’s modern design language, exceptional battery life, and significant performance improvements, all while costing $100 less than its predecessor.

As a student, the balance between performance, battery life, and portability remains the biggest draw for me, and this new M4 model ensures all those fundamentals are still met and improved upon. There really isn’t another laptop within this category that matches the M4 Air in these aspects. The biggest constraint this laptop endures is Apple’s pricey upgrades, which seem unreasonable given that you can pick up last year’s model or even the M2 Air for significantly less and with higher storage, and still be left with a laptop that handles everything exceptionally well.

Overall, the M4 MacBook Air continues to be the best laptop for most people. It’s an amalgamation of an already excellent formula, now with more performance and a more attractive price point. If you’re in the market for a new laptop, it should be at the top of your list.

Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4, 2025)

The M4 MacBook Air keeps the same slim, lightweight design and vibrant display as its predecessors, but now sports the upgraded M4 chip and a new 12MP Center Stage camera for improved performance and video call experiences. The performance boost is most noticeable in media handling and AI-driven tasks, while battery life and sound quality remain stellar. It also introduces new features like support for two external displays, Wi-Fi 6E, and a new Sky Blue color option, all at a lower starting price. Overall, while current Apple Silicon users may not see a generational jump, those on older models or new buyers will find the M4 MacBook Air a compelling upgrade.