MacBook Air
From £999
Apple’s thinnest, lightest laptop now also gets the M1 treatment. But without a price hike! Prices still start at just £999. The next step model (with increased SSD storage and eight-core GPU) even costs £50 less at £1,249. Like the MBP, Apple’s own unified memory silicon enables faster performance and better graphic speeds. And the 16-core Neural Engine results in nine times faster machine learning.
It may be Apple’s most affordable laptop, but the MacBook Air certainly doesn’t feel like a budget machine, thanks to its 100% recycled aluminium unibody, and 13.3-inch LED-backlit Retina display, which has a resolution of 2560x1600 (227ppi) and True Tone, which automatically adjusts the display’s colour temperature depending on the ambient light.
The inclusion of the M1 chip has changed none of the Air’s physical characteristics – the portable laptop is still just 1.61cm thin, and weighs 1.29kg. Despite the performance boost, the Air is now fanless, using an aluminium heat dissipating panel instead – which also means that it runs in complete silence.
The base model comes with an eight-core CPU, but a seven-core GPU, and 256GB SSD storage. While on the step-up model, the CPU and GPU are both eight-core, and the storage starts at 512GB. Both offer the option to upgrade to 16GB memory, and are configurable with increased storage; you can add up to 2TB of SSD storage for £800 on the base model or £600 on the eight-core GPU model.
The M1 MacBook Air can be teamed with Apple’s Pro Display XDR, although none of the M1 Macs can be used with an external GPU (eGPU). You also get Touch ID for secure logins, and a Force Touch trackpad.
The MacBook Air is also equipped with two Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports and a headphone socket. The laptop now supports 802.11ax Wi-Fi – aka Wi-Fi 6, has Bluetooth 5.0 onboard, and is equipped with a 720p FaceTime camera for video chats.
So with the new internal upgrades, does the MacBook Air still boast its legendarily long battery life? Yes, and some! You can now get up to 18 hours of Apple TV app movie playback, or 15 hours of wireless web surfing, thanks to its 49.9Whr battery. Like the earlier 2020 incarnation, the new MacBook Air comes with Apple’s Magic Keyboard for fast, fluid typing.