Apple MacBook Air
Even the cheapest version is brilliant – there’s plenty here to persuade Windows loyalists to jump ship
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Range starts at: £833 (£999 inc VAT) Model tested: £833 (£999 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk
This is the first time we’ve included a MacBook in a “budget” laptop Labs, with the company just squeezing under our £999 limit with the base model of its new M1 MacBook Air. Unlike many base models, this is no low-end affair. The only specs downgrade versus the £1,299 MacBook Pro is that you have seven graphics cores rather than eight, with the CPU being the same, all-conquering ARM-based M1 chip.
It’s safe to say that, until the M1, ARM-based processors didn’t have a good reputation within laptops. All the Windows on ARM systems we’ve tested have been sluggish affairs where you traded speed for battery life, but Apple has turned that trend on its head: the M1 MacBook Air is supremely fast in whatever benchmark you choose, as reflected by its chart-topping scores in Geekbench 5. That’s in both the single-core and multicore tests, all without the aid of a fan.
The fact the MacBook Air achieves this while lasting for almost 15 hours in our video-rundown test shows that on this rare occasion you can both have your cake and eat it. This sturdy laptop will travel well too. It’s a metal unibody construction without a hint of weakness, while the lid is the stiffest on test. There’s only one downside to this: the MacBook Air feels every gram of its 1.3kg weight, especially if you compare it to the Huawei MateBook X or Samsung Galaxy Book S.
Such a long battery life means you don’t need to take the power supply with you on day trips, but when you do you’ll find it a compact companion at 191g. Also note that this laptop is wonderfully slim at 16.1mm. We wouldn’t feel comfortable slinging it into a bag, though, because its matte metal finish gives it an ornamental feel and scratches feel sacrilegious.
In reality, this is a potent work tool rather than a piece of jewellery. The keyboard is the best of all the laptops on test this month, with a feeling of solidity and purpose none of the others can match. We like the extra palmrest space too, while Apple even goes to the effort of isolating the cursor keys so you don’t accidentally hit a neighbouring key. Then there’s the enormous touchpad with its clever haptic feedback, which you can instruct to be silent or clicky – and even control the strength of the click.
Finally, we come to the screen, which once again puts Apple at the top of the quality table. For example, of all the laptops here it’s the only one capable of covering over 90% of the DCI-P3 gamut popular with filmmakers, and its colour accuracy is spot on. Apple also includes extra features such as True Tone, which adjusts the tone of the image based on the ambient lighting. Add a peak brightness of 400cd/m2 and it’s a truly great all-rounder. all-rounde
It should be no surprise that films look terrific on th the MacBook Air and Apple backs bac this up with a superb set of speakers. The microphone and webcam aren’t a match for the company’s top-end machines, machin but they function perfectly well for videoconferencing. videoconferencing
There are points against the M1 MacBook Air, especially for traditional Windows users thinking about switching. Top of the list is the unfamiliar OS, although the ubiquity of we b apps and ready availability of familiar software such as Office makes this less of a burden than you might think. Where you may stumble is if you need to use niche software or hook up legacy hardware, a problem exacerbated by the switch to Apple’s M1 architecture rather than x86. ( See Jon Honeyball’s column on p108 for an example of this.)
The MacBook’s other historic weakness is games. It’s telling that we weren’t able to run any of our 3D performance benchmarks other than GFXBench’s Car Chase test (naturally, it scored well here, returning 186fps in the off-screen 1080p test).
Nor does Apple go overboard on ports. It’s great to have USB-C 4 at the ready for its speedy data transfers, but there are only two (both on the left) and the sole other connector is for a 3.5mm jack. And, if you want more than the 256GB of storage of the base model, you’ll need to stump up an extra £250 for the 512GB version, in a familiar repeat of the Apple upsell model. Decide that 8GB of RAM isn’t enough nough for you? Doubling it to the maximum 16GB is a costly stly £200.
However, even if you’re unwilling willing to make a wholesale switch ch to the Apple ecosystem, the M1 MacBook Air is the most tempting ting proposition for Windows dows devotees yet. It still isn’t cheap, but it’s packed with great-quality components and, if the software you want to run is s available, it’s also blisteringly eringly fast.
“Almost 15 hours in our video-rundown test shows that on this rare occasion you can both have your cake and eat it”