Apple MacBook Air

Thanks to Apple’s new M1 chip, this laptop is a revolution: light, impossibly fast and near silent

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SPECIFICATIONS

Processor Apple M1 chip

Screen 13.3-inch, 400 nit, 2560x1600 LED

Memory 8GB / 16GB

Storage 256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB

Battery Up to 18 hours

Connectivity 2x Thunderbolt 3, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0

OS macOS 11

Dimensions 304.1.212.4x4.1–16.1mm

Weight 1.29kg

From £999 apple.com

This is the start of something huge for Apple: computers made using its own chips. Ever since the iPad debuted the first Apple-made chip back in 2010, we had to wonder T whether this would be the long-term plan. The M1 chip makes that a reality, and it turns out to be a big leap forward for laptops. If you want a computer that can do standard tasks without breaking a sweat, the MacBook Air is pretty much unmatched.

It’s simply screamingly fast for a mid-price, lightweight machine. Actually, it’s screamingly fast for almost any laptop.

Its Geekbench 5 scores of 1732 in single-core and 7556 in multi-core give you an idea of what to expect: that is as fast for single-core performance as laptops get, and for multi-core performance, it’s stronger than the 16-inch MacBook Pro that costs more than twice as much.

It’s not just benchmarks either – in practical tests such as video encoding or compressing files, we saw performance pretty much in line with hefty pro machines.

That’s all paired with storage that’s incredibly fast too – we measured write speeds of 2,292MB/s and read speeds of 2,789MB/s using BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test, which is around twice what the previous MacBook Air achieved.