Quick Impressions – M4 MacBook Air

I bought the newly released M4-powered 13″ MacBook Air (512 GB). I had been holding off on buying a new computer and I had my eye on several models, not just the MacBook. The MacBook Air made the most sense for me personally, the time felt right, so I pre-ordered and it arrived yesterday afternoon.

I did get the Sky Blue model and it is what I expected it to be. For the curious, don’t think of this like the blue Surface Laptop. Think of Silver as the neutral gray color, Starlight as the warm temperature gray, and Sky Blue as the cool temperature gray. It looks nice just don’t buy one if you were hoping to turn heads. It’s MacBook gray. It will stand out in a sea of Silver MacBooks. On it’s own, it’s a shade of gray.

Beyond that, yes, M4 is mighty fast but I haven’t owned a MacBook since the Intel era so I don’t have a fair comparison. It runs very cool which is impressive given there’s no fan. I opened this lid this morning at breakfast and was taken by surprise by how the display was lit and the computer was ready to go, instantly. This has probably been true since M1 but, again, this is my first Apple Silicon Mac. General computing and all the usual day one tasks of installing applications, updating, testing features, etc. has all been very responsive. The battery hasn’t been draining very much, either.

I think the biggest story with this new MacBook Air isn’t the M4, isn’t the new color, but that Apple added more value and dropped the price. $999 for the most current model MacBook Air is a great deal. I have to kick the tires on it some more but I am very happy with the M4 MacBook Air so far.