Apple MacBook Air M4 arrives packing a hell of a value punch, starts at $999 with 16GB of RAM

Apple has launched a new MacBook Air powered by its M4 SoC in what came as no surprise to anyone - but there are pleasant surprises here, make no mistake, particularly on the pricing front.

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Civilization VII running on the new MacBook Air, with the M4 pepping up gaming performance (Image Credit: Apple)

This was the launch which was expected yesterday by many - and we got a new iPad Air M3 instead - but the new MacBook Air M4 has now arrived, or rather, pre-orders are live (ahead of shipping on March 12).

As expected, there are MacBook Air 13-inch and 15-inch flavors packing the M4 chip, with a baseline level of 16GB of RAM (mirroring Apple's move with other devices), and a new 12MP Center Stage camera.

Otherwise, the laptop remains much the same, except for a notable - and very welcome - drop in price. The MacBook Air starts at $999, which is $100 less than the predecessor models (and harks back to the days when these machines were more affordable, and pitched under a grand). The new Air starts at $899 in the education sector, it should also be noted.

There's also a new color scheme, a metallic light blue ('sky blue') which joins the existing palette of midnight, starlight, and silver.

Apple has produced its usual vague performance comparisons (to older hardware) with this launch, including an assertion that the new M4 chip (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU) means the MacBook Air is up to twice as fast as the M1 model. Battery life is rated at up to 18 hours.

As expected on the one hand, but with surprise twists on the other

So, the core moves with the MacBook Air here were all pretty much as predicted by the rumor mill: a faster model thanks to the new M4 silicon, and not a lot else in the way of hardware changes, save for the move to standardize the entry-level model's RAM to 16GB in line with the other recent Macs from Apple.

Of course, the 16GB loadout of Unified Memory does make the $999 price tag on the baseline model of the MacBook Air 13-inch seriously tempting. (The 15-inch starts at $1,199, by the way).

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You can connect up to two external monitors while still using the MacBook Air's own display at the same time (Image Credit: Apple)

On top of that, there's a perk that flew a bit more under the radar in the form of support for multiple screens, for those who are shooting for a setup to ramp up their productivity (hopefully).

Apple informs us that there's now support for up to two 6K external displays with the MacBook Air M4 models - and the laptop's own display can be used as a third screen at the same time.

Early reaction has been favorable - even the new color has gone down well - and it looks like Apple is very much onto a winner here. Although that's mostly thanks to the reduction in price which wasn't predicted, especially not in the current climate where most of the chatter is around tech getting more expensive (certainly in the US, due to Trump's tariffs, of course).