The MacBook Air with M1 processor is Apple’s first Mac computer. The MacBook Air is the most famous Mac and the best-selling 13-inch notebook in the world, so this shouldn’t be a significant surprise. The layout appears to be the same as in the last generation, but Intel processors are dropped in favour of the M1 architecture.
According to Apple, you will receive a fanless, utterly silent laptop with up to 3.5 times the CPU performance of the previous-generation Air and up to 5 times quicker graphics. Also reported to be two times speedier are the SSDs.
Along with the significantly enhanced performance, the battery life has been improved. The new MacBook Air has a battery life of up to 15 hours for Wi-Fi web surfing and 18 hours for offline movie playback. This is the most extended battery life for a MacBook Air and is 6 hours longer than its predecessor. Additionally, Apple claims that you may make video calls for twice as long on a single charge as previously (without mentioning numbers here).
The laptop’s 13.3-inch 2560×1600 Retina Display, which also boasts True Tone technology and 400 nits of brightness, now supports the P3 colour space. There is built-in Wi-Fi 6, Touch ID is still functional, and there are two Thunderbolt connectors that support USB 4.
General
Weight
1.29 kg (2.84 lbs)
Dimensions
304.1 x 212.4 x 16.1 mm 11.97 x 8.36 x 0.63 inches
Area
646 cm2 (100.1 inches2)
Screen-to-body ratio
~79.4%
Side bezels
8.8 mm
Colours
Silver, Gold, Gray
Transformer
No
Cooling system
Passive
Vapor chamber
Yes
Apple Macbook Air – Display
Size
13.3 inches
Type
IPS LCD
Refresh rate
60 Hz
PPI
227 PPI
Aspect ratio
16:10
Resolution
2560 x 1600 pixels
HDR support
Yes, HDR10
Touchscreen
No
Coating
Glossy (Antireflective)
Max. brightness
400 nits
Contrast
1069:1
sRGB colour space
99.8%
Adobe RGB profile
85.9%
DCI-P3 colour gamut
98.6%
Response time
35 ms
Battery
Capacity
49.9 Wh
Voltage
11.4 V
Full charging time
2:23 hr
Battery type
Li-Po
Replaceable
No
Fast charging
Yes
USB Power Delivery
Yes
Charging port position
Left
Charge power
30 W
Cable length
2 meters
Weigh of AC adapter
172 gramm
CPU
CPU Name
Apple M1
Base frequency
2.1 GHz
Turbo Frequency
3.2 GHz
Cores
8
Threads
8
Integrated GPU
Apple M1 GPU
Fabrication process
5 nm
Apple Macbook Air – Benchmarks
Single-Core Score
1706
Multi-Core Score
7422
Graphics Card
GPU Name
Apple M1 GPU (8-core)
TGP
15 W
Type
Integrated
Fabrication process
5 nm
GPU base clock
450 MHz
GPU boost clock
1278 MHz
FLOPS
2.6 TFLOPS
Memory size
System Shared
Memory type
LPDDR4X
Memory bus
128 bit
Memory speed
4.27 Gbps
Shading units (cores)
1024
Texture mapping units (TMUs)
64
Raster operations pipelines (ROPs)
32
Apple Macbook Air – RAM
RAM Size
8GB / 16GB
Channels
2×4 GB
Clock
4266 MHz
Type
LPDDR4X
Upgradable
No
Storage
Storage Size
256GB / 512GB / 1TB / 2TB
Bus
Custom
Storage type
SSD (M2)
Channels
1×256 GB
Upgradable
No
NVMe
Yes
Sound
Speakers
2.0
Dolby Atmos
Yes
Loudness
79.6 dB
Microphones
3
Connectivity
Wi-Fi standard
v6
Bluetooth
v5
Fingerprint
Yes
Optical drive
No
Webcam
Above the display
Webcam resolution
1280 x 720
USB-A
No
USB Type-C
2x USB 3.1
Thunderbolt
Thunderbolt 3
HDMI
No
DisplayPort
No
VGA
No
Audio jack (3.5 mm)
Yes
Ethernet (RJ45)
No
SD card reader
No
Proprietary charging port
No
Pre-orders for the MacBook Air with M1 began today at $999; for educational users, the price will be $899 and higher. The entry-level model has 256GB of storage, an M1 chip with 8 CPU cores and 7 GPU cores, and 8GB of RAM. You must pay an extra $250 to get a second GPU core and twice the storage space.
The laptop, which runs macOS Big Sur, will be available in Space Gray, gold, and silver starting next week.
