They’ve all had their charms, but this number three may be the best yet: 2025’s 15-inch Apple MacBook Air is the company’s third Air laptop at that screen size, and it’s the most affordable and most improved of the lot. For this new edition, Apple trimmed the 15-inch Air’s starting-model price by $100, to $1,199, while introducing its latest-gen M4 processor, a new 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam, and a new Sky Blue color option that doesn’t cost extra. (Our slightly upgraded test model rings up at $1,399.) That said, while the bigger Air is better, the world hasn’t stood still around it—the 15-inch Air is losing ground on performance, features, and battery life to some competing PC laptops. While the latest big-screen MacBook Air is one of the best values at its size, this competitive slip keeps it out of Editors’ Choice consideration and makes us hopeful for a more thorough refresh next year.
Configurations: New Features, Better Performance, Lower Price
Unlike the 13-inch model, Apple’s configuration options for the 15-inch MacBook Air are much more straightforward. In most cases, each upgrade from the base-level 15-inch Air costs an additional $200. For example, going from 256GB to 512GB of solid-state storage space costs $200, and 1TB costs $200 more than that ($400). The same applies to the memory upgrades: Going to 24GB costs $200, and to 32GB costs $400. (The outlier to this rule is the 2TB SSD, which costs double that of the 1TB option, at $800.)
First Look: Apple’s 2025 MacBook Air Comes in Sky Blue–and Costs $100 Less
All 15-inch MacBook Air models feature the M4 processor with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU; no further chip upgrades are available. The laptop starts at $1,199—$100 less than last year—for 16GB of unified memory and a 256GB SSD, and our review unit is a step up from that, with a 512GB SSD for $1,399. The highest-end 15-inch Air costs $2,399 and includes 32GB of memory and a 2TB SSD.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
However, as with the 13-inch model, the new lower starting price and 16GB memory baseline enable higher-end configurations that are more affordable than before. For instance, our equivalent review configuration, in terms of memory and storage, cost $1,699 last year as an Apple M3 model—that’s a $300 savings, comparatively speaking. Likewise, the maxed-out MacBook Air is $100 cheaper this year.
Beyond the price drops are some notable additions. Every new 15-inch Air configuration comes with an improved 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, and if you want to look beyond the original gold (Starlight), silver, and black (Midnight) options, you can choose the new Sky Blue chassis color. This color gives off a two-tone effect, changing its appearance between a cloudy silver under direct light and a subtle, barely-there baby blue under indirect light. Looking at it one way, you get two colors for the price of one; looked at in another, really Sky Blue is silver and a slightly off-silver.
This price reduction is well-timed for Apple, considering it isn’t terribly difficult to find a $1,200 Windows laptop with a 15-inch, 1800p OLED screen these days. Will such a PC laptop challenge the 15-inch Air on performance, though? As you’ll soon see, that’s growing increasingly likely.
Design: Still a Top-Tier 15-Inch Laptop, But Growing Old
Much of what I covered in my review of last year’s 15-inch MacBook Air applies to this model. Little to nothing has changed about the anodized aluminum shell, the punchy-but-quiet keyboard, and the silky-smooth trackpad. The laptop even measures and weighs the same as last year, at 0.45 inch thick and 3.3 pounds.
And how has the thin-and-light, desktop-replacement PC laptop competition carried on since my last MacBook Air review? Let’s just say Apple’s 15-inch Air finds itself in a hotly competitive space in 2025, with all of our comparison systems challenging its feathery weight and super-slim dimensions. The Asus Zenbook S 16 is nearly as thin and light, at 0.51 inch and 3.31 pounds, respectively—a difference you’ll barely notice. Meanwhile, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is noticeably thicker (0.6 inch) but actually lighter, at 3.2 pounds. Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 nips at the Air’s heels, measuring 0.48 inch thick and weighing 3.41 pounds.
This narrowing of the portability gap (not to mention the performance one) between Apple’s MacBook Air and like-priced PC laptops means Apple will need to find new ways to compete to regain the substantial leads it once had.
This issue is potentially compounded by the fact that nothing has changed about the MacBook Air’s top-of-screen “notch” (which is home to the webcam hardware) or the arrangement of ports. While the screen design doesn’t bother me much (since the bit of screen space that the notch occupies is already effectively taken up by the macOS menu bar), I get the sense that I’m in the minority with that opinion.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Regardless, the display could use a more thorough update, particularly to a newer panel tech like OLED. LED-backlit IPS can’t compete with pure OLED in terms of deep black tones, color depth, and contrast ratio.
Apple already tunes its IPS panels to draw more color coverage and brightness out of them than usual, so imagine what OLED could do married to the MacBook Air’s color coverage and its True Tone color-temperature-adjustment feature. However, the screen’s 2,880-by-1,864-pixel resolution is satisfactory; going any higher-res would likely have a negative effect on battery life.
Two Thunderbolt 4 connections, the MagSafe power connector, and the headphone jack are just fine for the ports, but this MacBook Air’s body, larger than the 13-inch version’s, cries out for at least one more physical connection. I’m not asking for an SD card reader, which might increase the laptop’s thickness, but a third Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C port would be welcome.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Finally, I have no complaints about the laptop’s keyboard and touchpad, which have the same feel as the ones on last year’s model. Apple continues to claim some of the highest-quality inputs of any laptop. However, given the bigger physical chassis size of the 15-incher versus the 13-incher, I see room for improvements in its next major revision. As a larger laptop, the 15-inch Air should certainly have more ports, and I can’t see why top-firing speakers haven’t made it to the 15-inch model.
Using the 15-Inch Apple MacBook Air: The Roomier Air Experience Continues to Impress
Last year was my first chance to play around with a 15-inch MacBook Air, having only reviewed 13-inch Air laptops before, and I came away impressed by the more deluxe-feeling thin-and-light laptop. Going back to a 13-inch Air for my recent review felt comparatively cramped, whereas the 15-inch model is roomier in every way: more space on the keyboard deck to rest my palms, more screen space on which to tile my open apps, and more trackpad space for navigating macOS. My opinion of the laptop hasn’t changed much with this update, since little has changed on the outside. I enjoy using the 15-inch model even more than the 13-inch one since it’s not much heavier and barely thicker, giving you additional work space without much sacrifice to portability.
Using the laptop daily, I find the screen to be just fine for what I’m doing: primarily editing and writing articles in a web browser, with many tabs open, and communicating with coworkers over Slack and Asana. However, the Air’s screen isn’t necessarily keeping up with its increasing processing capabilities. Editing photos or playing the odd game would look even better on a 120Hz OLED panel. We’ve seen such screens on PC laptops within the past year for as little as $1,300.
As noted earlier, using the keyboard and trackpad feels like using the last model. I can type at a similar words-per-minute rate as before, without a change in accuracy. The trackpad is just as comfortable as before, with plenty of space for navigating and executing multitouch gestures.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
While the 15-inch MacBook Air’s port loadout hasn’t changed from the M3 to the M4 model, one crucial operational aspect has: The M4 processor update allows the laptop to power two connected displays while its lid is open and the screen is on. What’s better than two screens? Three, of course.
Moving on to an upgrade that could genuinely change one little corner of using the 15-inch Air: the Center Stage webcam. This new camera makes gathering friends, family, or colleagues around the MacBook Air for a group FaceTime call much easier. The wide-angle lens and 12-megapixel sensor can adjust the frame to accommodate multiple people on a call in front of the laptop, while keeping the picture crystal clear and everyone in the frame. Apple’s Neural Engine coprocessor handles this feature’s automated frame and focus adjustments.
One advantage that the 15-inch MacBook Air has over the 13-inch model is a six-speaker array instead of just four. These speakers are even better suited to laptop movie watching and video calls without headphones. Still, top-firing speakers would be welcome, given the space on the chassis afforded by the 15-inch design.
As for Apple’s updated 16-core Neural Engine in the M4, this is Apple’s first fresh MacBook Air following the debut of Apple Intelligence in late 2024. While the M4’s manufacturing process refinements have vastly improved its AI performance at certain precision levels, which you’ll see in the benchmarking discussion below, I’m still not blown away by Apple Intelligence in practice.
To learn more about my thoughts on Apple Intelligence and macOS Sequoia so far, check out my 2024 Mac mini and 2025 MacBook Air 13-Inch reviews. At the very least, Apple’s current computer lineup should be ready for the next phase of Apple Intelligence: a new Siri assistant powered by an AI language model to access local apps and data.
Testing the 15-Inch Apple MacBook Air: Improved, But With PC Rivals in Pursuit
As I’ve laid out already, Apple’s competition in the thin-and-light laptop market has geared up for quite a fight into 2025 and beyond. This observation is not just based on the feature sets we’ve seen from similarly priced PC laptops. Every Windows laptop in this comparison set has either a larger or faster OLED screen than the MacBook Air’s IPS panel, but some also have comparable or better performance.
Of course, we want to measure Apple’s year-on-year improvements to the 15-inch Air, but we’re primarily focused on how this stacks up against similarly configured PC laptops. For that, we have the Asus Zenbook S 16 ($1,699), the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (starts at $1,099.99; $1,299.99 as tested), and the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 (starts at $1,449.99; $1,749.99 as tested). These laptops top the 15-inch MacBook Air on display refresh rate and panel technology, and the Galaxy Book4’s Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, in particular, challenged the M4 in our tests below.
Productivity, Content Creation, and AI Tests
Because macOS does not support our usual PCMark tests, we’ll dive right into our CPU-centric benchmarks. First, Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 renders a complex scene using the company’s Cinema 4D engine. Next, Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
To measure a laptop’s mainstream content-creation chops, we use workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators to gauge a laptop’s image-editing prowess with various automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 2024.
Also, we’re beginning to test AI performance in functions like image and text classification and face detection using Primate Labs’ Geekbench AI benchmark. To understand how this translates to AI agent performance, the quantized score best represents the level of precision that on-device AI models will use.
The fanless M4 chip inside the 15-inch MacBook Air put on a brilliant show (similar to its 13-inch sibling), but it was challenged by the Snapdragon X chip inside the Galaxy Book4 laptop. While it edged out the Samsung laptop in Cinebench, the MacBook Air took second place in Geekbench and HandBrake. While the margins were small in both cases, a loss is a loss.
As it has for years, the MacBook Air posted a dominant Photoshop score, outpacing its predecessor by nearly 1,000 points. As for its AI task throughput, the M4 chip’s Neural Engine vastly outperformed the previous generation, particularly at quantized precision, the figure most relevant to AI agent performance.
This performance story isn’t new for the 15-inch MacBook Air, but it performed better competitively here than against last year’s set of systems. However, it was still behind the competition in some cases. An interesting observation: All three of these ultra-thin, desktop replacement PC laptops are fan-cooled systems. Considering how close these laptops are to beating the 15-inch Air on thinness and weight, Apple must continue advancing performance meaningfully if it wants to remain competitive. Or, it could keep slashing prices.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
Our graphics performance testing starts with three of UL’s 3DMark benchmarks using the macOS-compatible 3DMark iOS app. Steel Nomad Light is a 1440p test without ray tracing, focusing on raw graphics rasterization. Solar Bay is where ray-tracing testing comes in, and the Wild Life Extreme test pushes machines to their limits at 4K resolution.
We also measure gaming performance using the 2022 strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3, which we run exclusively on Macs. In the game’s Battle benchmark, we run the test at Ultra and Low settings at 1080p resolution, recording the average frames per second (fps).
Apple showed substantial gains in graphics performance within the UL synthetic benchmarks, first with the new MacBook Air leading in the 1440p Steel Nomad test. However, the Yoga laptop’s Intel Arc 140V graphics edged the M4 processor by nearly 1,000 points in the ray-traced Solar Bay test. The M4 took the lead once again in the demanding Wild Life Extreme test.
For the the Total War: Warhammer 3 benchmark, we mapped the M4 Air against a few other MacBooks (Pro models) and Macs (a Studio). Being a fanless M4 implementation, the MacBook Air performed the worst among the compared Macs in the Total War: Warhammer 3 benchmark. Still, these numbers suggest a decent 30fps experience is possible at medium detail settings in some games, though you might want to stick with 1080p resolution for now.
In an interesting twist, the M4 SoC inside the MacBook Air appears to have more of an edge in graphics than in raw CPU performance over the PC laptops charted above. Of these mainstream desktop replacement laptops, who would have thought the Mac had the chance of being the better gamer?
Battery Test
We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
While this 2025 MacBook Air 15-inch model endured longer than last year’s by nearly 90 minutes, its running time simply doesn’t compete with these rival PC laptops. The latest silicon from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm have made significant gains in efficiency of late, making the MacBook Air’s job of differentiating itself on this front much more difficult. Still, this is plenty of juice for a workday and an improvement over the outgoing model (not to mention Apple’s own 18-hour claim). Apple must keep pushing to remain competitive, as its lead has already slipped.
Verdict: The Best Big Air Yet, But the Alternatives Keep Getting Better
On the whole, this is the best the 15-inch MacBook Air has ever been. For the deep-pocketed Apple loyalist, who may have an M3 Air, this model will feel improved enough to justify grabbing one for that fancy new colorway and improved webcam. However, for M3 owners who don’t have that kind of dough to throw around, wait until the eventual M5 model before you upgrade. Even if you have an original 15-inch Air, you might think twice before clicking that buy button and hold out hope for a more profound redesign in 2026.
Why? Based on our testing, comparable PC laptops in 2025 now challenge the 15-inch Air. We suspect this is part of why Apple dropped the starting price by $100, and with its midrange to high-end configurations, by several hundred.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
This Air is a better value than before, but like-positioned PC laptops have all but caught up to the Air’s game with comparable performance, higher-tech screens, and even longer battery life. Apple’s price reductions have done a lot of the heavy lifting in earning the 15-inch Air its 4-star score here.
We find the 15-inch MacBook Air in an interesting position in 2025. While this 15-inch Air serves up the best value in a big-screen MacBook to date, with lower prices, improved features, and beefier starting configurations, some competitors now can outpace its processor and outlast its battery. The 15-inch Air remains an excellent MacBook and a solid buy if you’re in the macOS camp, but we’re hopeful for more profound improvements next year.
Apple MacBook Air 15-Inch (2025, M4)
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The Bottom Line
We’re getting antsy for a more significant redesign, but the MacBook Air 15-inch remains Apple’s best value in a big-screen laptop, thanks to a lower starting price, kicked-up CPU performance, and a boost in the base model’s memory capacity.
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About Joe Osborne
Deputy Managing Editor, Hardware
