As sure as the Earth’s endless journey around the Sun, Apple has launched its MacBook Air laptops for 2025, replete with its latest silicon, the M4 processor, inside. The new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models gain a helpful power bump in the upgrade, but come with two surprises: They retain the Air’s fanless cooling design despite the peppier chip, and the starting prices are a cool $100 off the previous generation. Who expected that?
This means the new 13-inch MacBook Air with M4 starts at just $999, the same as the outgoing M2 MacBook Air, while the 15-inch model with M4 is $1,199, versus $1,299 for last year’s version.
This level-up should see the M4 MacBook Air laptops perform faster and more efficiently than last year’s models, but Apple’s current MacBook Pro laptops will likely still hold a performance advantage. These pro-grade MacBooks have enjoyed fan-cooled M4 processing for months now.
Not stopping there, Apple also introduced a Mac Studio three-quel with options for an M4 Max processor or a brand-new M3 Ultra chip. The latter connects two M3 Max processors using a high-speed interconnect to create what looks to be the company’s most potent Apple Silicon chip to date. These new desktops start at $1,999 and $3,999, respectively, just like before.
I got the opportunity to see the new MacBook Air laptops and Mac Studio briefly before their unveiling. Here’s everything I learned about Apple’s latest ultraportable laptops and high-power desktops for 2025 so you can confidently decide whether to preorder one of these new Macs before their March 12 launch date—preorders are live now.
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Apple Gives the MacBook Air a 2025 Glow-Up
The MacBook Air has settled into its latest chassis design with few complaints, so what do you give a MacBook that (nearly) has it all? New colors and features, of course. With everything else unchanged in terms of thickness and weight, the new MacBook Air has a new color that Apple calls “Sky Blue.”
The Sky Blue hue actually appears to be two-tone as lighting conditions around it change. This color is one of the standard options alongside the existing ones; no need to pay extra to get the new look. On a related note, Apple’s Midnight (black) colorway now has the same fingerprint-resistant anodization on its aluminum as the black MacBook Pro to better resist oily smudges.
In addition to inheriting the M4 chip from the MacBook Pro laptops, which I’ll return to in a moment, the new MacBook Air models gain the Pros’ 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with Desk View, which is an ultra-wide lens. Center Stage and Desk View leverage the M4 chip’s Neural Engine to follow subjects as they move around within the lens’ viewing area.
(Credit: Apple)
What else do the M4 chips bring to the MacBook Air? Of course, they introduce higher power and efficiency. Apple brags that the M4 MacBook Air is twice as fast as the Apple Silicon-debut M1 model. Reading between the lines, that means a smaller performance gain over the outgoing M3 MacBook Air laptops.
The M4 processor also allows both new MacBook Air laptops to support two connected external displays while the laptop is open, as opposed to just one in the same scenario with an M3 model. Finally, Apple says the M4 MacBook Air laptops can last up to 18 hours on their batteries, thanks to efficiency gains via the new silicon. That battery projection is on par with the numbers for the outgoing M3 models.
The new MacBook Air laptops will have 16GB of unified memory in their entry-level models, a new baseline due to the needs of Apple Intelligence. The 13-inch model will start with a 10-core CPU and an eight-core GPU on its M4 chip, with an option to splurge for a 10-core GPU. The 15-inch model will feature the more potent pairing to start.
Double Up Your SoC: The Mac Studio Returns With an M3 Ultra
Rounding out its new-CPU rollouts, Apple has a new Mac Studio desktop featuring your choice of an M4 Max processor (first seen in the 2024 MacBook Pro models) or a brand-new M3 Ultra chip. Both options bring Thunderbolt 5 connectivity to the platform, with all six of the M3 Ultra Mac Studio’s USB-C ports supporting it.
This new connection standard unlocks up to 120Gbps data transfer rates, which enables new accessory options for content creation and other high-octane computing needs. These include high-capacity input hubs, as well as external boxes that can host PCIe expansion cards with I/O for specialized video workflows, or for attaching extra-high-speed portable storage.
Otherwise unchanged in terms of its case and thermal design, the 2025 Mac Studio brings everything the M4 Max can already do in a MacBook Pro to an implementation with more cooling potential. According to Apple, the M4 Max’s 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU are 3.5 times faster than the M1 Max. This new chip also brings several graphics processing features to the platform, namely Apple’s second-generation ray-tracing engine and hardware-accelerated mesh shading.
(Credit: Lily Yeh; Apple)
The Mac Studio with M4 Max starts with 36GB of unified memory and can host up to 128GB, while the M3 Ultra Mac Studio considerably increases that capacity. But first, a question: Why are we not getting an M4 Ultra right now?
This is because of how these Ultra-grade M-series chips are produced. Apple’s Ultra-level chips aren’t singular pieces of silicon like the others but two of the firm’s highest-performing processors paired up on a mainboard using a high-speed interconnect called UltraFusion. This technique allows the two chips to essentially act as one but with double the processing resources on tap.
In this case, that means a 32-core CPU (two 16-core M3 Max CPUs) bolstered by a massive 80-core GPU (again, two 40-core M3 Max GPUs), Apple’s highest core counts yet achieved. Creating a Frankenstein’s monster of a chip like this takes additional development time and resources, so the Ultra line is often “behind” a generation.
(Credit: Apple)
The M3 Ultra will miss out on some of the M4 line’s enhanced graphics processing techniques, notably Apple’s second-gen ray tracing, but it should prove a beast for development work on AI models and other machine-learning projects. This is because doubling processing resources allows for a massive increase in memory bandwidth and capacity. The M3 Ultra puts up 800GBps of bandwidth and has the capacity for as much as 512GB of unified memory, the most ever crammed into a personal computer of this size.
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During a demonstration, I witnessed a maxed-out Mac Studio with M3 Ultra use a 600-billion-parameter large-language model (LLM) to generate original Python code for a new function within a 3D modeling app faster than I could type it out (much less understand it), using more than 270GB of memory to do it. Then, the demonstrator shifted to a session of Cyberpunk 2077 that was running in the background to show off not only the GPU’s real-time rendering capabilities but that both tasks were running concurrently.
The Mac Studio with the M3 Ultra is for an even more specific audience than the model with M4 Max, namely bleeding-edge AI and machine learning developers, with twice the performance of the M4 Max in workloads that are optimized to tap into its massive core counts. With that, the M4 Max-based Mac Studio is better for content creators and the rare breed of Mac-loving computer gamers.
The Takeaway: A Likely New Performance Ceiling, a Definite Surprise on Pricing
The more broadly exciting story here from Apple is its brand-new line of MacBook Air laptops with a new color and MacBook Pro-level features for $100 less than before. Apple has increased its laptop value proposition quite a bit since it left Intel silicon behind years ago, but even I didn’t expect a price cut in 2025.
While Apple won’t say why or how it managed the price reduction, I suspect it is due to its fabrication partner, Taiwan’s TSMC, refining its 3-nanometer process, first used for the M3 chips, to produce better yields for M4. This increase in supply could have allowed Apple to respond to demand with a lower price without cutting into its margins.
This price drop also allows the newest MacBook Air laptops to better compete with the wave of sublime, sub-$1,000 Windows laptops we’ve seen over the past year from companies like Asus and its Zenbook line.
One note: The M3 MacBook Air laptops will not be sold at a lower price, as the M2 MacBook Air laptops have been since the M3 models landed. The M3 models are being discontinued, leaving the M1 MacBook Air, sold through Walmart, as the sole alternative to the latest M4 models.
It’s not every day that you see Apple slash a hunk off the price of its latest-gen flagship laptop, which should please consumers and might increase the pressure on its PC rivals to continue driving prices down. Likewise, reaching new performance heights such as the ones demonstrated on the desktop side is sure to shake PC makers, who, without switching to a unified memory approach, can only dream of fitting 512GB of RAM into a compact desktop.
I went into Apple’s briefing for these new Macs expecting a mildly impressive showing, with decent generational performance gains, for the same prices as before. I left pleasantly surprised. Return to PCMag soon for thoroughly tested reviews of Apple’s first new Macs for 2025.
