Apple’s M4 MacBook Air could launch in the next few weeks — what we know

The wait for the M4 MacBook Air is almost over, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

While M4-powered MacBook Pros have been on shelves since November, buyers of the cheaper and more lightweight Air still only have the M3 model to play with. But that should change next month, a year after the M3 MacBook Air launched.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Gurman writes that 13- and 15-inch versions of the “company’s most popular laptop” are “gearing up for a release in March”. Apple has begun to prepare its various marketing, sales and retail teams for the arrival, and inventory of the current models is being whittled away with no sign of replacement.

Right on time

Gurman has a long history of usually being right or close to right when it comes to Apple insights. He has been talking about the release of the M4 MacBook Air near the start of 2025 since the end of last year, when he noted that production was only just beginning, meaning a 2024 release was out.

At the start of this month, he reported that stock of current-gen MacBook Airs was “dwindling” — usually a telltale sign that a replacement is imminent with Apple — and just last week, he added that he would “expect the laptops to go on sale by March at the latest”.

But in terms of the fine detail, he’s not been completely on target. In December, Gurman was confidently predicting that the M4 MacBook Air would beat the next iPhone 16e to market, but that officially became impossible when the new cheaper smartphone was confirmed last Wednesday.

What to expect

We’re not expecting huge differences for the MacBook Air, with the laptop still coming in two sizes, with near-identical external designs to their respective predecessors: 13 inches for maximum portability or 15 for better productivity.

But the key difference will be on the inside. In our extensive benchmarking of every M-series MacBook, we found that the M4-powered Pro achieved a 23% better score in Geekbench 6’s single-core test and 25.6% in its multi-core variant.

While neither can compete with the best gaming laptops, the M4 chip is definitely superior both in action games like Borderlands 3 (23fps vs 14.2fps at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution) and slower-paced strategy games like Civilization VI (53fps vs 23.7fps, again at 1,929 x 1,200).

And while you might expect the fanless MacBook Air to perform worse even with the same chipset, a pre-release benchmark suggests the difference may not be that stark. In terms of GPU performance, the Geekbench Metal test measured just a 5% difference between the two.

Hopefully, would-be buyers will be able to find out for themselves very soon. As with the iPhone 16e, we’re not expecting a full event, with Apple likely to drop the new laptops with just a press release and a YouTube video. Suffice it to say that as soon as it does, we’ll have full reviews and analysis of the laptops for you to get your teeth into.