I was waiting on the M4 MacBook Air, and when it launched, my hype levels were at maximum. The Sky Blue finish is mesmerizing, and taking $100 off the price is awesome. But just like that, this mega saving on the outgoing M3 model made me seriously reconsider.
Right now, you can get the near-maxed out M3 MacBook Air with 24GB of RAM for just $1,099 at Amazon. That’s a massive $300 saving, which makes this one of the biggest laptop deals I’ve seen this year (so far).
So I know the obvious first question — why should I get this older model over the M4 MacBook Air? I mean, in our own testing, we’ve seen that newer chipset run up to 15% faster. Well, it comes down to three things: RAM, storage and value for money.
More is more
You could have a super quick chip like M4, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Mac apps, it’s that they are super RAM-hungry and no single or multi-core prowess can get around that. It’s like having a Ferrari with a fuel tank the size of a soda can!
16GB should be enough to cut the mustard for most things, but for those moments where you do need to throw some prosumer tasks at it, like 4K rendering or RAW photo edits in Photoshop, that additional headroom is essential to really make the most of that M3 speed.
256GB isn’t just low, but slow too
The base storage on a MacBook Air is 256GB, which in and of itself is a bit of an issue. Given the low capacity, you may find yourself spending quite a bit of time doing a bunch of file organization.
But the problem is bigger than that. You see, the base model operates on a single NAND flash memory chip — the place where all your stuff is stored only has one tunnel to be loaded out of and read into. That means slower loading speeds.
Laptop | SSD read speed (MB/s) | SSD write speed (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|
M4 MacBook Air (256GB SSD) | 2891.1 | 1919.7 |
M3 MacBook Air (512GB SSD) | 3030.7 | 3058.8 |
Anything above this, like the more spacious 512GB on this model, runs on two. That unlocks an additional lane for SSD reading and writing and we’ve seen speed jumps of up to 50% in loading content.
Making your money go a long way
Now let’s take a look at what you’d have to pay for Apple’s upgrade prices on the M4 Air to match the RAM and SSD. To get 24GB of RAM, you’re paying $200, and it’s the same price for doubling the storage.
That means $300 more for the sake of 15% faster chipset speeds. To me, that’s a very small return on your investment, when this near-max spec M3 Air is right there.
If we’ve learned anything in the first few months of 2025, it’s that we’ve got to be smart with our money. And if you’re in the market for a laptop, this is the smart buy.
