Why the M1 Air is still the perfect laptop
Why the glaze?
I feel like hype for recent laptops like the Snapdragon ARM Windows 11 machines and Apple's own recent releases have drowned out just how effective the M1 Macbook Air is in the current market. I'm here to argue it is BY FAR the best purchase you can make in 2024 in terms of a used budget laptop.
Everyone knows the story of Apple silicon's transition, but I think people don't realize how smooth and seamless it is currently. At no point have I ever felt the impact of compatibility issues due to the new architecture. Rosetta translation is so seamless and easy that you really don't even notice when stuff is "Intel" and when it's "Apple".
Build quality
The M1 Air feels sturdy and yet lightweight. This isn't a rugged ThinkPad, but as far as Macs go, the wedge design feels like an intuitive, slim form factor. The keyboard feels relatively good, and it has the typical Mac feature of being able to have the lid lifted with one hand.
Like all Macs, the trackpad is literally just two tiers above everything else. There is nothing like it. The way the trackpad doesn't respond to palm rests but only fingers, the tactile feeling despite not having a physical button, the well-integrated gestures.
Display
It's got a decent 1440p display with fractional scaling. Font rendering looks great, which matters a lot when you're staring at words for hours on end. It's not mini-LED or OLED or anything, but it's by no means bad.
SSD
The flash storage in Apple silicon Macs is very fast. I wish it weren't soldered to the logic board, but what we do have rips through large media files with no problem.
CPU
The M1 chip is a monster. This thing trades blows with desktop PCs and smokes a lot of other lightweight laptops in its range. It's hard to directly compare Apple silicon chips with Intel or AMD because they literally operate on different instruction sets and have dedicated Media Engine chips for chewing through footage. What I will say is the vast majority of people will be able to do their entire workflow on this one SoC. I've seen people with elaborate FL Studio timelines or complex workflows with IDEs and multiple browsers flying around and it's able to chew through it all without a sweat.
RAM usage?
Unfortunately -- and this is a big snag -- most M1 Airs in circulation ship with only 8 gigs of RAM. While this is perfectly adequate for a lot of people and swapping on these machines isn't super noticeable, some workflows just can't gel with so little RAM. The 16GB models are the right investment.
Noise
It's literally silent. No fans. This is huge to me and I absolutely despise laptop fans. Of course, some mild thermal throttling of the monster CPU inside is necessary to achieve this, but I view it as a worthy tradeoff. If you're also someone bothered by heat and noise when operating laptops, this is a great buy.
Battery life
Saving the best for last. Like all Apple silicon laptops, this thing has absolutely insane battery life. In an era where AMD and Qualcomm have kind of caught up in the race for all-day battery life, this might not be obvious. However, the Air is able to power through entire shifts at work for multiple days without breaking a sweat. I really end up charging it every other day because it lasts so long. If you're someone that finds yourself constantly moving around at work and plugging your laptop into an outlet isn't always feasible, this is an EXCELLENT option.
Price
You can nab these in the US for around $650-700 if you're lucky with 16GB RAM. The used market is packed with 8GB models if that really suits your fancy. Either way, you'll have an incredible lightweight workhorse for college, work, or whatever use case you need. The other MacBook Airs are solid, but they're priced higher often times. If you can snag an M2 or M3 for similar money, absolutely jump on it. However, this thing will be around for ages. Work has started to roll them out in bulk to employees and we have seen absolutely zero complaints since.