Our thinnest, lightest notebook, completely transformed by the Apple M1 chip. CPU speeds up to 3.5x faster. GPU speeds up to 5x faster. Our most advanced Neural Engine for up to 9x faster machine learning. The longest battery life ever in a MacBook Air. And a silent, fanless design. This much power has never been this ready to go.

Small chip. Giant leap.

It’s here. Our first chip designed specifically for Mac. Packed with an astonishing 16 billion transistors, the Apple M1 system on a chip (SoC) integrates the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, I/O and so much more onto a single tiny chip. With incredible performance, custom technologies and industry-leading power efficiency,¹ M1 is not just a next step for Mac — it’s another level entirely.

Devours tasks. Sips battery.

M1 has the fastest CPU we’ve ever made. With that kind of processing speed, MacBook Air can take on new extraordinarily intensive tasks like professional-quality editing and action-packed gaming. But the 8-core CPU on M1 isn‘t just up to 3.5x faster than the previous generation² — it balances high-performance cores with efficiency cores that can still speed through everyday jobs while using just a tenth of the power.

Up to 9x faster.¹⁴ Even for a 16-core Neural Engine, that’s a lot to process.

Apps on MacBook Air can use machine learning (ML) to automatically retouch photos like a pro, make smart tools such as magic wands and audio filters more accurate at auto-detection, and so much more. That’s not just brain power — that’s the power of a full stack of ML technologies.

The power of macOS Big Sur on M1.

Developed to unlock the potential of the M1 chip, macOS Big Sur transforms Mac with major performance benefits and so much more. Powerful updates for apps. A beautiful new design. Industry-leading privacy features and best-in-class security. It’s our most powerful software ever — running on our most advanced hardware yet.

More power. Wakes instantly.

The M1 chip and macOS Big Sur work together to make the entire system snappier. MacBook Air wakes instantly from sleep. Everyday tasks from flipping through photos to browsing Safari are faster. And your hardest-working apps all have access to the power they need.

Biggest collection of apps ever

Run powerful apps built for M1. All your existing apps work thanks to Rosetta 2. And for the first time, you can use your favourite iPhone and iPad apps directly on macOS Big Sur. Altogether you’ll have access to the biggest collection of apps ever for Mac.

The do-it-all notebook gets do-the-unbelievable memory.

The M1 chip brings up to 16GB of superfast unified memory. This single pool of high-bandwidth, low-latency memory allows apps to share data between the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine efficiently — so everything you do is fast and fluid.

Lifelike colours for unreal beauty.

Images take on new levels of detail and realism on the brilliant 13.3-inch, 2560x1600-resolution Retina display. Text is sharp and clear. Colours are more vibrant than ever. And the glass goes right to the edge of the enclosure, so nothing takes away from your gorgeous view.

Good looking. And easy on the eyes.

MacBook Air automatically adjusts the white point of your display to the colour temperature of your environment for a more natural viewing experience.

You’re live on the Air.

The image signal processor in the M1 chip helps you look your best for every FaceTime call and video conference. Three built-in microphones make sure what you say gets heard whether you’re on a call, dictating a note or asking Siri about the weather.

Get clearer, sharper images.

See more detail in shadows and highlights. And face detection uses the Neural Engine to adjust white balance and exposure for even more natural-looking skin tones.

Get down to it. Write away.

When a keyboard types like a dream and still does a whole lot more: that’s magic. With new pre-programmed shortcuts, useful features are even easier to access. Get help from Siri, switch keyboard languages, respond with the perfect emoji, find documents with Spotlight — there’s so much you can do with just a tap. And the backlit keys with ambient light sensor help you type in low-light settings.

One touch is all it takes to lock or unlock MacBook Air.

Use your fingerprint to rent a movie, buy an app, or access things like secure documents or system settings without having to re-enter your password. And when you shop online with Apple Pay, Touch ID fills in your shipping and billing information without sharing your card details.

Charges, chats, streams, works and plays well with others.

Wi-Fi 6

The next generation of Wi-Fi isn’t just faster — it keeps MacBook Air going strong even as more and more devices join the network.

Thunderbolt / USB 4

Ultra-high bandwidth meets ultra-versatility. Thunderbolt enables data transfer, charging and video output all through a single port — and MacBook Air has two of them.

1. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM. Performance per watt refers to the ratio of peak CPU performance to average power consumed using selected industry-standard benchmarks. Comparison made against high-performing CPUs for notebooks and desktops commercially available at the time of testing. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
2. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 422. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
3. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM measuring peak single-thread performance of workloads taken from selected industry-standard benchmarks, commercial applications and open source applications. Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks commercially available at the time of testing. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
4. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Open source project built with pre-release Xcode 12.2 with Apple Clang 12.0.0, Ninja 1.10.0.git and CMake 3.16.5. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
5. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Logic Pro 10.6.0 with project consisting of multiple tracks, each with an Amp Designer plug-in instance applied. Individual tracks were added during playback until CPU became overloaded. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
6. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Adobe Lightroom 4.1 by exporting 280 RAW images to JPEG. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
7. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 10-second project with Apple ProRes 422 video at 3840x2160 resolution and 30 frames per second. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
8. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM using selected industry-standard benchmarks. Comparison made against the highest-performing integrated GPUs for notebooks and desktops commercially available at the time of testing. Integrated GPU is defined as a GPU located on a monolithic silicon die along with a CPU and memory controller, behind a unified memory subsystem. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
9. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 13-second project with 4K Apple ProRes 4444 media, at 3840x2160 resolution and 24 frames per second, with 2 streams of video played back simultaneously for 5 minutes. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
10. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1.0.1 using the built-in benchmark, at 1440x900 resolution, with medium settings. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
11. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Affinity Photo 1.9.0.199 using the built-in benchmark version 1900. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
12. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems with Intel Iris Plus Graphics, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Shapr3D 3.45.0 using a 288.2MB model. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
13. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, configured with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/uk/batteries for more information.
14. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with pre-release Xcode 12.2 and Create ML 2.0, with an Action Classification model created in the app. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
15. 1TB = 1 trillion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
16. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with FIO 3.23, 1024KB request size, 150GB test file and IO depth=8. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.
17. Speeds are based on theoretical throughput and may vary.
18. Screen size is measured diagonally.
19. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, configured with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/uk/batteries for more information.
20. Intel-based models are available with up to 32GB memory and up to 4TB storage. 1TB = 1 trillion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
21. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using pre-production 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/uk/batteries for more information.
22. Testing conducted by Apple in October 2019 using pre-production 2.3GHz 8-core Intel Core i9–based 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 12 clicks from bottom or 75%. The standby test measures battery life by allowing a system, connected to a wireless network and signed in to an iCloud account, to enter standby mode with Safari and Mail applications launched and all system settings left at default. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/uk/batteries for more information.