MacBook Air M1

The MacBook Air with M1 chip was one of the first three Macs to run on Apple's own silicon, arriving alongside the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro and ending fifteen years of Intel processors inside Macs.

Outwardly nothing changed at all. It kept the tapered wedge shape, the 13.3-inch Retina display at 400 nits, the 720p camera, two Thunderbolt ports, Touch ID and the same three colours of gold, silver and space grey. Anyone walking past would not have known it was new.

Inside, the fan was gone. The M1 ran cool enough that Apple removed it entirely, making this the first MacBook Air that was completely silent no matter what it was doing. Battery life jumped to around 15 hours of web browsing or 18 hours of video, far beyond the Intel model it replaced.

The M1 itself had an 8-core processor and a choice of 7 or 8 graphics cores, with 8GB of memory as standard and 16GB available. Apple claimed performance around three and a half times that of the previous Air, and reviewers broadly agreed, with several calling it the most significant Mac in a decade.

It started at $999, or $1,249 for the version with the extra graphics core and 512GB of storage. 

Announced on 10 November 2020, it reached customers on 17 November 2020.