M4 MacBook Air vs M3 MacBook Air: Should you upgrade your MacBook?

Apple finally announced the MacBook Air with an M4 chip, and like clockwork, the company officially discontinued last year's M3 MacBook Air. But how different is the new machine compared to the older one? The most obvious change is of course the M4 chip, but there are some other highlights as well. Let's dive deeper into the differences between the two MacBooks.

#1 - Sky Blue colour

While there are no structural differences or design changes this year, Apple did give us a new paint job with the Sky Blue colour. The company also quietly removed the Space Grey colour to make way for the Sky Blue.

#2 - M4 chip brings increased power

Despite being only a minute upgrade, the M4 chip does have more power on paper as compared to the M3 chip. While both chips can have as many as 10-GPU cores, the M4 chip comes with a 10-core CPU as well, compared to an 8-core CPU in the M3. Despite the specifications showing an obvious improvement, that performance would rarely be felt on a day-to-day basis by an average user. However, the newer chip does have more headroom for improvement, and is a nice way of future-proofing your laptop.

#3 - More RAM, with higher max capacity

This year's MacBook Air comes with 16GB RAM in the base model, double that of last year's model which had 8GB RAM. The bump up is due to the M4 chip, which requires increased RAM, as seen earlier with the launch of the MacBook Pros with the M4 chip, which also had 16GB RAM in the base model.

Not only this, the maximum RAM capacity has also gone up this year. Last year's M3 MacBook Air had a max RAM capacity of 24GB, which has now increased to 32GB on the M4 MacBook Air.

#4 - 12MP Centre Stage webcam

While MacBook webcams can't be compared to smartphone cameras, they certainly perform better than their Windows counterparts, and Apple is only increasing the gap with the 12MP Centre Stage camera on the M4 MacBook Air. For context, last year's M3 Air only had a 1080p camera with no Centre Stage functionality. 

#5 - Price

The 13" M4 MacBook Air starts at ₹99,900, a ₹15,000 price difference from the launch price of the 13" M3 MacBook Air which came at a starting price of ₹1,14,900.

Should you buy M4 MacBook Air?

If you're currently using the M3 MacBook Air, it makes no sense to upgrade, as there aren't enough reasons to shell out ₹1 lakh for a laptop with just a handful of changes and not a lot of performance gains. 

If you're currently using any Intel-based MacBook or if you're on the M1 MacBook Air, this marks a good time to upgrade. However, if your laptop is working fine and you can stretch its usage for another year or two, you shouldn't need to upgrade it just yet.

For those using Windows laptops and looking to upgrade and switch to Mac, this is one of the best laptops that you can use now. Another option would be to wait for a while, and check out the deals on last year's MacBook Air. As Apple has officially discontinued it, those retailers and resellers who still have unsold inventory are likely to clear their stocks with attractive deals and discounts.