Apple MacBook Air M1

On the outside, the new MacBook Air is nearly similarly to the Intel-based one Apple released in early 2020, It has the same screen size 2560 x 1600 screen that maxes out at 400 nits of brightness, Touch ID fingerprint login, good enough speakers, Apple’s revised scissor-switch keyboard, and that massive trackpad.

It also has the same starting price: $999 for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That base model also has one less core on its graphics processor compared to pricier configurations, though I can’t speak to what impact that might have. As previously you can’t upgrade anything later on if you need to.

There is only one exterior difference between the new one and the last model: Apple swapped out some of the buttons on the function row for more useful ones.

The other differences are all on the inside. There’s no fan anymore, for one thing, just an aluminum heat spreader. But even when pushing this machine to its absolute limit, I never felt it get more than a little warm.