Stop press. This is the best MacBook Air we’ve ever used, and for once we aren’t overly hankering for a Pro as the M1 chip means the Air’s significant performance boost allows you to dip into both video editing and graphics-heavy gaming without breaking so much as a sweat. The battery is a trooper, and though it might age over time, a day’s work is entirely achievable. There really is only one bugbear, and it’s that rubbish webcam, which in the age of essential video calling is an annoyance we're finding hard to shake off. If you can get over it, though, the MacBook Air (M1) arguably becomes the best all-round work laptop for under a grand.

Super-fast; Great battery life; Retina display is superb;

Webcam poor; Thick bezels ;

Typical Mac easy to use

The response times are awesome

Like driving a Corolla for ten years now jumping into a Ferrari

Everything fine with the product delivery very very slow compared with Australia Post. Wouldn’t use home delivery ever again

Have you ever seen a bird sitting contently on a tree and wondered whether it will be afraid of the branch breaking? The bird in all likelihood doesn’t have that fear because fundamentally it’s trust doesn’t lie in the branch — it lies in its wings.

Sleek design, Impressive performance, Great battery life

Apple has never been afraid to break with the past, especially when it leads to one of the best laptops on the market. When it decided the floppy disk was outdated, for example, it dropped it and went all-in on USB. It did the same with Motorola CPUs, dropping them for Intel when the PowerPC could no longer keep up. Now, it’s done it again, this time putting its own ARM-based silicon inside the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro 13, and the Mac mini and leaving Intel behind. That might be a scary proposition for some MacBook fans, because how well could the Apple M1 perform when ARM’s only showcase so far has been the very underwhelming Windows 10 on ARM initiative? If you’ve read our MacBook Pro 13 M1 review, then you already know the answer to that question. At least on that machine, there’s no reason to fear. I put the MacBook Air M1 through its paces to see if the fanless version of Apple’s initiative could perform as well. For this review, I was sent the entry-level $1,000 MacBook Air M...

Apple's M1 blows Intel away; Phenomenal battery life; Excellent keyboard and touchpad; Rock-solid build quality; Simple good looks;

Supports only one external display;

Super-fast; Great battery life; Retina display is superb;

Webcam poor; Thick bezels ;