Apple’s bold claim about the MacBook Air’s speed sounds impressive—but is it too good to be true?
Apple has never been shy about hyping up its latest hardware, but its newest claim about the MacBook Air with the M4 chip might raise some eyebrows. The company insists that the 2025 MacBook Air is up to 23 times faster than the last Intel-based model. That sounds astonishing—until you read the fine print.
Apple’s comparison pits the top-spec 2025 MacBook Air (M4 chip, 10-core CPU, 32GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD) against the fastest-ever Intel MacBook Air from 2020 (1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, and a 2TB SSD). While that’s a fair matchup, the real kicker is how Apple measured speed.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe eye-popping 23x speed boost was recorded using Super Resolution in Pixelmator Pro, an image upscaling feature that relies heavily on machine learning. Not exactly a task most users perform daily. In real-world applications, the gains aren’t as extreme, though still impressive.
Apple provides additional performance comparisons:
- Microsoft Excel calculations run 4.7x faster than on the fastest Intel MacBook Air and 1.6x faster than the M1 model.
- iMovie video editing is 8x faster than on the Intel model and 2x faster than on M1.
- Adobe Photoshop operations are 3.6x faster than on the Intel model and 2x faster than on M1.
- Web browsing is 60% faster than a PC laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor.
While Apple’s 23x claim might be more of a marketing stretch than a realistic benchmark, there’s no denying that the MacBook Air with Apple Silicon is significantly faster than its Intel predecessors. If you’re still clinging to an old Intel model, upgrading to the new M4-powered Air will feel like a night-and-day difference.
The 2025 MacBook Air is available for pre-order now, with deliveries beginning Wednesday, March 12.
