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MacBook Air laptops are seen displayed during the WWDC22 at Apple Park (Photo by Justin ... [+] Sullivan/Getty Images)
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Apple's product launch team is having a busy first quarter of 2025. Now that the iPhone 16e has been revealed, the community is looking to the Mac lineup, expecting Tim Cook and his team to finally release a MacBook Air with the latest Apple Silicon M4 chipset.
With two models now showing up in the online benchmarking tools, not only is the launch getting closer, but we also know a little more about the potential performance of the macOS consumer-focused laptops.
Benchmarking The MacBook Air M4
Data on the next MacBook Air, expected to be the first to be equipped with Apple's M4 chipset, comes from the ever-popular Geekbench utility.
It shows the "Mac 16,2" model (which is widely recognised as the upcoming 13-inch MacBook Air) comfortably outpacing the current M3-equipped MacBook Air, even if you assume there is still some software optimisation to take place before a potential late-Q1 2025 release. The "Mac 16,3" model has also been benchmarked, and it is recognised as the upcoming 15-inch MacBook Air.
The benchmark data points to the hardware being tested, which comes with a 10-core version of the M4 chipset; 8-core and 9-core versions are also available. This could mean that every MacBook Air will come with the 10-core version, but it’s more likely that this is a higher-spec variant in the range, with an 8- or 9-core version available at a lower price point. Apple has, after all, sought to keep the MacBook entry-level price at $999, which could be easier to reach with a lower-specced chipset.
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