My friends always ask me what MacBook I want to buy. This is what I told them

We all have That tech-savvy friend, everyone turned to advice, especially before big sales events like Amazon Prime Day. OK, that’s me. I’m that guy.

When people found out my livelihood work, everything turned into 11. I review laptops for work and almost everyone needs one. If people don’t know where to start, this is how I guide them in choosing the right Apple MacBook, and I suggest you get started.

Start with MacBook Air

You might think narrowing your laptop’s choice to a MacBook would help, but choosing an Apple laptop isn’t that easy these days. You have two sizes of MacBook Airs, two MacBook Pros and all chip configurations, from M4 to M4 Max. This doesn’t even include a large number of older models that are flooded with search results from online retailers.

That’s why I like to keep it simple. When someone came to me and asked which MacBook to buy, I started with the 13-inch MacBook Air M4. This is the laptop that most people should buy, which is why it is the top of our best laptops and the best MacBook guide. Retailing at $999, but it almost always sells for at least $899, and at the time of writing it dropped to $849. While it doesn’t have much storage (only 256 GB), it does start with 16 GB of RAM (or what Apple calls unified memory).

From there, I asked them to I They should get bigger or stronger reasons. I don’t want my real friends and family to spend a dime more than they should, I know some people will think Even if it’s just the M4 model, they need to upgrade to the MacBook Pro.

Let’s be a reality. You may not need the extra performance of the M4 Pro or M4 Max chip. Unless you edit videos, make music, or take photos Make a livingnot worth spending hundreds (or thousands) to speed up video rendering. The M4 MacBook Air’s capabilities are far beyond people’s consciousness. Upgrading to the M4 Pro and M4 Max is primarily about improving graphics and versatile CPU performance, but that’s just a lot of things that creative professionals can get.

Reasons for upgrading

Part of the problem is that we still operate the same way we did in 2015. Ten years ago, it wasn’t just some tasks that were faster on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. It is the old MacBook Airs that simply can’t do these things. If you are an amateur musician, artist or programmer, you are forced to save for your MacBook Pro or temporarily give up on those hobbies. Apple Silicon completely changed that equation, and its M-series chips became more capable. Now, even in the fanless MacBook Air, we are at the point where the M4 is very capable.