Is the MacBook Air M1 still worth buying in 2026?

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The M1 MacBook Air was a monumental laptop because it marked Apple’s move away from Intel processors to its own system-on-a-chip (SoC), known as Apple Silicon. The M1 was the first Apple Silicon chip, introducing unified memory in which the CPU and GPU share the same memory pool. It offered significantly better performance and efficiency than the Intel chips that preceded it, resulting in exceptional battery life. The M1 MacBook Air launched in November 2020, making it almost six years old – long enough to give anyone pause before buying one in 2026.

If you’re looking for an entry-level MacBook for light work, spending over a thousand dollars for the MacBook Air M4 or M5 may be overkill. The M1 MacBook Air remains an attractive option in 2026. Finding a brand new model is difficult, but you can find a refurbished device from third-party resellers at a cheaper price, often for less than $650.

The MacBook Air M1 still offers excellent performance, build quality, and battery life. It can also hold its own against modern mid-range Windows laptops, especially if you can find a model with 16GB of unified memory. Apple also confirmed that the MacBook Air M1 supports macOS 27 Golden Gate, which is scheduled to launch in September 2026. If you need a little more performance, however, consider getting the MacBook Air M2, also a worthy buy in 2026.

The MacBook Air M1 handles light workloads with ease, even in its base 8GB configuration. You’ll be able to comfortably browse the web, create documents in Microsoft Word and Google Docs, and make Zoom calls without issue. You can even stream 4K videos on Netflix and YouTube. That said, you should always be careful about how many apps and browser tabs you keep open, especially when working with memory-intensive websites or apps.

Battery life remains one of its biggest strengths, with Apple rating it for up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing or up to 18 hours of video playback on a single charge. But since you’ll most likely be getting a used or refurbished model, expect some battery degradation. Reputable sellers often sell devices with at least 85% battery health. The laptop is also completely silent thanks to its fanless design, while its aluminum unibody chassis still feels premium years after its launch.

You can also make decent games on it. According to testing by YouTuber Andytizer, the MacBook Air M1 can run games ported to Mac Silicon like “Death Stranding,” “Resident Evil 4,” and “No Man’s Sky” at 1080p, averaging 40 to 55 fps with MetalFX (Apple’s upscaling technology) set to Performance mode. The laptop’s 13.3-inch Retina display also helps maintain crisp gaming quality.

Although the MacBook Air M1 can be opened with one finger, it’s a bit finicky because the laptop is very light and the bottom lifts up with the lid most of the time. The screen still looks great, but it’s a standard LED-backlit panel with a peak brightness of 400 nits. This means it can be difficult to see outside in direct sunlight. This may be due to the lack of mini-LEDs, which help models like the 14-inch MacBook Pro M1 achieve a peak brightness of 1,600 nits.

Storage is another limitation. If you work with a lot of large files, you’ll likely quickly fill up the 256GB SSD storage on the base model. You can find MacBook Air M1 laptops with up to 2TB of storage, but these tend to cost more. The simplest solution used to be an external SSD, but prices have fluctuated in recent years due to the supply and demand of NAND flash.

The MacBook Air M1 also only has two USB-C ports, which can seem limiting if you tend to plug in multiple devices. You can easily solve this problem with something like the Anker 5-in-1 USB-C Hub, which offers an additional USB-C port, three USB-A 2.0 ports, and an HDMI port for $19.99. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the laptop only supports a single external monitor, which rules out dual-monitor setups unless you have workarounds.