The M4 MacBook Air is arguably the fastest laptop in its league, but how it serves top-notch performance with a fantastic battery mileage is simply peerless.
Table of Contents Table of Contents Low uptake, high yield Realistic workflows fare even better Peerless, in a lot of ways Over the course of the past few months, I've tried a handful of Windows on Arm machines. The biggest takeaway is that if you buy a slim and light Windows laptop in 2025, you don't need to hunt for a seat near a wall outlet. The battery life figures I've got from Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptops have been pretty amazing. For the first time, I feel Windows laptops have reached a point where they can reach the high benchmark set by the MacBook Air. My most recent tryst was with the Asus Zenbook A14, and the Dell XPS 13 before that. I loved the thin and lightweight form factors, and the progress Windows on Arm has made with the app compatibility situation. Recommended Videos Yet, despite all the progress, if I were to recommend a slim and light laptop, the MacBook Air M4 would be at the top of my list. There are a healthy few factors that go in its favor, but battery life, in itself, is the biggest driver. I've used every iteration of the MacBook Air since the M1 variant, and I think Apple finally struck power efficiency gold with the M4-driven model this year. Low uptake, high yield It's not a straightforward choice to buy a laptop with the "definitive" best battery life. There is no such universal benchmark, especially when you're dealing with an entirely different OS, architecture, and hardware variables. A lot of other factors come into the mix, including the apps and workflow that a machine is supposed to handle. This is where you make the safer bet, where a balance of performance and battery efficiency is the ideal choice. At that metric, the MacBook Air remains unbeatable. Before we dig into the benchmarks, I'll show the collective side of why silicon efficiency matters. Take a look at the figures below. Two Chrome windows were eating up more energy reserves than a fairly powerful photo editing app, in addition to hogging up…