MacBook Air M4 for Coding – Best Laptop for Developers 2025?

MacBook Air M4 For Coding – My Personal Experience

Let me make things clear – I am using the new MacBook Air M4 which is base model which features 13-inch display and packs 16 Gigs of RAM and 256GB of storage). I have been testing this device from last few weeks, and I have many thoughts.  I am tech enthusiastic person test and provides unbiased reviews by passion and basically a software developer profession.

I thought someone who is into development planning to buy MacBook Air M4 for coding. Spends most of his day multitasking between Xcode, VS Code, multiple tabs on chrome filled with documentation and code theories – I was curious to know:

Is this MacBook Pro M4 really the ultimate lightweight option for developers?

First Impression of MacBook Air M4: Unboxing and Desings POV

The day my MacBook Air M4 arrived at my doorsteps, I did the same that all tech enthusiasts would do – unboxed it like a kid with blush on the face.

Unboxing Experience

You would have unboxed Apple products previously; you know how clean and minimal unboxing experience it gives. Inside the box you get the braided USB-C to MagSafe cable and a tiny charger which was of 30W. My MacBook Air M4 was of sky-blue color, which is a bit different from the traditional classic silver to thought to give it a try.

I have also noticed that the power cable’s color will be same as of the MacBook Air, giving a nice aesthetic touch to your setup.

The MacBook is very sleek and slim, looks premium in the sky-blue color and honestly better look in comparison to the classic grey option.

Design and Build Quality

The MacBook Air M4 feels solid in hand, and the new sky-blue colors makes it more lucrative in your eyes. The aluminum chassis body has that level of premium vibe that could remind you again and again that it’s not a budget-segment device. The new blue shade can add personality

Ports and Connectivity

MacBook Air models always lack the ports, but you get the essential ports – MagSafe 3 charging port (magnetic one), two Thunderbolt 4 and one classic headphone jack to connect your entertainment accessory. Like Pro model it doesn’t comes with any card reader, but if you’re using Type-C hub, this is not a dealbreaker.

MacBook Air M4 vs MacBook Pro M4 Specs (Base Variant):

Specs	MacBook Air M4	MacBook Pro M4
CPU	10-core CPU (4P and 6E)	10-core CPU (4P and 6E)
GPU	8-core GPU	10-core GPU
Ray Tracing	Hardware accelerated	Hardware accelerated
Memory Bandwith	120GBPS	120GBPS
RAM	16GB	16GB
SSD	256GB	512GB

MacBook Air M4 for Coding – A Good Option?

It’s time to dive deeper into the part that matter the most – is MacBook Air M4 good for coding? Can this Air model powered with M4 chipset handle serious development task?

AI & Python Based Development Work

I tried first with the AI and Python based development testing to check how much this MacBook Air M4 can handle in terms of this. I ran some custom broad algorithm script and timed it – the MacBook Air M4 completed the task and wrapped everything in 40 seconds, while the MacBook Air M3 completed the same task in 47 seconds.

Surprisingly in terms of TensorFlow also the result was impressive with such a compact device. I tried to set up an auto-encoder model via Anaconda and ran image reconstruction on 11 images. The MacBook Air M4 tools 15 seconds, while the M3 based model tool around 17.5 seconds.

In short, I can confidently say that the latest M4 powered MacBook Air can handle Artificial and Python development – until and unless you’re not dealing with massive models.

Website Development

If you’re into web development either front-end or full stack projects, the performance of M4 based MacBook Air shines on the top compared to other Air models.

I ran the speedometer 3.0 benchmark just to check the real-world web app performance, and you know what the results were impressive

MacBook Air M4 was able to handle 621 runs per minute – enough to proof how good is this for web developers.

Compared to the MacBook air M3 there’s a huge leap since MacBook Air M3 was only able to handle 512 runs per minute and even easily beasts the Speedometer 3.0’s benchmark by giving a score of 50.5 compared to the M3 model which scored only 40.2.

Xcode and iOS Development

I quickly installed the Xcode on this MacBook and got straight to work. The application was running smooth, there were no shutters or slowdowns with the increasing number of codes. Building, testing and running iOS application with Xcode was very seamless and responsive.

To test it to the next level, I tried with some objective data, I ran the standardized Xcode Benchmark project which I had downloaded from GitHub. The MacBook Air (M4) clocked in at 151 seconds, while the MacBook Air M4 did this in only 140 seconds, the 11 seconds gap is not a big jump, for majority of developers this can be fast enough.

The Thermal Throttle with MacBook Air M4

The MacBook Air is designed with fan less architecture means it doesn’t uses any fan for cooling the temperature and here sometime it fails in heavy tasks due to heating and temperature rising above 45 degree Celsius – and everything gets dicy.

 Overheating Issue

Since the laptop has no fans, Apple is using its passive cooling again with powerful chipset like M4. It works very well with normal light applications such as editing documents, sending email, or just casual entertainment on Netflix/YouTube but the complete scenario changes once you start pushing it hard to its maximum potential.

In my personal experience, during Xcode build and TensorFlow runs, the keyboard area on the laptop got hot which makes it uncomfortable while typing.

I’m not talking “warm of coffee” like of hot but enough that won’t let you rest your hands for too long. And yes truly speaking the I also noticed the drop in performance during sustained loads under long session – no doubt clear result of thermal throttling taking place.

And also, this is something that I haven’t experienced to this severity on the M2 or M3 powered MacBook Airs.

If your day to day tasks includes building large builds and training models often on daily basis, then this is something to seriously consider – the downside of MacBook Air M4 for Coding.

SSD Performance of MacBook Air M4

I used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, one of the most popular disk speed test application available for free in the App store, I was able to get 2,800 MB/s of reading speed while 2,000 MB/s writing speed. This is low as compared to the MacBook Pro M4 but also enough for almost every developer – including developers who are working with Docker images or very large datasets.

External Display

Finally good news for developers who tends to rely on the external monitor this time the MacBook Air M4 supports two external displays, thanks to the capability of the M4 chipset. I tested it with two 4k display and both were running smoothly at 60Hz seamlessly.

Final Verdict : Is MacBook Air M4 for Coding?

In simple words, if I had to sum up my personal development experience with the MacBook Air M4 in one sentence, then it would be:

It’s a great laptop for most of the developers – until you need to work with intensive development, AI model training and high-performance output.

For your everyday coding experience including the web-dev, Python even mobile dev – it performs seamlessly without any shutter or lags. MacBook Air M4 is very lightweight option for developers who keeps on moving from one to another place and are away from their power socket for a long time, it can easily survive 15 hours on single charge.

But, if your day to day tasks involves intensive development or hate the warm keyboards, you might consider the MacBook Pro which features active cooling and comes with fans inside it.

So, should you get it? Yes if you want portability with solid power and if you can live occasionally with the little to more heat.  But, if you are building and deploying for hours and long session on daily basis then look at the Pro.

What do you think about the MacBook Air M4? Have you tried the M4 yet. Or sticking with your older model? Make sure to share your thoughts in the comment.

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