The Best MacBooks (2024)

Senior staff writer Dave Gershgorn has reviewed and covered technology since 2015 at publications such as Popular Science, Quartz, Medium, and now Wirecutter. He has also built, repaired, and largely avoided frying his own computers since 2006. At Wirecutter, he tests laptops, monitors, and tablets.

The best reason to buy a MacBook is that you need macOS or prefer it to Windows, or you favor the physical design of Apple’s laptops. The operating system is stable and easy to use, but more important, it integrates well with iPhones and iPads—for example, iMessages sent from your Mac also appear on your iPhone and vice versa, and features such as AirDrop and iCloud make it easy to share notes, pictures, videos, reminders, contacts, passwords, bookmarks, and other data between your devices.

Macs are also a good choice if you want great support. Apple’s tech support is routinely rated above that of most, if not all, other PC and phone makers, and Apple Stores and Apple authorized service providers offer accessible in-person tech support and repairs in many locations.

Apple has moved away from Intel CPUs to its own custom-designed processors for MacBooks, and the results are superior to what most Windows laptops can provide, in some key ways. Apple’s processors offer much better performance and faster integrated graphics, and the laptops have stellar battery life; their batteries are also less prone to draining quickly when you’re using an energy-hogging app like Zoom or Google Chrome.

A Mac isn’t a great choice if you want to run high-end games, or if you want to be able to make upgrades or repairs yourself. Windows ultrabooks provide decent performance and more kinds of ports at or below the price that Apple charges for a MacBook Air. Budget Chrome OS or Windows laptops are a better choice if you have only $500 to spend, while business laptops make it easier to fix and upgrade components over time. And Windows gaming notebooks and pro laptops, while typically large and bulky, usually have newer and faster dedicated graphics processors than Apple’s laptops do, and you can buy some of them for less than half of what a 16-inch MacBook Pro costs.

At this writing, Apple offers eight different laptops in multiple configurations. We considered the following criteria when deciding which ones to recommend:

The Apple MacBook Air (M2, 2022, 13-inch) is still the best MacBook for most people, especially at its new lower price of $1,000. This MacBook has a bright, vibrant screen, a processor that’s fast enough for nearly anything besides gaming, and a MagSafe charging cable that easily detaches if snagged by an errant foot.

It has a terrific display. Details look sharp, colors are vibrant and accurate, and the screen gets bright enough for use on a sunny day. In our color-accuracy tests, the M2 Air met Apple’s claims of 500 nits of brightness, and it reproduced colors well enough for professional creative work.

The M2 processor is perfect for everyday tasks like browsing the web and using apps. The M2 chip is powerful and energy efficient, and it easily handles about two dozen tabs, plus software such as Discord, Slack, Spotify, and productivity apps. If you’re mostly using your laptop to run your web browser or some of those aforementioned apps, 8 GB of RAM should be enough. But if you’re coding or editing any kind of media, or if you think of yourself as a power user, you should upgrade to 16 GB of RAM.

It has an especially thin, slab-like design. When closed, the M2 MacBook Air is a thin metal slab with four rubberized feet measuring less than half an inch tall, an update from the previous wedge design of older MacBooks. This uniformly slim design makes the M2 MacBook Air feel great to carry around while it’s closed, because its flat top rests against your palm, while your fingers rest around its curved edge. It’s also an easy shape to slip into a backpack or bag.

It has just enough ports. The M2 MacBook Air has a MagSafe charging port, two USB-C ports, and a headphone jack. The MagSafe cable attaches magnetically to the charging port, so if it gets snagged on something as you’re moving your laptop, or if someone walks by and catches it on their foot, the cable safely detaches instead of pulling on your laptop. Apple has also added fast charging in this model, so it will charge to 50% battery in just 30 minutes on a charger with at least 67 W of power. The USB-C ports are capable of Thunderbolt speeds, up to 40 gigabits per second, and can also serve to charge the laptop.

The notched webcam is good for video calls. At the top of the display, you’ll find a notch for the webcam, much like the notch in iPhones and larger MacBook Pro models. Apple has upgraded this webcam to 1080p resolution, a welcome change after the 720p webcams of previous MacBook Air models. In our tests, the 1080p camera was sharp and made me look a bit less washed-out on video calls.

We’ve tested it for a year. We recommend the base model of this machine, with 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. After I initially tested the M2 MacBook Air, I bought one with 8 GB of RAM, and in regular use I haven’t run into any issues due to insufficient RAM. I slice 3D-print files, record music, do some light coding, and use the machine for general web browsing. However, if you edit photos or videos professionally, deal with large datasets, compile code, or regularly perform other intensive tasks that bog down your computer’s memory, you should upgrade to 16 GB of RAM. As for the storage, generally we think that Apple’s storage offerings are overpriced, and we’ve found that between cloud storage and external hard drives, upgrading the storage isn’t entirely necessary. Again, the value of doing so might vary depending on your specific situation; if you always run out of space on your storage drives, upgrading might be a worthwhile decision.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

It can run hot. During any kind of video exporting, photo processing, or other media creation, the M2 MacBook Air gets uncomfortably hot after just a few minutes of work. The processor radiates heat from the keyboard and the bottom of the device, with external temperatures up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

It can also run slow. The M2 MacBook Air with 256 GB of storage has a slower storage drive than M1 MacBook Air models and M2 versions with 512 GB of storage. While the 512 GB version’s storage can be up to 50% faster, you would likely notice a difference only while transferring or creating large, gigabyte-size files. Apple has reportedly fixed this problem with the M3 MacBook Air, so if you’re constantly transferring large files, upgrading to the M3 version is worth considering.

The 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (M1, 2020) was released in 2020, and it remains a fantastic laptop for the price. Apple comes out with new machines multiple times a year, but just because there are newer laptops, that doesn’t make this one any worse. The M1 MacBook Air is more than fast enough for browsing the web, working on documents, and making light photo and video edits, and it has an excellent high-resolution screen, a great trackpad, and a totally silent fanless design. Its battery life is excellent, long enough to survive through a full day of work or classes and then some.

The newer versions of the MacBook Air, with Apple’s M2 and M3 processors, don’t offer a major difference in day-to-day tasks, so if your needs are basic, you can save a few hundred dollars with the older but still fantastic M1 model.

It’s much cheaper than any other MacBook. Apple no longer sells the M1 Air, but the company is making the older model available at Walmart for $700, which is $300 less than the base price of our top pick, the M2 MacBook Air. If you’re just looking to get a Mac, and you don’t care about a magnetic charger or a sharper webcam, the M1 Air is your best option.

It has a great display. Apple traditionally makes fantastic displays, and the M1 Air’s screen is no different. Boasting a 2560×1600 resolution, it’s far sharper than the 1080p displays found on other budget laptops. It reaches 400 nits of brightness, which is bright enough for most office environments, except on really sunny days. The display supports both the sRGB color gamut and the wider DCI-P3 color gamut, which can show more shades of certain colors, though this feature isn’t hugely important unless you’re doing high-end film or photography work. The screen also supports Apple’s True Tone feature, which subtly changes the color temperature to match the ambient lighting in the room.

It uses USB-C instead of MagSafe for charging. The M1 Air has a headphone jack on its right side plus two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports on its left side for connectivity and charging, so you need adapters or new cables to connect your other devices. Each port supports charging, 40-gigabits-per-second data transfers, one external display, and basic USB peripherals such as flash drives, printers, and mice. Having only two ports for both charging and connecting peripherals is a bit limiting, but only if you’re frequently connecting flash drives or other things to your laptop.

Its battery lasts beyond a full day of work or school. The M1 MacBook Air has great battery life—in our test that simulates browsing the web and watching videos on YouTube, it lasted longer than 14 hours. We also found that the battery didn’t drain as quickly as those of competitors when we used video-chatting apps like Zoom, which are typically pretty hard on a laptop’s battery.

This older Air’s webcam isn’t as good as the one in newer models. The feed from this machine’s 720p webcam looks outdated in video calls, especially in comparison with the 1080p camera in the M2 and M3 Air models.

The Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024, 15-inch) is a worthy upgrade over any 13-inch MacBook if you’re looking for a larger screen, better sound, and slightly cooler temperatures when you’re stressing the processor. It has the same general design as the smaller version, as well as the same ports, webcam, and keyboard. This laptop makes the most sense for people who watch movies or TV on their laptops, those who feel cramped using 13-inch laptops, or media editors who don’t have the inclination or budget to shell out for a MacBook Pro.

Its larger display is an excellent reason to upgrade. The 15.3-inch screen is the centerpiece of this M3 MacBook Air, and it makes the laptop feel roomier and more comfortable to work on than its 13-inch sibling. To match its larger size, the screen has a 2880×1864 resolution, higher than that of the 13-inch version. We’ve come to hold Apple’s displays to a high standard when testing for color accuracy, contrast, and brightness, after years of the company’s consistency in making high-quality laptop screens. The M3 15-inch MacBook Air has an impressively accurate display that makes media look great. Its color imperfections are so slight that they’re invisible to the naked eye, so this laptop could serve you well for color-accurate print work.

It has Apple’s new M3 processor. The M3 chip adds a few AI tricks for developers to integrate into software, but for everyone else it delivers a solid increase in speed—in benchmarks that we’ve run, it has been about 20% faster than older models. The processor can also power two external displays, as long as the Mac’s display is closed; previous MacBooks could power only one external display, with the laptop still open. (However, if you’re planning to keep your laptop’s display closed and use two monitors, it would be better to buy the cheaper 13-inch model with a smaller screen or even to buy a Mac mini instead.)

Its ports are the same as those of previous-generation MacBook models. The 15-inch M3 MacBook Air matches its 13-inch M2 cousin in this regard, offering the same selection of two Thunderbolt USB-C ports capable of 40 gigabits per second, a MagSafe 3 port, and a headphone jack. It also has the same 1080p webcam, which looks very sharp.

But it has noticeably better speakers. We were surprised to hear a noticeable difference between the speakers of the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook models. This 15-inch version has two additional speakers, for a total of six; this setup produces a wider soundstage and generally increases the volume and fidelity of the audio played.

If you need to use two external monitors: The Apple MacBook Air (M3, 2024, 13-inch) is a great laptop with a fast new processor, but for now the cheaper M2 MacBook Air is enough for most people. The M3 model is about 20% faster and brings a suite of enhancements to the chip’s GPU and AI processing power, but we don’t think that improvement makes a meaningful difference in day-to-day use of the laptop. When Apple stops selling the M2 version, the M3 model will be our new pick, but for now you can save the $100 difference.

Apple’s MacBook Pro (M3) is appealing because it harkens back to a time when Apple laptops with Intel processors were underpowered enough that people with more mainstream needs had to buy “Pro” machines to get their work done. But that’s no longer the case. If you aren’t editing HDR video or handling color-critical workflows, you don’t need this MacBook Pro’s XDR display, the biggest differentiator between the models. Even in our video-editing tests, we’ve seen a major difference between Apple’s Pro and non-Pro processors only when editing 4K video. Unlike the versions of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, the base-model M3 MacBook Pro lacks a third USB-C port on its right side. The MacBook Air models we recommend are about a pound lighter and less expensive, and they offer nearly identical performance for most people.

Apple’s other M3 MacBook Pro models, with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips in 14-inch and 16-inch varieties, are impressively fast and capable machines, but they go far beyond most people’s needs. If you’re a photo or video editor, if you work in 3D design, or if you compile huge chunks of code, check out our guide to the best laptops for photo and video editing. Otherwise, you’d be better served by a MacBook Air.

Apple’s Certified Refurbished store is usually a good place to save money on a like-new MacBook Pro or MacBook Air. Laptops based on the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips are still extremely competitive, but you’d get diminishing returns for your money on M1 machines, which Apple still prices quite high.

This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.