I’m a very picky person when it comes to buying things… especially Apple hardware. I can’t count the number of Apple devices I tried out and sent back, because something wasn’t right. Because there are always tradeoffs, and I don’t like tradeoffs, I want it to be just perfect 😅
So since I really needed a new MacBook (I’ve been using an M1, which would be fine if I had only bought it with more than 8 GB RAM… 🤦🏻♂️), last autumn I decided to test MacBooks this way. I wasn’t sure if I wanted an Air or a Pro, since they’re quite different right now. There’s this holiday promotion that Apple has each year around Black Friday, that if you buy something in November-December, you can safely return it until the 2nd week of January (!) instead of the usual 2-week period. So I decided to buy both an M3 13" Air and an M4 14" Pro, try them out and pick one to keep in January 🙃
Spoiler: I’ve kept the Air in the end. The Pro has some things better than the Air, but it’s noticeably thicker and heavier, and using the classic MacBook Airs for ~5 years in the last decade has spoiled me forever, and I just refuse to go back to heavier, bulkier laptops.
There are a few more differences that I wrote down, so here’s a short subjective comparison if you’re just looking at those shiny new Sky Blue Airs and thinking if you should get that one or the Pro…
Note: I haven’t really used the Pro that much, certainly not all the time for 2 months – more like a few times for a few hours. I’m writing on the Air right now.
Size / exterior
As mentioned, there is definitely a difference. For comparison:
- current MacBook Air 13.6" (2025): 1.24 kg
- Retina MacBook Air 13.3" (2020): 1.29 kg
- classic MacBook Air 13.3" (2015): 1.35 kg
- older MacBook Pro 13.3" (2020): 1.40 kg
- current MacBook Pro 14.2" (2024): 1.55 kg (M4) to 1.62 kg (M4 Max)
So the lightest Pro is 150g heavier than my previous M1, 200g heavier than classic MacBook Airs, and 300g+ heavier than the current Air (!). That’s about 2/3 of the iPad’s weight of difference, and it’s absolutely noticeable. It might not be a problem if you use it as a desktop computer, but it is a problem if you need to carry it around all the time, or if you have the “on the lap lying on the couch” kind of workplace like me…
The Pro is also a lot thicker (and at least feels thicker than the 13.3" Pro). It’s not that much of a problem, but I definitely like how super thin the Air is.
I remember the Pro also had those kinda annoying slots with a bit sharp edges at the bottom, for air in/outflow probably, Air doesn’t have those.
Screen
The Pro has a slightly bigger screen, not that much though.
ProMotion (120 Hz) on the Pro is immediately noticeable, but I can’t say if it’s important or even clearly better, it’s a bit weird at first (feels kinda… iOS-y?); probably something I could get used to rather quickly though. I can’t say I’m missing it on the Air at all, but I’m not that used to this mode, since the only devices with it that I owned was my previous and current iPad.
The Pro has a better DPI – the screen has a “full 2x Retina” resolution (1512 x 982 “point” size), while the Air uses a scaled resolution (1280 x 832 “point” size, while the standard display resolution is 1470 x 956), so the Pro’s screen is sharper. Again, the past two MacBooks I’ve used also used the scaled resolution, so it’s not something that’s bothering me.
Pro has an HDR mode with higher brightness – I’ve tested this playing “Silo” on Apple TV, but… I had a bit mixed feelings about it. I’m not sure if it looked better on the Pro with the higher contrast and real black, than on the Air with less black blacks. And the white interface elements that show up on hover were kinda blinding.
The Pro is technically capable of higher peak SDR brightness, but it’s hard to say how this works exactly – the specs say “up to 1000 nits (outdoor)” (vs. Air’s 500 nits). But note the “outdoor” – so it’s something that uses the light sensor, and only enables higher max limit if it’s in a bright place. So if you took both of them outside on a bright day, the Pro would probably be much more usable, but in a rather dark room, they looked pretty much the same at max brightness. But there might be some hacks to unlock the limit (?). Anyway, as someone who usually has max brightness set, and has sent back one Air in the past because it was too dark (400 nits), the current Air is good enough for me.
I was a bit worried about the screen color balance – Apple has this annoying thing where every device has a slightly different white tone, sometimes it’s more yellowish, sometimes more blueish, sometimes more towards violet…. and it’s not always possible/easy to calibrate it differently. Some of the past MacBook Airs and the new OLED iPads are too yellowish for me, for example.
So these two… are both kinda yellowish, the Pro even more so I think. But they can be calibrated a bit – the Pro has this more advanced color calibration thingie that I’ve never seen before, that’s missing on the Air, which lets you change color balance on a hexagonal grid. The Air has a standard color profile wizard with a white point slider. But I’ve moved it slightly towards the blue and it’s ok. If you’re used to Apple’s current OLED screens (I’m not), you won’t notice this.
Notch
I was horrified when they first announced the MacBook with a notch in the screen… I was expecting this to be a big problem. It’s not really a problem in practice, and I say this as a notch-hater. I know there’s some hack that lets you run a smaller resolution, pushing the menu bar down and making the screen fully rectangular, at the cost of lost vertical space, but I don’t think I’d want that – those pixels definitely count. The only thing I don’t like is that the notch swallows overflowing icons from the menu bar, they just disappear if you have too many. I was recommended several tools that work around this in that thread, but I haven’t tried any yet.
Keyboard
I think both have fairly similar keyboards – the good one that Apple switched back to from the terrible butterfly one. They both felt ok to write on.
However, they do look different – the Air has the classic black keys on silver background design, while the Pro has black keys on… black. I’m not a fan of this, tbh – the keys are much harder to see. They do have the backlight of course, but you kinda need to rely only on that.
Ports
The Pro has an HDMI port and an SD card slot. I couldn’t care less tbh – I use these very rarely, and I got adapters. I prefer a thinner laptop instead.
The bigger difference is the extra USB-C port on the right, while the Air only has ports on the left – that would be kinda useful, but oh well.
The Pro also has the headphone jack on the left instead of right, but I’m not sure if that matters. It might be better this way tbh – I think they used to be on the left long ago, and I liked that more?…
Temperature
The Air definitely runs a bit warmer at idle than the M1 MBP did (doesn’t really fall below 40°C when it’s running), and gets warm quicker when doing something serious, and I don’t really like this… or even if the temperature of the CPU is the same, it feels warmer on the bottom, which matters when you’re mostly holding it on the lap. I guess it might be because of the fan-less internal design, or just things are arranged differently inside somehow. Although I think the Pro was also slightly warmer than my M1. (I’m curious how the new M4 Air will turn out in complete reviews…)
Sound
The Pro had a better sound on the speakers – not that the Air sounds bad, but the Pro definitely sounded better somehow (note, I’m not an audiophile at all).
And surprisingly, the Air has a different sounding touchpad. I think the click sound is the same here as on the 2020 MacBook Air, and different than the current and last few generations of Pros – the Pros have a kinda more “metallic” click sound, and the Airs' touchpad click is… I don’t know how to describe it, it’s different. A slightly lower, more “dull” tone. I think I like the Air version more.
