So, which MacBook Air is it going to be?
“If I’m spending money anyway, it should be on the latest model.”
Understandable. And with new prices, that would even be the right calculation: The premium for the current generation is usually manageable when buying new, and you’re also buying yourself years of software support. Refurbished changes that logic. Here, three MacBook Air generations stand side by side, and the price gap between them is greater than the difference in benefits. So the question isn’t which Air is the best. The question is which one is enough for you.
This one isn't decided on paper
Most people buying a MacBook Air end up comparing numbers. Cores, nits, gigabytes. That's understandable, but it rarely leads to the right decision, because on any spec sheet the newer machine wins automatically. Except you're not buying a benchmark. You're buying something you'll work on for years.
So this guide flips the order round: what you need first, then the machine. Three generations of MacBook Air are in our Monthly Deals in August: the 13″ M1 from late 2020, the 15″ M4 from early 2025 and the 15″ M5 from early 2026. All three are refurbished, all three are tested, and all three have a warranty.
What all three have in common
Before we get to the differences, the important bit: none of these three is a compromise.
All three run on Apple silicon, meaning Apple's own chips. In practice that gives you the same underlying feel: the machine is awake the moment you open the lid, it stays quiet under load (all three are fanless, so they are literally silent), and the battery sees out a normal working day without you hunting for a socket.
On top of that, all three share a high-resolution Retina display, Touch ID to unlock, an aluminium body that still doesn't creak years later, and a Swiss keyboard layout.
If you're coming from an older Windows laptop or an Intel Mac, any of these three is a clear step up. From here on it's only a question of headroom.
The three generations, one by one
MacBook Air 13″ M1, 256 GB, 8 GB RAM (Late 2020)
The M1 was the chip that caught half the industry off guard in 2020: a fanless 13-inch laptop that was quicker than Intel MacBooks with a fan in them. Five years on, it hasn't got any slower. It has simply got company.
With 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, it covers what school and university actually throw at you: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, research with a lot of tabs open, notes, video calls, streaming, the occasional photo in Lightroom or a short edit in iMovie. It weighs around 1.3 kg and disappears into any rucksack.
To be straight with you, there are things it doesn't have: MagSafe (it charges over USB-C), a 1080p camera (it has 720p) and the ability to run two external monitors at once. If you can live with that, this is the cheapest Apple silicon there is.
Who it's for: anyone whose day is text, spreadsheets, a browser and video calls and who would rather not pay more than that requires.
MacBook Air 15″ M4, 256 GB, 16 GB RAM (Early 2025)
The M4 Air is where «it'll do» turns into «this is a pleasure». 15.3 inches instead of 13.3 means two windows side by side are genuinely usable, not just theoretically able to fit. Plus 16 GB of RAM, twice as much as the M1.
That memory is precisely why the M4 feels calmer day to day than the chip generation alone would explain. If you're editing in Lightroom, researching in a browser, playing music and sitting in a video call all at once, you feel those 16 GB. The M4 also drives two external displays, so it can replace a desktop outright.
The price is CHF 749, or CHF 711.55 with the 5% August discount. It's the most expensive machine in this comparison and also the one where the cost-per-year-of-use sum comes good soonest.
Who it's for: people with several programs open at once working with images or video for whom the laptop is the main machine.
MacBook Air 15″ M5, 512 GB, 16 GB RAM (Early 2026)
The newest generation here, and the only one with 512 GB of storage. That's the real difference. If you keep a lot locally, meaning a photo library, video projects, large sample libraries or virtual machines, 256 GB fills up faster than you'd expect. And storage can't be added to an Air after the fact.
Then there's the current chip generation, which means the longest runway before Apple stops supporting it in software. If you intend to keep the machine for four or five years, that's an argument which only bites at the end of its life but bites hard when it does.
Who it's for: the longest service life and anyone who has run out of 256 GB before.
August deal price: CHF 1,171.
The three differences that actually matter
Everything else is a detail. These three points decide it, and two of them can't be put right later.
13 or 15 inches
13.3 inches is portable, light and fits on any fold-down table on the train. 15.3 inches is a workspace. If you carry the machine every day and mostly work with one window full screen, 13 inches is right. If you're mostly at the same desk and need two documents side by side, 15 inches is a real gain. You don't notice it in the number. You notice it after a fortnight.
8 or 16 GB of RAM
The most important point in this guide is that RAM is soldered in on a MacBook Air. The decision is final.
8 GB is plenty for Office, a browser, mail, video calls and streaming. macOS manages memory efficiently, and the difference barely shows with that sort of use. You need 16 GB the moment several demanding programs run at the same time: photo editing, video editing, design tools, development environments, or a browser with forty tabs open alongside everything else.
256 or 512 GB of storage
Also not upgradeable. 256 GB is enough if you work with iCloud, OneDrive or Google Drive and don't keep photos and video on the machine permanently. You need 512 GB if your files are big and have to be available offline. An external SSD is a perfectly legitimate way round it, but it's never in your bag on the day you need it.
Which Air suits your day?
Notes, office, research, and video calls: MacBook Air 13″ M1.
8 GB and 256 GB aren't a sacrifice for this profile; they're the right size for it. The money you save is better spent on the extended warranty, a decent bag and an external display for the desk.
Several programs at once, photo editing, and presentations: MacBook Air 15″ M4.
The 16 GB of RAM and the bigger screen are the two things you'll notice every day here. Not the chip.
Years of use with headroom and plenty of local storage: MacBook Air 15″ M5.
If the machine has to last four or five years and you'd rather not do sums about storage, buy properly once instead of tightly twice.
What 'refurbished' actually means at Revendo
'Used' is a broad term. Here it's defined. Every MacBook goes through a full quality check under the MATT protocol: a function test of every component (display, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and camera); a battery capacity measurement; certified data erasure; and cosmetic grading into five clearly defined condition categories, from «Bargain» through to «New».
The battery is the part that worries people most about a used laptop, so it's set out plainly: in the «Used» grade, capacity is at least 80%; in the «New» grade, at least 97%. You know what you're getting before you buy.
On top of that:
- One year of warranty, extendable to three
- 14-day money-back guarantee, no reason needed
- Repairs as an Apple Authorised Service Provider, using genuine Apple parts
- Ten shops across Switzerland, if you'd rather look at the machine in person
The difference between the condition grades is on the outside, not in the performance. A machine graded «Used» computes exactly as fast as one graded «New».