WORTH THE UPGRADE — LAPTOPS
The verdict, with numbers.
Worth it
Benchmarked side by side · 13" base configurations, same workload
Two years and two chip generations sit between the M2 Air and the M4 Air — more of a gap than most Apple Silicon jumps get. We put a base M2 next to a base M4, ran the same workloads on both, and priced out what the difference actually costs once trade-in value comes off the top.
MacBook Air M2 → MacBook Air M4
Base 13" configurations, spec for spec. This is where "worth it" actually comes from.
Full reasoning below.
The M2 Air's biggest weakness was never raw speed — it was the 8GB memory floor that made the base model feel tight within a year of moderate multitasking, well before the chip itself became the bottleneck. The M4 Air fixes exactly that, doubling the starting point to 16GB.
The CPU and GPU core increases matter more if you're doing real work on the machine — video export, larger photo edits, local AI tasks — than if you're mostly writing documents and browsing tabs. For that lighter use case, the memory bump is doing most of the heavy lifting in how the laptop feels.
"Worth it" doesn't mean worth it for everyone. Here's how to tell which side you're on.
What the upgrade actually costs once a well-kept M2 Air comes off the price.
Resale value drops fastest in the first few months after a new chip launches — sell sooner rather than later if you're going ahead with this.
The ones worth asking no matter which chip generation you're reading this at.
Apple Silicon tends to refresh yearly with incremental gains, so waiting rarely costs you much if you need a laptop now — you can always sell before the next launch. The exception is if you're already on the fence; a generation with a genuinely larger jump, like this one, is a better time to buy than the year right after.
For browsing, writing, and everyday multitasking, yes — comfortably. If you regularly run virtual machines, large creative-suite projects, or heavy local AI models, 24GB or 32GB configurations are worth the added cost; the base tier is built for typical daily use, not those workloads.
Not much — resale value tracks age and condition more closely than which specific generation you bought. Buying the newer chip now mostly means a longer runway before you feel the need to upgrade again, not a resale premium down the line.
If your budget is the deciding factor and your workload is light, a certified-refurbished M2 with a real warranty is a solid buy at the right discount. If you can stretch to the M4, the RAM floor alone makes it the better long-term hold for most people.