Credit: Raghav Sethi/MakeUseOf

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Raghav Sethi began his tech writing journey in 2022, contributing to his college’s open-source community blog. Later that year, he joined MakeUseOf, and since then has written extensively about Apple, Android, and AI. His work ranges from hands-on experiments to opinion pieces that explore the bigger picture behind emerging tech trends.

Alongside his work at MUO, you can also find Raghav’s articles at XDA Developers, where he mainly focuses on Linux and the world of open-source software.

Outside of writing, Raghav enjoys working on coding projects, playing the guitar, and living life on the edge by installing the latest beta software on his daily devices.

The last laptop I bought was five years ago, and I’ve never owned one that lasted this long without any real issues. In fact, I fully plan on sticking with my M1 MacBook Air until it’s absolutely dead.

Out of curiosity, I recently checked how much it still sells for, and after seeing the price, I was pretty surprised. Even five years later, it’s still fantastic value and absolutely worth considering if you’re looking for a basic do-everything machine.

MacBook Air 13-Inch M1 2020

Even five years later, the M1 MacBook Air is still holding up remarkably well, offering solid performance, excellent battery life, and a level of overall value that’s hard to beat at its current price.

Apple silicon made most laptops look stupid overnight

The biggest comeback I have ever seen

Credit: Hamlin Rozario/MakeUseOf

Before 2020, I really couldn’t stand MacBooks. Intel-era Macs, especially everything Apple shipped after 2016, were just a flood of bad decisions. They were riddled with reliability issues and were just bad in terms of price-performance ratio, too. Overall, they were pretty much the worst laptops you could buy unless you really, really needed macOS.

Even when Apple announced Apple silicon back in June 2020, I was hugely skeptical about Apple being able to pull it off. Given their recent track record at the time, there was no way I believed Apple could change the entire architecture and actually come out ahead. But I was completely wrong.

At launch, Apple delivered exactly what it promised. A reliable laptop with perfect battery life, good enough performance for most people, and all of that wrapped in a genuinely solid value package.

It felt strange to say that Apple was providing more value than most Windows OEMs. That was completely unheard of at the time.

Even app support turned out to be almost a non-issue. Rossetta 2 handled everything really well, and most major developers ported their apps to ARM within a few months. This is not something I can say about the not-so great Snapdragon Windows laptops.

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Suffering from success

The one I went for back in 2020 was the M1 MacBook Air, which retailed for $999 at the time. I was already growing tired of Windows by then and really wanted to try out macOS, so I didn’t overthink it and just went for the cheapest option.

At that point, my only real requirement was that it needed to last me through my final years of high school and then college as well. Battery life was the number one priority, but I ended up far more satisfied than I thought I would be.

I have never used a laptop at this price, which got everything right to the most minor details. It was insane to me how snappy it felt while editing 4K video (even if it was footage from an iPhone), compiling code, or just working in a browser. It just worked, and at the time, macOS Big Sur was probably the best OS I had ever used.

I never thought I’d care about things like a fanless design, good speakers in a laptop, or an actually great trackpad. But those “minor” things kept adding up to the point where the experience felt almost flawless. I don’t think I can ever go back to using a laptop with a fan again.

In fact, when the M2 MacBook Air launched, and then the M3, and now the M4, I never got a real reason to upgrade, aside from maybe wanting more RAM. Apple’s biggest competition at this point is literally itself, just because of how insanely complete a machine it accidentally built, and even five years later, when the price has almost halved, it’s an insane value for money.

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Five years later, nothing beats this at the price

Please don’t get a Chromebook

Credit: Screenshot by Raghav - NAR

Today, you can buy the base M1 MacBook Air for $599 at Walmart (it was even down to $499 recently). This is the base model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is admittedly a bit lacking in 2025. So I decided to take a look at what else the sub-$500 laptop market actually offers right now.

What I found was a bunch of laptops that were clearly better than the MacBook in one or two specific areas, but dramatically worse at almost everything else.

For example, there were plenty of gaming laptops that would absolutely demolish the MacBook Air in raw performance. But in return, you’re dealing with a worse keyboard, trackpad, display (not refresh-rate wise), and, most importantly, significantly worse battery life.

Credit: Raghav Sethi/MakeUseOf

That’s really the thing with the M1 MacBook Air. Somehow, even five years later, it’s still one of the best overall packages you can buy at this price. You get “good enough” performance across almost every category, without making major compromises.

I do understand the concern around the 8GB of RAM. I’m writing this article on one right now with a bunch of tabs open, and it’s working fine for the most part, but it’s not completely bulletproof either if I start launching a ton of other apps at the same time.

That said, if you just want a machine for basic everyday use, which for most people mainly means living in a browser with some light workloads on the side, it’s fine and still a great experience. But if you’re shopping for a laptop with a very specific or demanding use case in mind, then yes, this obviously isn’t the best option for you.

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This might not be the laptop for you

While this is easily the best tech purchase I’ve ever made, it obviously might not be perfect for you. You really need to understand your own use case and decide what actually makes sense for you. For example, if you’re a gamer or rely on Windows-specific software, the MacBook Air is a terrible choice.

And even though I believe macOS is a better long-term replacement for Windows, there’s also a very strong argument to be made that you could get more life out of an older machine by installing Linux and being completely fine.