I thought I had this figured out. I was making a hard-headed decision to buy a refurbed M1 MacBook Air with 16GB RAM for half the price of a new M4 one, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment. But, ironically, it’s because the M1 version is so good that I think I’m at risk of selling it again and buying the shiny new M4 model …

If you’re in the market for a reliable, high-performance laptop, there’s no reason to pay full price. This grade-A refurbished 13.3" Apple MacBook Air from 2020 with an M1 chip, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD is available for just $569.

The MacBook Air M4 continues the trend of bringing incremental upgrades but what are these differences between the new M4 and the older M3 and M2 models?