MacBook Air 15 (M4) vs. Surface Laptop 7: the MacBook is just better

If you want a large display but you don’t want to carry around a heavy laptop, then the thin-and-light 15-inch laptop category is for you. These machines tend to be fast enough for demanding productivity users, but they don’t have the discrete GPUs that make many larger laptops good for gaming and creative applications.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 has ruled the roost as the best example since it was introduced in 2024. The Apple MacBook Air 15 received an upgrade to the M4 chipset in early 2025, and it’s a strong competitor. Which one is better for you?

Specs and configurations

The MacBook Air 15 starts at $1,199 for a 10-core CPU/10-core GPU M4 (the only option), 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The 15.3-inch IPS display is also the only option. For $200 you can upgrade to 24GB of RAM and for $400 you can get 32GB. Storage options including 512GB for $200, 1TB for $400, and 2TB for $800. That makes the most expensive configuration with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD cost $2,399.

The Surface Laptop 7 list price starts at $1,299 for a 12-core Snapdragon X Elite chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 15.0-inch IPS display (again, the only option along with the chipset). Upgrading to a 512GB SSD is $200 and to a 1TB SSD is $400. The most expensive configuration is $2,499 with 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD.

That makes the MacBook Air 15 slightly less expensive for most equal configurations. However, while Apple rarely puts its current devices on sale and so you’ll have to find a third-party seller to get a discount, Microsoft does put sale prices on its Surface devices. Right now, the Surface Laptop 7 is on sale at prices that are slightly lower than the MacBook Air 15.

Design

It’s easy enough to argue that Apple and Microsoft make the most well-designed and solidly constructed laptops today. That’s not really to knock the likes of HP, Dell, Lenovo, and others who also make good laptops. It’s just that Apple and Microsoft have a different kind of focus — Apple with its penchant for meticulousness and Microsoft wanting to create flagship products to show off specific Windows features. It’s no surprise that both companies make relatively expensive laptops.

The MacBook Air 15 and Surface Laptop 7 are two examples. Both received high scores in our review, and both reviewers — myself with the MacBook Air 15 — consider them among the best laptops you can buy today. Both are made extremely well, with quality materials and tight tolerances. They just look and feel like high-quality products. Both are also attractive, with bright color options and consistent, elegant designs that are instantly recognizable. I’d say they’re equally good looking.

The MacBook Air 15 is a lot thinner and lighter, though. The Surface Laptop 7 feels hefty by comparison, and it really is. In fact, the MacBook Air 15 feels a lot more like a thin-and-light laptop than the Surface Laptop 7, which arguably falls just outside of that category. Both have similar display bezels, but the MacBook Air 15’s display is slightly larger so it’s wider. The Surface Laptop 7 has a taller 3:2 aspect ratio, so it’s deeper. Hold them in hand, and the MacBook Air 14 just feels like the smaller laptop.

Both laptops have very good keyboards, but I would rate Apple’s Magic Keyboard as superior. First, its keycaps are larger and its spacing is more comfortable. Second, the switches are lighter and snappier. If I have to type something very long, I’d choose the MacBook Air 15 — or, really, any MacBook, because the keyboards are identical on all of them.

Both laptops also have very good haptic touchpads. The MacBook Air 15’s is considerably larger but they’re both very responsive, and the Surface Laptop 7’s version has a lot of customization options. Apple’s Force Touch haptic touchpad also has the Force Click feature where pressing a little “harder” invokes additional functionality. I use that feature quite a bit, so I prefer the MacBook Air 15’s. Note that the Surface Laptop 7 display is touch- and pen-enabled, which will be a huge advantage for some people and irrelevant for others.

Finally, the MacBook Air 15 has a higher-resolution 12MP webcam with support for Apple’s Center Stage and Desk View features. The first automatically centers the user in the screen as they move around, and the latter allows sharing one’s desktop with participants and showing a picture-in-picture video along with it. Both features work great. The Surface Laptop 7 supports Microsoft’s various Copilot+ PC AI features, which add some Studio Effects videoconferencing functions. Both laptops have fast AI chips, with the MacBook Air 15’s Neural Engine (NE) coming in at 38 tera operations per second (TOPS) and the Surface Laptop 7’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) hitting 40 TOPS. It remains to be seen how important these features turn out to be.

Performance

The Surface Laptop 7 uses the 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chipset, which is aimed at combing performance with better efficiency than previous generation Windows laptops. Graphics are powered by the Adreno integrated GPU. The MacBook Air 15 has Apple’s latest M4 chipset, with 10 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores. It, too, aims to combine power with efficiency.

In our benchmarks, the M4 comes out ahead. It’s around 60% faster in single-core tasks, which will matter more for simple productivity. It’s also faster in multi-core tasks, although only slightly. Overall, the MacBook Air 15 will be snappier and more responsive, and thanks to CPU optimizations for things like video encoding, it will be better at running creative applications like video editing.

Neither of these are gaming laptops, but the MacBook Air 15 is considerably faster in sheer graphical power. However, macOS remains a limited gaming platform, so your gaming experience will come down to whether your favorite title runs natively on macOS.

Display and audio

Both laptops have IPS displays that look great. The MacBook Air 15 has a 15.3-inch 16:10 panel at 2880 x 1864 and running at 60Hz. The Surface Laptop 7 has a 15.0-inch 3:2 panel at 2496 x 1664 running at 120Hz. Both are sharp, and the Microsoft display will run more smoothly.

According to our colorimeter, the displays have similar color width and accuracy. The Surface Laptop 7’s display is brighter and has higher contrast. You’ll like using either one of these display, but the Surface Laptop 7’s is slightly better. They’re both above average for IPS displays.

The Surface Laptop 7 has stereo speakers hidden underneath the keyboard, and the audio is okay for YouTube videos and common system sounds. The MacBook Air 15 has quad speakers with force-cancelling woofers. It’s a lot better, particularly in terms of overall volume and the amount of bass. You can enjoy a lot more on the MacBook Air 15 without plugging in headphones.

Portability

The MacBook Air 15 is noticeably more portable, being considerably lighter and thinner. But the Surface Laptop 7 isn’t too much to carry around.

In terms of battery life, we saw the same kind of performance from the Surface Laptop 7 as we’ve seen with other Qualcomm-equipped laptops. Its battery life is much better with less-demanding tasks like looping our test video than it is with more demanding tasks like web browsing. The MacBook Air 15 result are likely lower than they might have been — I had to use a different tool for benchmarking and it might have burned more power. And when I ran the Cinebench R24 benchmark on the MacBook Air 15 to test battery life under duress, it lasted for an excellent 4.5 hours. Qualcomm laptops don’t typically crack two hours, although we didn’t run that test on the Surface Laptop specifically.

The net result is that the MacBook Air 15 is going to last you a lot longer, especially when you’re doing real work. The Surface Laptop 7 is better than many older Windows machines, but not nearly as strong.

The MacBook Air 15 is just … better

These are two of the best laptops you can buy today on any platform. Most likely, the Surface Laptop 7 is right at the top among its Windows competitors. But, the MacBook Air 15 is just a little better in almost everything, and a lot better in performance and battery life.

You’ll spend around the same money for equal configurations of each laptop, which is to say, you’ll be paying a premium price. My recommendation is that unless you just have to have Windows, go for the MacBook Air 15. It’s just a better laptop.