Spring has sprung and new MacBook Airs are blooming on our teardown table. This year’s refresh brings Apple’s M4 silicon to the iconic laptop, along with some welcome spec upgrades and a surprising price cut.
But we’re sad to report that the M4 MacBook Air didn’t get any real repairability upgrades, and many of the welcome improvements to the iPhone repair experience haven’t made their way to the MacBook yet. There’s no fancy electrically released adhesive, and software limitations will continue to plague anyone trying to use third-party or harvested parts.
That said, we’re still getting a kick out of seeing Apple publishing full service manuals on launch day and an extensive list of available parts that will be available via Self Service Repair, a real repairability win.
What’s New (and What’s Not)
The M4 MacBook Air keeps the same chassis design introduced in 2022’s M2 model, but adds more processing cores, doubles the base model’s Unified Memory from 8GB to 16GB, upgrades the camera from 1080p to 4K, and (most surprisingly) comes with a $100 price cut, with the 13-inch starting at $999.
While the M4-equipped iPad Pro got a major display upgrade, the Air wasn’t as lucky. It sticks with a 60 Hz Liquid Retina LCD display, which isn’t as sharp or bright as the iPad or MacBook Pro’s.
So should you run out and buy an iPad Pro instead? Probably not. The 2024 iPad Pro 13” earned a miserable 3 out of 10 provisional repairability score, and the M4 model doesn’t seem likely to be much better. From a repairability standpoint, the MacBook Air is likely to be cheaper to maintain in the long run—though that’s clearing a pretty low bar.
The Battery Situation: Not Bad, Could Be Better
One of our main priorities in considering a laptop’s repairability is its battery, which is usually the component most likely to need replacement. Battery repair in the M4 MacBook Air looks very similar to the M3 model: After removing the four screws on the bottom cover and some careful prying, we’re pretty much given immediate access to the battery connector allowing us to disconnect power to the logic board and avoid any risk of accidental damage during the battery removal process.
Unfortunately, this year’s MacBook Air still doesn’t include the amazing electrically releasing adhesive we’ve seen in the new iPhones. On the bright side, the stretch-release adhesive under this battery has an engineering trick to make it less error-prone: There are four strips of adhesive under the battery, each adjacent pair forming one strip that curves back on itself. Apple’s repair manual recommends pulling these strips in pairs simultaneously, which is easier said than done. If a pull tab breaks, you’ll need to resort to isopropyl alcohol to help loosen the remaining adhesive.
This is the same design we saw on the M3 models, which were a massive improvement over the M2 models for one key reason: the battery cable, which runs under the logic board, isn’t glued down. That pesky glued-in cable required full logic board removal in order to access the battery on the M2 Airs, totally negating the utility of the screws and pull tabs. We’re happy to see Apple continue with no adhesive here, making battery repairs relatively painless.
Port Repairs: A Surprising Bright Spot
One common failure point on laptops are their ports, mostly due to mechanical wear as cables get plugged and unplugged thousands of times. Thankfully, on the newer MacBook Airs, both the MagSafe and USB-C ports are the more accessible—and replaceable—components.
This modular approach to ports is nearly best-in-class, allowing for relatively straightforward repairs to these high-wear components. While not as easy as Dell laptops with ports attached via screws and pin-to-pad connectors, it’s still a significant improvement over earlier MacBook designs and most other consumer laptops where ports are soldered directly to the motherboard.
The Display: Harder Than It Needs to Be
Display repairs are among the most common for laptops, but in the MacBook Air M4, accessing the display is a complex, multi-step process buried deeper within the device than should be necessary. The antenna sections curve up ever so slightly higher than they should, blocking the small space required to shimmy the hinges out.
This labyrinthine process makes screen repairs unnecessarily complicated. For comparison, once you’ve opened up the Framework Laptop, the display bezel can be lifted off with a fingernail, revealing four T5 screws underneath (Framework estimates the full display replacement will take you 5–15 mins).
But the real issue isn’t just the physical difficulty.
Calibration Challenges Throw a Wrench in Screen Repairs
To be clear, swapping out a display is totally possible and well worth doing, if your screen is damaged. We sell MacBook Air display assemblies and hear all the time from customers who have done the repair successfully.
That said, Apple’s System Configuration tool leaves something to be desired when replacing screens outside the Self Service Repair system. When we swapped logic boards between two identical M4 MacBook Airs, System Configuration gave us an error: the ambient light sensor wouldn’t calibrate, which disabled True Tone. The manual said our only path to remedying that error was to go through the Self Service Repair Store team, which of course, we hadn’t used to buy the part.
These software blocks manifest regardless of whether you’re using third-party components or OEM parts from salvaged devices. MacBook refurbishers have asked repeatedly for a path to calibrating salvaged screens and eliminating the other big barrier to MacBook refurbishing: Activation Lock, which many owners forget to disable when they recycle or donate their laptops.
The Unreachables: Keyboard and Touch ID
Beyond the display lies the true repairability nightmare: the keyboard, which requires full device disassembly to access.
The keyboard is particularly problematic. As one of the most heavily used components in any laptop, it’s also one of the most likely to fail due to liquid damage, stuck keys, or general wear and tear. Yet in the MacBook Air M4, it remains buried beneath virtually every other component in the device. This makes what should be a simple repair into a daunting, time-consuming process.
Worse yet, it’s attached to a milled aluminum chunk, making it a very expensive part to replace.
The Touch ID (and power button) isn’t much better, buried under the logic board. It’s also famously paired to the Air’s logic board for security—the manual suggests that with a button purchased via Self Service Repair, you could reset it with System Configuration. We couldn’t test this via a logic board swap.
The Verdict: 5/10 Repairability
Taking all factors into consideration, the MacBook Air M4 earns a provisional repairability score of 5 out of 10. While it offers better repairability than an iPad (though that’s a low bar to clear), it still falls short of what we’d consider genuinely repairable hardware.
What We Like:
- Repair manuals available on day one
- Accessible and modular ports
- Immediate battery disconnection
What Needs Improvement:
- Outdated adhesive system for battery removal
- Complex display removal process
- Software locks and calibration issues
- Keyboard and Touch ID buried under all components
The MacBook Air M4 represents a modest evolution of Apple’s ultraportable line with welcome performance improvements and a price cut. But from a repairability standpoint, it’s largely business as usual: a mix of good intentions and frustrating limitations that continues to fall short of what consumers deserve in a premium laptop.
Until Apple really focuses hard on the System Configuration software experience, we won’t see true repairability for any MacBook in their lineup.
Ein Kommentar
While I’m all for repairability, and I think that Touch ID sensors, screens and pretty much everything else should be able to be repaired by a 3rd party vendor. Removing an activation lock is something I would very much not.
As that opens the doors for thieves to gain access to the software to do it, and I really do like that if some thief was to steal my Apple products they would essentially be SOL to sell it on.
Recycling used Apple products, is a process issue, one that could be solved by Apple making activation lock removal for legitimate recycled products easier in house with Apple. They have all the information of the owners, so they could reach out for confirmation with the previous owner.
I realise that some may argue that some 3rd party tools already exist, so might as well… my counter is that those tools were hard fought and that’s the point, it shouldn’t be easy, if you’re not recycling a machine that isn’t legitimately yours to do so.
Justin - Antwort