I've used MacBooks for almost 2 decades — here are 3 I'd buy with my own money

Tom's Guide

a day ago

I've been using MacBooks ever since college. And while I miss the light-up logo on the lid, they continue to be some of the best laptops you can buy right now. This is due to their combination of raw performance and power efficiency in sleek systems.
And they're about to get even better with macOS Tahoe/26 coming just around the corner. Look past the Liquid Glass fanciness, and you've got some real power user features, including a vastly improved spotlight search that I'm so excited to try in the developer beta.
In some situations, it's best to get the latest (and they're still discounted ahead of Prime Day). But given the rate of improvement between generations, I have one personal recommendation that could save you a ton of money.
Here are my personal picks from our top choices of the best MacBooks that you should buy right now, which are all on sale at up to $350 off.
The M3 MacBook Air may not be the latest generation system in Apple's ultra-light lineup, but it shines for its balance of power, efficiency and portability — all in a very sleek package.
In its midnight blue finish, the M3 Air is looking sharp — paired with a powerful M3 chip, a gorgeous 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.
'But what about the M4 MacBook Air!?' I hear you all exclaiming. I get it, and don't let me stop you if you want the latest Air starting at $899. But for that full price, what do you actually get over the M3?
From our lab testing of both of these devices, I can only see three differences:
Besides that, you get the same everything else — same flat utilitarian design, same bright and color accurate display, same four-speaker audio, same ports and the same RAM.
And when you take a look at the performance and stamina of an M3 MacBook Air, this is still a mighty laptop to get. Even better? It's just $799, which makes it an absolute steal. This is the best option for most folks reading this.
So this is the level where I'm at in terms of the performance requirements I have — stepping into 4K video edits, RAW photo editing and some multi-track music recording.
To back all of this up, you need a serious workhorse, and the M4 Pro MacBook Pro is the machine to do it.
This is an amazing price on one of the best pro laptops you can buy right now — packing a seriously performant M4 Pro chip for any heavy workload, 24GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, a gorgeous 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display and an alluring Space Black to that utilitarian shell. Oh, and don't forget the mindblowing battery life, too!
And from the decisions made here, Apple has 100% engineered this towards prosumers. The 120Hz mini LED display is bright, color accurate and buttery smooth for navigation around macOS. There's an SD card slot on here for camera connectivity, Thunderbolt 5 ports for fast accessories, and an HDMI 2.1 socket for plugging straight into a monitor.
Top that all off with the screamer of an M4 Pro chip with advanced graphics and a massive 18+ hour battery life, then you're golden!
This one is a laptop I'd only recommend for a select few of you reading this. If you find yourself in a full-time job editing cinematic masterpieces, in advanced engineering or sciences looking for the horsepower to back up your work, or you're an AI engineer looking to run an entire model offline, the M4 Max MacBook Pro is the right choice.
It'll cost you a small fortune, but this is the ultimate MacBook Pro you can buy right now. The base model features a 16.2-inch 3456 x 2234 Retina display, Apple M4 Max CPU, 36GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.
It's a steep price tag, but if you can make the most of its unlimited power, you're onto a winner. The cream of the crop deserves the big screen experience, and that 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display absolutely stuns, while giving you all the additional real estate for the many complex controls of pro creator apps.
The M4 Max chip, with its blazing CPU and 32-core GPU, is capable of compiling so much code in a breeze or rendering huge 3D animation projects effortlessly. It also excels in machine learning and AI model training, as you can squeeze so much processing power out of that chip for local models.
So if you're on the cutting edge of digital content creation, a developer with big ambitions, or someone with deep pockets who wants a completely slowdown-free experience, this is the one I'd tell you to get.