Looking for a Cheap MacBook? The Air M1 Is Only $600.

Once upon a time, I worked at a place whose IT department struck dread into my heart. Not because they weren’t competent—they were. It was because every time I got it back, I could tell they used it by the chocolate-smudged fingerprints all over the keyboard.

You won’t have to worry about grotesque evidence of a prior user all over the keyboard of your next laptop if you avoid the eBay specials. Neither will you have to wonder how much abuse it’d secretly lived through in its prior life.

You can buy new and save hundreds with this $599 deal on the MacBook Air M1 over the MacBook Air M4’s $850 price tag. Well, newish. Even though the M1 is several generations behind the M4, it’s not a refurbished model, and it’s certainly not a candy-covered mess with a potentially checkered past.

still fast in 2025

For the normal day-to-day uses that satisfy the general population using their laptop for email, web browsing, Google Workspace or Microsoft Teams, watching 4K movie streams, and certain workplace CMSes, the MacBook Air M1 is plenty quick.

Just don’t load down the disk to near full or task it with performance-intensive jobs, such as editing video. For that, you should consider the MacBook Pro. If you want to enter the Apple ecosystem, you’d be hard pressed to do so for cheaper than the $599 deal on this new, very leftover MacBook Air M1.

Still not sold on dropping $599? You can still grab a refurbished MacBook Air M1 for a bit less money. Although the price has bumped very slightly since I last spotlighted it, you can still grab one for $395.

Best of all, it’s an official refurb, which means it’s been checked out to be in good running order. Actually, best of all is that it won’t arrive on your doorstep with a bunch of chocolatey fingerprints all over it.