{"id":216130,"date":"2026-02-20T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/should-you-buy-an-m3-or-m4-macbook-air-now-or-wait-for-the-rumored-budget-macbook\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T18:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T23:55:09","slug":"should-you-buy-an-m3-or-m4-macbook-air-now-or-wait-for-the-rumored-budget-macbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/20\/should-you-buy-an-m3-or-m4-macbook-air-now-or-wait-for-the-rumored-budget-macbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Should you buy an M3 or M4 MacBook Air now, or wait for the rumored budget MacBook?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should you buy an M3 or M4 MacBook Air now, or wait for the rumored budget MacBook?<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/tech.sportskeeda.com\/laptops\/should-buy-m3-m4-macbook-air-now-wait-rumored-budget-macbook<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-20 09:15:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: tech.sportskeeda.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Apple is reportedly working on a budget MacBook. This has been corroborated by multiple industry sources, such as Ming-Chi Kuo, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, and TrendForce.<\/p>\n

In fact, TrendForce believes this upcoming MacBook could cost as low as $599 – $699, which would make it significantly cheaper than the M4 MacBook Air or even the M3 variant (if you can still find one). This begs the question: Should you wait for this rumored budget MacBook, or buy an M3 or M4 MacBook Air, both of which are already available on the market?<\/p>\n

In this article, I will compare the current MacBook Air with the rumored budget MacBook, based on the latter’s leaked specs.<\/p>\n

Note: <\/strong>This article is based on leaked and speculated information and should be taken with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n

Read more: <\/strong>New analysis sheds light on Apple M5 Pro and M5 Max’s 2.5D alleged chiplet design and more<\/strong><\/p>\n

M3 or M4 MacBook Air vs rumored budget MacBook: A comparison<\/h2>\n

Leaked Specs comparison<\/h3>\n

Here are the specs of the M3 or M4 MacBook Air and the rumored budget MacBook (based on leaks):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Specifications<\/td>\nM3 or M4 MacBook Air<\/td>\nBudget MacBook (leaked)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Display<\/td>\n13.6-inch Liquid Retina screen
2.5K resolution
16:10 aspect ratio
60Hz refresh rate
500 nits peak brightness<\/td>\n		13-inch IPS touchscreen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
CPU<\/td>\nApple M3 8-core CPU
Apple M4 10-core CPU<\/td>\n		Apple A18 Pro 6-core CPU<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Memory<\/td>\n16\/24\/32 GB LPDDR5X Unified memory (Soldered)<\/td>\n8 GB memory<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
GPU<\/td>\nApple M3 8-core GPU
Apple M4 8\/10-core GPU<\/td>\n		Apple A18 Pro 6-core GPU<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Storage<\/td>\n256GB PCIe Gen 4 unified SSD (Soldered)<\/td>\n—<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Battery<\/td>\n52.6Wh<\/td>\n—<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Design, build quality, and display<\/h3>\n

\"The<\/svg>“\/The Apple M4 MacBook Air has a great display (Image via Apple)<\/p>\n

According to previous leaks, the rumored budget MacBook might feature a more compact chassis than the current MacBook Air due to its smaller 13-inch display. As for chassis quality, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg believes Apple will provide a similar aluminum design to the Air model. A…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should you buy an M3 or M4 MacBook Air now, or wait for the rumored…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":216131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/staticg.sportskeeda.com\/editor\/2026\/02\/0094c-17715831581831-1920.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-216130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-macintosh","tag-macbook-air"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216132,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216130\/revisions\/216132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}