There’s a new MacBook Air in town and it’s one of the most important releases in years. The latest Apple laptop offers some serious performance gains over its predecessor thanks to Apple’s custom-designed M1 processor, which replaces the Intel chip found in all previous MacBooks, and not only makes the new model faster but more efficient.
That means hours more battery life and a design which doesn’t need to be cooled by a fan – making it totally silent to use and less hot on your lap.
Express.co.uk has already reviewed the new MacBook Air and was impressed with what we found. The machine is buttery smooth and boasts some epic battery life, which means you can get through a day without reaching for the charger. Apple’s suite of apps, like Safari and Pages, launch in the time it takes to blink and even editing 4K video is performed without the hint of a stutter.
It’s all very impressive, but we did have one big gripe.
During our time testing the M1-powered MacBook Air, we found Google’s Intel-primed version of Chrome was painfully slow to use. In fact, at times it felt exhausting to do anything in this software so we gave up using it – that’s not great for fans of the world’s most popular browser (Chrome is currently used by almost two-thirds of all desktop users).
READ MORE: Apple’s new MacBook Air has a different keyboard to every MacBook we’ve seen before
Luckily, this dreadful google Chrome experience is no longer an issue with Google now releasing an M1-optimised version of Chrome.
M1-powered MacBook owners simply need to head to the Google Chrome download page where they will be offered the option to install the correct version of the app.
Explaining more on Twitter, Elvin Hu, an interaction designer on the Chrome team, said: “If you want to use Chrome on new Macs with Apple M1 chips, head here and download the Apple Silicon version we released in M87 today!”
Express.co.uk has now installed this new Chrome and all of the dire launch times and stuttering page loads have gone with this browser actually feeling faster than it has in the past.
We’re still fully testing things but this new version of Chrome could also be less of a battery drain which is great news for MacBook Air owners especially as the M1 chip has already boosted performance.
If other developers follow with similar updates, this will definitely be the MacBook to buy if you are considering an upgrade.
The MacBook Air is on sale now and starts at the same £999 price as the previous generation.
