Apple 13.3" Silver Review

This 2015 MacBook Air is the cheapest portal into the macOS world. It's incredibly light and reliable, but the processor is slow, storage is tiny, and the screen is poor. It's only for someone who needs a Mac for basic tasks and nothing else. At $220, you're buying the Apple logo and portability, not performance.

Let's talk about this 2015 MacBook Air. It's a refurbished laptop, which means it's been checked and cleaned up by Apple, but it's fundamentally an older machine. This isn't the shiny new thing on the shelf. It's a tool, and it's for a very specific person: someone who needs a reliable, ultra-portable Mac for basic tasks and wants to spend as little as possible to get into the ecosystem. The 8GB of RAM and Intel Core i5 are from a decade ago, and the 128GB SSD is tiny. But our data shows it's incredibly reliable and surprisingly portable, scoring in the 93rd and 92nd percentile for those traits. It's the definition of a 'get the job done' laptop.

The performance story here is split. On one hand, the integrated Intel HD Graphics 6000 scores in the 97th percentile. That's a bit misleading—it's not powerful, it's just that integrated graphics from 2015 were remarkably efficient and reliable compared to many buggy or power-hungry options from that era. It means this machine will handle the macOS interface, video playback, and very basic tasks without a hiccup. On the other hand, the CPU sits in the 15th percentile. That dual-core i5-5250U is slow. Opening multiple tabs, working in a spreadsheet, or even just booting up will feel sluggish compared to anything modern. The 128GB storage (10th percentile) and 5th percentile RAM score tell the rest of the story: this is a machine for light, single-task use.

At around $220, the value proposition is simple: this is the cheapest way to get a functional Mac laptop. You're trading all modern performance for that low price and the macOS badge. Compared to a new budget Windows laptop at the same price, you'd get a much faster CPU, more RAM, and a better screen. But you wouldn't get macOS, this level of portability, or Apple's refurbished reliability guarantee. It's a trade-off. You're buying the platform and the form factor, not the power.

If you need a portable Mac, the obvious step up is a refurbished MacBook Air with an M1 chip, which will cost more but be exponentially faster. For a similar ultra-portable Windows machine, look at the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go series. It'll have a better screen and similar portability, but Windows instead of macOS. If you need more power and are okay with more bulk, the Lenovo Legion or ASUS ROG Flow lines are gaming machines, but they highlight the extreme performance gap: they're in a completely different league. This 2015 Air is competing in a niche of its own: ultra-cheap, ultra-portable macOS.

Anyone who needs to do more than one thing at a time should skip this. Students, business users, and casual creators will find the slow CPU and limited RAM a constant bottleneck. If you need to run research databases, spreadsheets, coding environments, or even just have a dozen browser tabs open, this machine will feel painfully slow. Also, if you care about screen quality for watching videos or working, the 6th percentile screen is a major letdown. Look instead at a refurbished M1 MacBook Air or a modern budget Windows laptop like an ASUS Vivobook or Lenovo IdeaPad.

We can only recommend this to a very specific user: someone who needs macOS for specific software or preference, has a very light workload (literally just word processing and web browsing), prioritizes portability above all else, and has a tight budget. For them, it's a logical buy. For anyone else—students needing to run research apps, business users multitasking, or anyone who stores lots of files—this is a bad choice. The performance limitations will become a daily frustration. In those cases, spend a bit more on a refurbished M1 Air or look at a modern budget Windows laptop.