These cheap MacBook Air deals make grabbing a great student laptop easy

The latest version of Apple's MacBook Air series is easily one of the best, making the recommendation for students and anyone else who needs to work from home that much simpler. It's light, fast, powerful, and incredibly beautiful. Plus, you can get some surprisingly good deals for such a new laptop.

• The best student laptops, ranked

Apple introduced the latest version of the MacBook Air – and discontinued the other versions – late last year and the biggest change is one you can't even see. Inside the new Air, Apple is using its own M1 chip, replacing Intel's, which relies on a new architecture and is incredibly, mindblowingly fast.

• Read our five-star MacBook Air (2020) review
• MacBook Air with M1 vs. MacBook Air with Intel: Which is best?

While changing out the processor might not sound like a big or exciting deal, it definitely is: Apple has worked long and hard to make the M1 incredibly powerful, much more powerful than comparable Intel chips, and that really shows in everyday performance.

According to our testing, the latest Air pretty much never heats up or even gets warm, everything loads quickly, and battery life is easily one whole day. The screen and built quality are also top-notch. 

For the vast majority of people, the MacBook Air with M1 is an instant and strong recommendation from us. 

The best MacBook Air (2020) deals (US)

MacBook Air (2020) | M1 (8-core) | 8GB / 256GB | $999 $899 from Apple Education
Apple is currently offering $100 off the latest MacBook Air for students, an unbeatable discount that makes a very well-specced laptop even better value. 256GB storage is generous and as we've said, there's pretty much nothing the M1 chip can't handle easily.

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The best MacBook Air (2020) deals (UK)

MacBook Air (2020) | M1 (8-core) | 8GB / 256GB | £999 from Currys
In the UK, we're less lucky with the available deals (although students can get Apple discounts) but for the money, you can't beat the MacBook Air, which packs desktop-level performance into an incredibly thin and light body. If you can spare the cash, there isn't a better laptop.

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When it comes to student laptops, Apple has always been one of the hardest companies to the beat and the MacBook Air (2020) with M1 makes the best even better. 

• And these are the best lightweight laptops available today