MacBook Air update: Apple adds Haswell chips and drops prices by £100 across the board

Apple has given its MacBook Air line-up a quick (and expected) refresh today, updating the computers to use Intel’s latest Haswell processors.

The new entry level Air (the most portable of Apple’s laptops– with solid-state drives and less powerful chips) has been boosted from a 1.3GHz processor to a 1.4GHz Core i5 chip.

In addition Apple has also dropped the price on all models by at least £100. The 128GB 11-inch and 13-inch models have gone from £849 and £949 to £749 and £849 respectively, while those with a 256GB hard drives have dropped by £130: from £1,129 to £999 for the 13-inch model and £1,029 to £899 for the 11-inch model.

One minor improvement that’s less obvious will be an increase on battery life, with the new power efficient Haswell chips adding an hour on each model from 12-hours to 13-hours.

Apple fans however will still be waiting for the major update to the MacBook Air range expected for later this year.

Although it’s not certain what significant hardware updates will be included it’s expected that an upgraded Air range could make the move to the faster Thunderbolt 2 port, as well as offering 8GB of RAM (not 4GB) as standard.