Many consider the MacBook Air is the gold standard in laptops, but others hate macOS. If you want a slick laptop with a different OS, here’s where to look.
Apple’s MacBook Air is among the most beloved laptops on the market, but it’s not for everyone. The Air has only improved over the years, with a thin and fanless design, an all-aluminum chassis, and Apple’s in-house silicon at its core. The latest MacBook Air sports the M4 processor, which is putting up serious numbers in benchmarks, and even bucks Apple’s reputation as a wallet squeezer by starting at a more reasonable $1,000 for the base version with 16GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It fully deserves the SlashGear Editor’s Choice badge we awarded it. But even with so many undeniable achievements, one element of the MacBook Air turns some consumers off: the macOS experience itself.
The MacBook Air is an undeniably premium piece of hardware, but for those who don’t want to use the software it runs on, there are alternatives. Whether you’re looking for a gaming experience the Apple ecosystem just can’t deliver yet, a device that gives you a touchscreen and a stylus for creative tasks, or just want the Windows equivalent of the MacBook Air without all the quirks and foibles of macOS, there’s something for you.
Before we begin, let me give an honorable mention to the 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop, which came very close to unseating my final choice for the best MacBook Air alternative thanks to its combo of design and performance. Ultimately, though, the following laptops beat it as the most attractive Air alternatives.Best MacBook Air alternative: ASUS Zenbook A14
Perhaps the closest macOS-free experience to the MacBook Air is the 2025 ASUS Zenbook A14. Pound for pound — 2.18 pounds, to be precise — this is the „MacBook for Windows“ the world has been waiting for. With Windows on ARM finally out of its awkward teenage phase thanks to Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X processors, this premium thin and light laptop not only has a mouth-wateringly premium build, but is configured with the latest chips from Qualcomm, going toe-to-toe with the Apple M4 chip found in the newest MacBook Air.
The laptop boasts a unibody construction, which is made from a fingerprint-resistant material that combines ceramic and aluminum (Asus calls it Cearaluminum).
