Can a base model M4 MacBook Air run Cyberpunk 2077?
Can the cheapest MacBook run the hottest new game for Macs?
Note: This article was first published on 22 July 2025.
Cyberpunk 2077 may be a fairly old game by now, but it’s still worth celebrating because it’s not every day that a bona fide triple-A game comes to the Mac platform.
According to the developer CD Projekt Red, the game will run on any Apple Silicon Mac with 16GB or more unified memory.
That’s a fairly lax requirement given that Apple, as of last October, decided that all Macs will come with at least 16GB of unified memory as standard.
This got me thinking: how well will it run on a base-spec M4 MacBook Air? Having reviewed it earlier this year, I had one lying around to test. Here are the results:
Graphics setting | Frame-rate |
For This Mac (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 36.25 |
Low (1280 x 800 pixels) | 59.50 |
Low (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 41.18 |
Low (1920 x 1200 pixels) | 35.67 |
Medium (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 34.22 |
Medium (1920 x 1200 pixels) | 29.04 |
High (17x10 x 1068 pixels) | 27.56 |
High (1920 x 1200 pixels) | 23.77 |
Ultra (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 23.73 |
Ultra (1920 x 1200 pixels) | 19.63 |
Graphics settings (with ray-tracing) | Frame rate |
Ray-tracing: Low (1200 x 800 pixels) | 31.21 |
Ray-tracing: Low (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 21.46 |
Ray-tracing: Medium (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 14.21 |
Ray-tracing: Ultra (1710 x 1068 pixels) | 10.83 |
To be clear, these results were attained using a base model M4 MacBook Air. This means it has an M4 chip with 10 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores. It also has 16GB of memory, 256GB of storage, and costs S$1,499.
Happily, the base model M4 MacBook Air ran Cyberpunk 2077 much better than it did Assassin’s Creed Shadows. With Assassin’s Creed, the MacBook Air struggled to get anywhere near 30fps. Even with everything dialled back, the best it could manage was a tragic 21fps. This is not the case with Cyberpunk 2077, where it could even manage a respectable 36fps using the “For this Mac” preset. Incredibly, it could almost hit 60fps on the lowest graphics settings and resolution.
The “For this Mac” preset makes it easy for players to find the right balance of performance and graphics fidelity.
From the results, we can also see that enabling ray-tracing has a drastic impact on frame rates. The MacBook Air only managed above 30fps with ray-tracing if the resolution is turned down to 1200 x 800 pixels. I don’t think that’s a great trade off because the game looks noticeably blurry at this resolution. Besides, I’m of the opinion that higher frame rates are more important than graphics quality, especially when you are struggling to hit 30fps.
One helpful feature with Cyberpunk’s settings is the “For this Mac” graphic preset. If you enable this preset, the game will automatically apply the optimal graphics settings to attain a 30fps frame rate. In other words, it automatically balances performance and graphics fidelity. This eliminates the guesswork required for gamers to get a decent gaming experience.
The “For this Mac” preset makes it easy for gamers to get playable frame rates and decent graphics quality on the MacBook Air.
Overall, I’d say the results are quite encouraging, especially when you consider the MacBook Air isn’t designed to be a gaming machine at all. Not only is it powered by the basic M4 chip, it also lacks active cooling.