Sell Your MacBook Air 15-inch

Four generations, one chassis: which 15-inch Air is yours?

Every 15-inch Air shares the same flat aluminium body, 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, six-speaker sound system, MagSafe 3 charging and two USB-C ports, so the outside tells you almost nothing about the chip inside. Buyers pay for the chip, which is why the first job before a quote is working out which one you own.

Open the Apple menu and choose About This Mac: the chip line reads M2, M3, M4 or M5, and the year appears beneath the model name. Two shortcuts help if the Mac will not start. Sky Blue was only offered on the M4 and M5, and the M4 was the first 15-inch Air to ship with 16GB of memory as standard, where the M2 and M3 began at 8GB.

If the machine is completely dead, the model number printed in small type on the underside (it starts with an A) identifies it too. Type it into the notes on the quote form and we will match it to the right generation, so a flat battery never forces you to guess.

What moves the price on a big-screen Air

After generation, unified memory is the biggest lever. On the M2 and M3 the ladder runs 8GB, 16GB and 24GB, and the 8GB builds are the ones used buyers now hesitate over. On the M4 and M5 it starts at 16GB and tops out at 32GB, so a 24GB or 32GB machine quotes clearly above the base model. Storage comes next. On the M2, M3 and M4, 512GB and 1TB builds carry a premium over 256GB; the M5 starts at 512GB, so there the step up is 1TB or more.

Size is worth roughly £100 at the same chip in our table: the 15-inch M5 sits £100 above the 13-inch M5, and the M4 pair shows the same gap. That premium holds because big-screen buyers are a steady group, people who want a larger display without paying MacBook Pro money, and they rarely settle for a 13-inch instead.

Condition works slightly differently on the 15-inch. The larger lid and panel make screen marks and corner dents easier to see, and the display is the most expensive part to replace, so honest notes about the glass matter more than cycle counts. Battery health on these machines is usually strong; give the maximum capacity from System Settings, Battery, and it is priced in with no surprise later.

The M2 15-inch: first, shortest-lived, and still quotable

The M2 15-inch launched in June 2023 and was replaced by the M3 in March 2024, so it was on sale for barely nine months. That short run leaves fewer of them in circulation than any other 15-inch Air, and used supply stays thinner than for the 13-inch M2 that sold for years alongside it.

It is also the 15-inch with the least headroom: 8GB was the standard memory, and three newer chips have followed it. Expect it to quote below the M3 15-inch, with 16GB and 24GB builds closing much of that gap. It is still well inside our window, because we buy every Apple Silicon Mac from the M1 generation onwards.

Packing and posting a 15-inch Air

The 15-inch is still a laptop, so it travels by post on the free insured label we email you, handed in at any Post Office; there is no courier to book. It is wider than a 13-inch, so choose a box that leaves room for padding on every side, or reuse the original box if you kept it.

Include the original USB-C adapter and MagSafe cable if you still have them. They help the grade a little, but a bare laptop is still a complete sale and nothing is deducted for a missing charger.

Turn off Find My before you seal the box; a laptop still linked to your Apple Account cannot be bought, and that link is the only thing we cannot remove from our side. Drive erasure you can leave to us, since each machine is wiped to NIST 800-88 after inspection, and the bank transfer lands within a day of that inspection.