A2337
MacBook Air M1 from 2020
The best selling modern model, and therefore the one that lands on our bench most often. Usually for two reasons, and both repair well.
A board with no fan, and its own weak spots
The M1 Air has no fan. That spares it a whole category of trouble the Intel models have: no clogged cooling, no dried out paste, no overheating graphics chip. These machines rarely fail from heat.
Where they do give out is at the edge of the board. The two USB-C ports do everything: charging, display, data. They get plugged and unplugged daily and they are first in line when there is a spike on the mains or a cheap charger involved.
What we see most often on this board
- It will not charge, or only if you hold the cable at a certain angle
- It charges on one port and not the other
- It gives no sign of life at all, not even with a different charger
- Liquid went over it and it still worked for a while
- The screen stays black but with a torch you can still see something
- It starts and shuts down again after a few seconds
Why most of these boards can be saved
On a dead M1 Air it is nearly always the power side and not the processor. The charging chip, the converter behind it or one of the rails. Those are replaceable components, and the board you get back is your own.
Liquid is the nastier case here. The board is small and dense, so a small puddle reaches a lot at once. On the other hand there is little room for liquid to hide, so a thorough clean gets to almost all of it.
What you will not see here is flexgate. The screen design is different and that fault disappeared with this generation.
Prices
What it costs on this model.
| Repair | What it covers | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Charging port or charging chip | Component replaced, port resoldered or replaced | €149 |
| Logic board, heavy | Short on a rail, IC replaced, several traces | €229 |
| Liquid damage | Ultrasonic cleaning, corrosion removed, repair | €299 |
| Display cable | Connector or cable replaced | from €169 |
| Battery | Original Apple part, fitting included | from €159 |
| Data recovery | Temporary repair or chips moved to a test board | from €349 |
A charging problem on this model is in most cases the cheapest repair there is. Have it checked before you start thinking about a new machine.
Your files
Your files are tied to this board.
The storage is soldered and the key sits in the M1's own security. Your files and this board are therefore inseparable. That is precisely why we repair this board instead of replacing it.
If the board still works just enough to boot once, we read everything out before we go further. If it does nothing at all, the chips go onto a test board.
Questions about this model
My Air will not charge. Is that expensive?
Usually not. On this model that is as a rule the charging chip or the port itself, the lightest category of work we have. You get the exact figure after the measurements.
It is completely dead. Is there hope?
More often than people think. An M1 Air that does nothing has in most cases a power problem, not a processor problem. That can be repaired, and your files stay where they are.
Does this model have flexgate?
No. That fault belongs to the Intel MacBook Pro from 2016 to 2019. If your image drops out, something else is going on and we will find it.
Read on
The repairs that apply to this board.
Next step
Will it not charge any more?
On this model that is nearly always the cheapest case. Post it in and you will know where you stand within a few days.