Ukrainian soldier’s M1 MacBook Air takes direct shrapnel hit, still works despite battle damage — screen cracked and letter ‘K’ missing but laptop remains functional

A Ukrainian soldier showed off his 2020 M1 MacBook Air after it got hit by shrapnel during the war in Ukraine. X user @lanevychs [machine translated] asked on the social media platform about the ballistic protection that the laptop offered, especially after his device was able to take a hit from a shell fragment and seemingly survived. Despite the damage, the laptop still continued to work, with the screen showing images in some sections. And although the projectile punctured the screen, it seems that the base and keyboard of the device stopped it from going clean through. The only keyboard casualty being the “K” key.

It’s unclear where the user is based in the country, but chances are that they are near to the conflict. It’s also likely not the first time that the MacBook Air took a hit, as @lanevychs said in the replies [machine translated] that he “recently replaced the matrix (probably the motherboard) on this laptop after an FPV strike.” The MacBook Air is arguably Apple’s thinnest laptop in its generation, with its tapered design giving it a thickness of just 0.16 inches near the edges. It is 0.63 inches at its thickest point, though, making it about 0.02 inches thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Even though this might be imperceptible to the average user, it’s apparently good enough to stop a shell fragment.