Nothing new here, the current MacBook Air keyboard has LED lighting zones. It's the same industrial design as the 2020 Intel Air and 2019 Intel Air. Previous MacBook Airs also had a keyboard part illuminated by an LED backlight that had relatively few LEDs so there are hot and cold spots.
If you buy an $700 Windows ultrabook, you'll witness the same thing.
And yes, MR commentors have whined about this for years, nothing new. Nobody should be surprised that the M1 Macs from 2020 exhibit many of the shortcomings imposed by the previous generation's Intel models; Apple made zero changes to the industrial design.
The fact that Apple moved from Intel to Apple Silicon without an industrial design change was anticipated by the sanest Apple industry observers.
Full-sized desktop keyboards have key mechanisms that are individually backlit so each key has the same brightness.
One can hope that a future version of the MacBook Air will have better keyboard backlighting. More LEDs = more power. All notebook PC manufacturers have to decide how worthwhile an evenly lit keyboard is worth.
If that's a showstopper for you, send your M1 MBA back and wait a year or two.
Will Apple pick a new part that has a few more LEDs for more even coverage? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's not just power considerations, there's also size, weight, cost, heat, gross margins, etc.
My guess is that right now, somewhere in a lab in Cupertino, there's a future MacBook Air design that has a brighter, more evenly lit keyboard. There's probably a prototype that has a keyboard backlit similar to the current one. It's anyone's guess which one Apple will bring to market.
One thing for sure, they won't erode gross margins by loading up on a lot of expensive power-sucking parts simply to appease a handful of Q&A forum whiners, um, I mean "enthusiasts."
