M1 MacBook Air (2020) freezes/crashes when charging cable plugged in

Hi,

My partner's having an issue with her M1 MacBook Air: the laptop will be running completely fine, but as soon as she plugs in a charging cable the performance slows to a crawl, some apps crash, and the system takes several minutes to recover or doesn't recover at all. This can be reproduced consistently.

There have been several other users reporting this issue, including:

• MacBook Air (M1, 2020) freezes (especiall… - Apple Community
• MacBook M1 freezes when I plug something … - Apple Community
• MacBook Air M1 freezes when unplugged - Apple Community
• M1 MB Air stutters or freezes temporarily… - Apple Community

But support have only provided generic replies, often with advice that doesn't even apply to the M1 chip (eg. resetting the SMC).

We have tried:

• Updating the laptop to the latest version of macOS;
• Restarting the laptop (which also resets the SMC/NVRAM on M1 Macs);
• Booting in safe mode;
• Using different chargers;

None of these have made any difference. The result is that the laptop becomes unusable as soon as as it's plugged in and often loses any work that's in progress, which is obviously unacceptable for a laptop that's used for work.

Please let us know how we can resolve this issue, as the laptop was an expensive purchase and is currently providing a worse experience than the seven-year-old MacBook that it has replaced.

Thanks,

Steve