With its powerful M5 chip, the latest iteration of the world’s most popular laptop keeps everything that made the MacBook Air compelling in the first place, while meaningfully boosting performance across the board. Beyond the faster processor, there’s also much quicker SSD storage and better memory bandwidth, all of which combine to make this a highly capable Mac.
In practical terms, the powerful M5 chip allows these Macs to better handle demanding data workloads than earlier models, making it an ideal machine for many creative and professional users. You also get 512GB of storage as standard (with as much as 4TB available as an option) and at least 16GB of RAM.
Big improvements to Apple’s most popular laptop
To some extent, of course, the MacBook Air has been left in the shadows by the all-new MacBook Neo. The latter costs much less, is quite capable of handling most tasks, and is a great fit for general purpose use, though the M5 Air can do all of that faster, because it is built to be a more efficient machine. Compared to the M4-powered model you can see these improvements:
- With 10CPU cores and either 8 or 10 GPU cores, the M5 chip has a 15% faster CPU and 30% faster GPU.
- It also has neural accelerators in each core, which makes the M5 MacBook Air very capable for AI-specific tasks or 3D rendering.
- The memory bandwidth hits 153GBps. (The M4 model gave us 120GBps.)
- SSD read/write speed are up to twice as fast as the M4, which you’ll feel when doing things with big files, such as when flinging video or imaging assets through apps or working/developing with on-device AI models.
The price has increased by $100 to start at $1,099, though you get twice the built-in storage to help soften the blow.
Benchmark performance
Let’s look at some of the benchmark scores I saw using Geekbench 6 with the Apple-loaned 15.3-in. MacBook Air I tested:
- Single-core: 4,103.
- Multi-core: 17,089.
For comparison, here are benchmarks for the previous generations:
- M1 MacBook Air: 2,346 single-core; 8,356 multi-core.
- M2 MacBook Air: 2,588 single-core; 9,691, multi-core.
- M3 MacBook Air: 3,065 single-core; 11,959 multi-core.
- M4 MacBook Air: 3,833 single-core; 14,871 multi-core.
- M5 MacBook Air: 4,103 single-core; 17,098 multi-core.
- MacBook Neo: 3,608 single-core; 9,346 multi-core.
Illustrating the extent to which the move to Apple Silicon has opened up new opportunities for Macs, the M5 MacBook Air delivers the kind of performance we once got from M3 Pro/Max MacBook Pros that shipped just over two years ago.
The bigger picture
To some extent, what’s coming next doesn’t mean much when planning what to get today, but the takeaway must be that MacBook Air has plenty of power under its hood for the future. When you choose one, you aren’t just getting the processor — you’re also getting a range of other internal improvements designed to optimize the benefits it brings.
These improvements must certainly have been the North Star to engineers when they built this Mac, which also benefits from those new neural accelerators across all its cores. Even compared to the year-old M4 MacBook Air, these systems represent a big upgrade.
Of course, when you grab a laptop, the big thing you need is battery life. While your results will vary, the promised 18 hours of use on battery will get you through your day, every day. So will the display, which in this case is a 15.3-in. Liquid Retina P3 display with support for 1 billion colors, True Tone, and 500 nits of brightness.
When it comes to audio output and the built-in web conferencing cameras in these Macs, nothing much has changed fromlast year’s M4 models. The song remains the same when it comes to design: you get that beautiful aluminum chassis, new colors (Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, and Silver), with pretty much everything we already love about these Macs the same. Connectivity relies on an Apple N1 wireless chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. You also get two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports, MagSafe charging and the ability of driving up to two external displays in addition to that Liquid retina screen. That’s very useful for on-the-go pros who want to use a larger display most of the time but need the convenience of a portable now and then.
What about MacBook Neo?
Some feel the arrival of the MacBook Neo will cannibalize MacBook Air sales. There’s some truth in that. And while the Neo can and will handle almost anything a regular user might want to throw at it, the M5 Air is much more capable by design. While the Neo has a 6-core CPU, the Air has up to 10; the Neo gets 5 GPU cores, the Air gets 10; Neo has a maximum 8GB memory, while the Air ships with at least 16GB — and the memory interconnect is much faster too. It means these systems are great for anyone who wants to accomplish more demanding tasks, but can’t quite justify purchasing a MacBook Pro.
No doubt, most people will be happy with any one of these Macs most of the time. But when you need to hit a deadline or regularly tackle more demanding tasks, you’ll probably lean toward the Air, or something better. Most business users will do just that, even though more companies will be eyeing Macs thanks to the affordable Neo, which will be suitable for a whole collection of new use cases that couldn’t justify investment in Air.
Buying advice
In reviewing Apple’s latest trio of Macs, I must confess — like so many people — that I really have lost a little bit of my heart to the MacBook Neo. But I do need a bit more power for what I do. That work doesn’t involve data-wrangling, video compositing, AI model design or any high-end graphics work, so while I might want a MacBook Pro, I really only need a MacBook Air. And this iteration offers all the power and performance I’d expect from a Mac I expect to use it for the next few years.
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