Apple’s big week of announcements continued today with a refresh of the MacBook Air, now powered by M5. M5 brings meaningful performance gains to Apple’s most popular laptop, the SSD gets faster and doubles its base capacity, Wi-Fi 7 arrives via Apple’s new N1 chip, and the price stays exactly the same. Overall, this is a solid update.
M5 Performance: Fast Enough for Almost Everyone
The M5 chip in MacBook Air features a 10-core CPU built around Apple’s “super core” design, which Apple claims holds the title of the world’s fastest CPU core. Paired with a 10-core GPU that now includes a Neural Accelerator in every single GPU core, the AI performance leap is substantial: Apple puts it at up to 4x faster AI task performance than the M4 MacBook Air, and up to 9.5x faster than M1. For those who want to run local LLMs or anyone using Apple Intelligence features heavily, this will be a significant improvement in performance.
But even beyond AI, the broader performance picture represents a strong update. Memory bandwidth climbs to 153GB/s—a 28 percent improvement over M4—contributing to smoother multitasking and faster app launches. Third-generation ray-tracing engine and enhanced shader cores benefit gaming and 3D rendering. Apple cites up to 1.5x faster image processing than the M4 Air in Affinity, 1.5x faster 3D rendering in Blender, and 1.9x faster AI video enhancement than M4 in Topaz Video. Against Intel-based MacBook Airs, the gains are far more dramatic: up to 6x or more across a range of demanding workloads.
Storage Doubles and Gets Faster Too
This is one of the most practical improvements in the entire update. Base storage jumped from 256GB to 512GB at the same starting price, and maximum configuration capacity expands to 4TB a spec box previously unavailable on the Air. On top of that, the new SSD delivers 2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation.
Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 via the N1 Chip
Apple’s new N1 wireless networking chip also makes its debut on the M5 MacBook Air, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. Wi-Fi 7 offers substantially faster throughput on compatible networks and improved performance on congested 5GHz bands. N1 also improves the reliability of features like Personal Hotspot and AirDrop.
Everything Else Stays Excellent
The MacBook Air’s core experience remains the same as the M4 model in all the right ways. The excellent, thin, light, fanless design is unchanged and available colors are sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver for both the 13-inch and 15-inch models. The 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch Liquid Retina displays on the Air still top out at 500 nits and the 12MP Center Stage camera now includes Desk View support. The three-mic array and six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos are both still here and battery life remains at up to 18 hours with MagSafe still on board as a dedicated charging port.
On the connectivity front, you’ll still have two Thunderbolt 4 ports, which can drive up to two external displays.
Pricing and Availability
Pre-orders open Wednesday, March 4, with availability starting March 11. Pricing holds steady from the previous generation:
- 13-inch MacBook Air with M5: $1,099 (education: $999)
- 15-inch MacBook Air with M5: $1,299 (education: $1,199)
