Apple MacBook Air M5 Review: The Best Gets Better — But Not Cheaper
Apple's M5 MacBook Air doubles its base storage and gains Wi-Fi 7, with a notably faster chip — but a $100 price hike and an unchanged design mean it's best suited for those upgrading from M2 or older.
Apple's MacBook Air has held the title of the world's best ultraportable laptop for years, and the M5 edition does nothing to jeopardise that reputation. But as the lineup grows more crowded — with the budget-friendly $599 MacBook Neo below it and the muscular MacBook Pro above — the Air is beginning to feel like the thoughtful middle child: not the cheapest, not the most powerful, but the smartest choice for most people.
What's New
The headline addition is Apple's M5 chip, which packs a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, with a Neural Accelerator in every GPU core. Apple claims the M5 delivers up to 4x faster AI task performance than the M4 and up to 9.5x faster than the M1 — and benchmarks broadly back that up. Geekbench 6 multi-core results land around 17,000, a meaningful step up from the M4's 14,900. The three other notable upgrades are doubled base storage (512GB, up from 256GB), a dramatically faster SSD with over 125% read speed improvements in independent tests, and Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 via Apple's new N1 wireless chip. There's also a price change — though not an upgrade: the 13-inch model is back to $1,099, up $100 from the M4's $999 starting price. Apple attributes this partly to the doubled base storage, and the math does check out.
Performance
For everyday tasks — browser tabs, Slack, streaming, creative work — the M5 Air is essentially imperceptible from the M4 in day-to-day use. Both are more than fast enough. Where the M5 begins to show its advantage is in demanding workloads. In the Handbrake 4K-to-1080p transcode test, the M5 Air finishes over 20 seconds faster than the M4. Cinebench 2026 GPU scores show 1.5x faster 3D rendering versus the M4, and up to 6.5x faster than the M1. For creatives running Final Cut Pro, Lightroom, or Blender, these gains are real and will compound over a working day. The fanless design means the processor throttles under sustained peak loads to manage heat — so while the Air is excellent for demanding bursts of work, the MacBook Pro (with active cooling) will outrun it on prolonged rendering jobs.
Battery Life
Battery life remains class-leading. Apple rates the 13-inch at 15 hours of wireless browsing and 18 hours of video streaming, and real-world testing confirms you'll comfortably get through a full working day — and then some. Independent tests clocked the 15-inch at over 15 hours of web surfing, a modest improvement over the M4 model. The M5's efficiency gains mean it delivers more performance per watt than its predecessor, all while maintaining the same slim, fanless form factor.
Design and Display
The chassis is unchanged since the 2022 M2 redesign: a slim, fanless aluminium shell measuring just 0.45 inches thick and weighing 2.7 pounds. It's still beautiful, still durable, and still one of the most elegant laptop designs in the industry. The 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display delivers 500 nits of brightness and supports one billion colours. The 12MP Center Stage webcam carries over from the M4, with portrait mode, desk view, and automatic subject tracking. The four-speaker sound system punches well above its weight. The port selection is limited to two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe charging port — if you need more connectivity, you'll need a hub.
Who Should Buy It
If you're on an M1 MacBook Air or older — including any Intel model — the M5 is a transformative upgrade. If you're on an M2 or M3, the calculus depends on your workload: casual users won't notice enough difference, but those doing video editing, music production, AI tasks, or heavy photo work will find the M5's GPU improvements and dramatically faster SSD to be a meaningful step forward. If you're on an M4 MacBook Air, there is no practical reason to upgrade.
Verdict
The MacBook Air M5 is the best ultraportable laptop you can buy in 2026 — and it has been the best ultraportable for several years running. The M5 chip, faster SSD, Wi-Fi 7, and doubled base storage represent a genuine improvement over its predecessor. The $100 price increase stings slightly, but it's defensible given what you're getting. This isn't a revolutionary laptop. It's an exceptionally refined one. For most people who want the best mix of performance, portability, battery life, and build quality, that's exactly what they need. Rating: 9/10.