Apple today announced the new MacBook Air with M5, bringing exceptional performance and expanded AI capabilities to the world's most popular laptop. Available in 13- and 15-inch models in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver, the new MacBook Air with M5 is available for pre-order starting tomorrow, March 4, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.
Performance benchmarks show about 11 percent improvement in both single and multicore performance over the M4 Air, while GPU saw more measurable improvement in the M5 Air, with about 31 percent better performance on average. M5 features a faster CPU and next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, delivering up to 4x faster performance for AI tasks than MacBook Air with M4.
MacBook Air now comes standard with double the starting storage at 512GB with faster SSD technology, and is configurable up to 4TB. The updated models start at $1,099 for 13-inch and $1,299 for 15-inch, now including 512GB base storage with 2x faster SSD speeds and standard 16GB RAM.
With the M5 generation, the MacBook Air finds itself in an unfamiliar position: that of the middle sibling. Previously Apple's most affordable laptop, the Air has been undercut by the new MacBook Neo. The refreshed MacBook Air is a laptop caught between two extremes—price and performance. The $600 MacBook Neo is now Apple's entry-level laptop.
Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air (M5) is the best mix of winning design, near-pro-level performance, and battery life you can find in an ultraportable. It's been our favorite ultraportable laptop for years now.
