M5 MacBook Air Review: A Laptop With Real Middle Child Energy

Apple’s laptop buffet table is crowded with meaty and miniature Macs alike. The plate is so packed, the M5 MacBook Air seems destined for back-of-fridge leftover status. 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. That little Mac is proof that we don’t have to accept poor design for the sake of affordability. The MacBook Air used to be Apple’s base level. Now it sits in the middle of the pack between MacBook Neo and the M5 MacBook Pro. However, for those who can afford it, the M5 MacBook Air is the sensible choice when you need actual processing power for doing anything beyond browsing or lightweight editing.

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Last year’s M4 MacBook Air started at $1,000. The new model with the M5 chip starts at $1,100. It’s a price hike, though that comes with upgrades. Most important is the doubling of the base SSD storage from 256GB to 512GB, alongside 16GB of unified memory. The MacBook Neo, which tops out at 512GB of storage and 8GB of unified memory for $700, isn’t built for most strenuous applications (even if it can play games like Overwatch and League of Legends with emulation). In comparison, the M5 MacBook Air handles everything from 3D modeling to video editing with speed and a touch of panache.

As good as that sounds, there are more details to consider. The $1,100 13-inch M5 MacBook Air comes with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU. You need to spend an extra $100 for the version with the better graphics performance with 10 GPU cores. The 15-inch M5 MacBook Air starts at $1,300 and comes with the better-performing GPU. In any case, if you hope to use a MacBook Air with at least 1TB of SSD, you’ll need to spend an extra $200, bringing the total for the 13-inch to $1,300 and the 15-inch to $1,500.

The 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro with the same 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM will demand at least $1,700. The extra $400 gets you a larger and better screen, more ports, improved battery life, and better speakers compared to the M5 MacBook Air. The M5 MacBook Pro is also better for real-time graphics tasks, based on our tests. Those are enough reasons to spend the extra money on the Pro. But if you can accept those small considerations, the MacBook Air lineup is ultra-portable and still packs a sizable punch.

Thin and light, and looks like a stealth bomber in ‘Midnight’

The M5 MacBook Air is Apple’s stealth bomber of its laptop lineup. The reason I say that is because the “Midnight” 15-inch laptop that Apple sent me for review is a big sheet of aluminum that seems built solely for military efficiency. Compared to a MacBook Air with a 13.6-inch display, the one with the larger screen has an extra-large Force Touch trackpad and not much else. There are no speaker grilles like on a Pro model. Instead, the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air features a six-speaker sound system with force-canceling woofers hidden in the recess between the keyboard and screen. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air only has a four-speaker sound system.

The unibody clamshell is a brilliant design, even if it’s the same basic chassis we’ve had since 2022 with the M2 MacBook Air. The Magic Keyboard is the same as it ever was—it’s fine. The trackpad has the pressure-sensitive Force Click missing in the MacBook Neo. And the fact that Apple manages to get an M5 chip running in this fanless metal jacket measuring at 0.45 inches in height is stellar. The whole 15-inch laptop weighs 3.3 pounds, while the 13-inch clocks in at 2.7 pounds (the same as the MacBook Neo).

If you’re thinking about upgrading to the latest MacBook Air from an older version, just know you’re not getting any more ports. There’s the MagSafe 3 magnetic port, allowing for up to 70W fast charging (less than the MacBook Pro’s max wattage charging). Otherwise, you have two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports on the left side and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the opposite. Apple saved Thunderbolt 5 with its faster data transfer speeds and improved power throughput for MacBook Pros with M5 Pro or M5 Max chips. PCs like Asus’ Zenbook S 14 manage to pack an HDMI port in a laptop just 0.47 inches thick.

While the MacBook Neo now claims all the fun colors, the M5 MacBook Air still has the “Sky Blue” option. I still prefer the “Midnight,” which seems less prone to fingerprints than “Space Black” MacBook Pros.

Strong performance, but not as good as the MacBook Pro

For the last few generations, the MacBook Air has proved so capable that it has nearly made the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the same chip irrelevant. However, the M5 generation has proved Apple’s aging laptop bodies are struggling to manage Apple’s leading performance chips. The M5 Max chip in a 14-inch MacBook Pro waffled with sustained performance.

In our testing, the base 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro suffered from slight thermal throttling, where the single fan couldn’t keep up with the power generated by the latest M5 chip. We worried that performance could be further impacted inside the fanless M5 MacBook Air. Thankfully, we found the laptop was consistent across most apps and our benchmark tests, likely because it’s doing less than the MacBook Pro.

This time around, the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro holds the edge over the thinner, lighter M5 MacBook Air in terms of raw performance. A slight dip in benchmark numbers doesn’t necessarily mean massive losses in real app situations. However, some apps suffer more than others.

In Geekbench 6, a benchmark test that measures the overall CPU performance, the M5 MacBook Air scored 4,172 in single-core and 17,157 in multi-core settings. Apple’s M-series chips still are some of the best in class for CPU performance, pound for pound (or teraflop for teraflop). A base M5 chip inside the M5 MacBook Air can achieve 200 points more in multi-core settings than the midrange Intel Core X7 358H CPU inside a Dell XPS 14. However, it’s also 500 points worse than the M5 chip inside the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

Despite maintaining the same 10-core CPU/10-core GPU configuration, the M5 chip inside the latest MacBook Air also scored 500 points worse in Cinebench 2026 multi-core settings, which measures the CPU’s rendering capabilities. In our Blender test where we get the computer to render a scene of a BMW, the M5 MacBook Air finished the task in 2 minutes and 37 seconds. That’s about as fast as Dell’s XPS 14 and about 15 seconds slower than the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro. Rendering on the GPU took just 13 seconds, basically equivalent to the MacBook Pro. No surprise, Apple’s chips still lead in rendering capabilities, well beyond any other single SoC (system on a chip).

You still want the 10-core GPU

When it comes to GPU performance, we start to see more significant differences between Apple’s laptops. In 3D Mark’s “Steel Nomad Lite” test, the M5 MacBook Air was close to 300 points worse than the M5 MacBook Pro. Recent PCs with Intel’s 12Xe3 GPU cores on the top-end Panther Lake chips are also beating the M5 MacBook Air by a significant margin for real-time rendering tasks. That includes ray tracing performance in tests like 3D Mark’s “Solar Bay” test.

Ray tracing is a more realistic simulation of real-time lighting in games. It also hits the GPU very hard. While the M5 chip’s GPU was built with additional ray tracing capabilities in mind, that doesn’t mean you’ll see a massive uplift in certain apps over an M4 MacBook Air. Taking the M5 MacBook Air through my tests in Cyberpunk 2077 showed it struggled to achieve the same frame rates the game could on the M5 MacBook Pro.

In-game, I could manage just above 30 fps using the game’s ray tracing low settings at 1200p with MetalFX upscaling. Those settings pushed the game from running at 1,280 x 800 resolution and used AI enhancements to push that up to 1,920 x 1,200. Unlike the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the unbelievably powerful M5 Max chip, the M5 MacBook Air didn’t suffer from extreme sustained performance issues when flexing with ray tracing in games.

This laptop is still good enough for some titles. While plugged in, I managed around 30 fps in Total War: Warhammer III on high settings at 1200p and saw similar performance in Baldur’s Gate III. Look, Macs are still not great for gaming, but that may change in the near future as x86 emulation for Apple’s ARM-based M-series gets more robust. At least you can expect moderate performance at lower resolutions from a base M5 MacBook Air.

Gaming will naturally result in more heat from the CPU. The M5 MacBook Air measured around 91 degrees Fahrenheit in the center of the keyboard and a maximum of 107 degrees closest to the screen, as measured with a laser thermometer. That’s warm, but manageable. At most, it will keep your lap toasty on a cold night.

Bright display and sweet-sounding speakers

I complimented the MacBook Neo for maintaining Apple’s Liquid Retina display at a relatively high brightness on such a cheap device. The M5 MacBook Air’s similar LCD display still bears a bright, quality picture that seems even better on the 15.3-inch model compared to the 13.6-inch one. If you’ve seen any MacBook Air display from the past four years, there’s little “wow” factor left.

The M5 MacBook Air has thinner bezels than the MacBook Neo. However, the M5 MacBook Air’s screen is marred by the notch for the 1080p, 12-megapixel Center Stage camera dipping into the display. The 15-inch model has a max 2,880 x 1,864 resolution compared to the 2,560 x 1,664 on the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air. Either way, that’s a slightly higher resolution than the MacBook Neo’s 2,408 x 1,506 resolution. The real benefit of the M5 MacBook Air’s display capabilities is thanks to its two Thunderbolt 4 ports. These allow connections for up to two external displays at 6K and 60Hz refresh rates or 4K at 144Hz.

If you’re considering the M5 MacBook Air over the MacBook Neo, this more expensive one comes with the wide P3 color gamut compared to the less robust sRGB spectrum. With Apple’s glossy screens and a max of 500 nits of brightness, both the M5 MacBook Air and MacBook Neo look plenty good for your photo or video editing needs. Apple’s MacBook Air displays also use True Tone technology, which adjusts the screen’s color temperature and brightness based on ambient lighting. The MacBook Neo doesn’t have this feature.

What’s been emblematic of the MacBook’s Air’s design has been its sound quality. This ultra-thin laptop sounds as good as thicker devices, even those with top-firing speaker grille. The 15-inch M5 MacBook Air comes with a six-speaker system compared to the 13-inch’s four speakers. Either one makes use of Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos in supported apps. The larger MacBook Air is certainly the one you want to curl up in bed with for some midnight streaming of the Netflix One Piece live-action series.

Actually ‘all-day’ battery life

While using this laptop as intended—for basic browsing tasks and the occasional dip into apps like Final Cut Pro and Pixelmator Pro—the M5 MacBook Air shines with a battery capable of making it through a full workday. It easily outmatched the MacBook Neo. That cheap laptop couldn’t quite make it through my nine hours of typing duty in Gizmodo’s blog mines.

It’s a slight difference, but one that matters in the long run if you hope to use this computer for years to come. While Apple promises you can get 18 hours of battery life on either a 13- or 15-inch M5 MacBook Air, what that really means is it will last through 18 hours when streaming content at a low brightness setting. The real difference will be how intensely you use your Mac, your typical preferred brightness setting, or whether you’re using any app that demands more from the CPU, GPU, or RAM.

The M5 MacBook Air may not have the battery life of a base 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro. However, this slim laptop has one thing the MacBook Pro doesn’t thanks to its N1 wireless chip: Wi-Fi 7 and faster Bluetooth 6 speeds.

Costs are everything now

Apple’s current MacBook lineup is a sliding scale of affordability. On the “good, better, best” spectrum, the M5 MacBook Air fits into “better” with matching price and performance.

Apple’s MacBooks are still classy laptops that lead some PCs in performance, though Intel is catching up. What’s even more ludicrous is that, as of now, Apple is not the most expensive laptop maker anymore. Many PCs with Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips, at least the version with more GPU cores that can match or beat Apple’s M5, cost between $1,700 and $1,900. Those machines may even have better OLED displays and more ports. Excusing the minutiae of spec differences, Apple’s midrange laptop prices are now par for the course.

No, that’s not good tidings for anybody looking to buy a decently capable laptop in 2026. If you’re planning to stick to the Mac ecosystem, you can feel sated with Apple’s upgrades. In reality, the real deciding factors between the M5 MacBook Air and M5 MacBook Pro are size, screen, and ports. A M5 MacBook Pro may be a better buy with its marginal performance gains compared to the M5 MacBook Air.

Sure, the MacBook Neo is exciting. The one thing to consider is whether that laptop will keep up with your demands today as well as five years from now. Also, let’s be frank—thinness still counts for something and Apple’s four-year-old laptop design is still excellent. The M5 MacBook Air is better if you demand portability more than ports.