The 5 best MacBooks to buy in 2025: The M5 is here

We put these laptops through multiple stress tests and Primate Labs' Geekbench 6, which measures overall CPU performance.

To gauge a MacBook's stamina, we conduct a battery rundown test — playing a looped 1080p version of Tears of Steel, a short open-source Blender movie, at specific settings.

We zero in on the display, keyboard, touchpad, webcam, speakers, and ports. We also assess its overall aesthetic and portability.

We consider how the newest MacBooks compare to Windows laptops with similar pricing, specs, and use cases. We also look at key upgrades from its predecessors and consider future-proofing.

The 15-inch version of Apple's latest MacBook Air is beautiful, long-lasting, unexpectedly peppy, and priced very fairly, making it super easy to recommend for basically anyone wanting a near-perfect ultraportable. I think most people will make good use of its larger screen, but if you want a more portable (and even more affordable) option, there's also a 13-inch size — more on it below.

If you're still hanging onto a MacBook with an Intel processor, or even an M1 model, you're a prime candidate for an upgrade to the M4 MacBook Air. The performance jump alone will be night and day.

Read Mashable's full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M4).

From a sheer performance standpoint, the M4 chip has effectively closed the gap between Apple's MacBook Air and Pro series. This 15-incher notched an excellent multi-core score of 14,992 in Geekbench 6's CPU test, our primary speed benchmark, making it less than two percent slower than the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro. (The newer M5 version of the 14-inch Pro is about 17 percent faster, which still isn't a radical jump.) The more notable difference between the two models' performance lies in the way they handle the stress of multitasking. Heavy workloads are a breeze for the Pro, which has fans, but they make the fanless Air get hot to the touch.

Compared to older MacBook Airs, the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air is 22 percent faster than the 15-inch M3 model; 39 percent faster than the 15-inch M2 version; and 52 percent faster than the 13-inch M1 MacBook Air. At the time of writing, it outperforms 85 percent of the laptops in our entire testing database.

Apple could have easily used this power bump to justify a price bump, but the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air actually wound up being $100 cheaper than its predecessor. That also includes 16GB of base RAM (up from 8GB), a better 12MP webcam (up from 1080p), and open-lid support for two external monitors. More ports and a better refresh rate are on my wishlist for the next time Apple revisits the Air, but on the whole, it's a superb value in its current iteration. Mashable's Stan Schroeder christened it "the best-buy Apple laptop, period."

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The brand-new 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro is for deeper-pocketed shoppers and power users who want to make as few compromises as possible without going totally overboard. For an extra $400+ and a slightly bulkier design (though not by much), it gets you cooler multi-tasking performance, nicer speakers, a brighter, higher-res display with that coveted 120Hz refresh rate, and a better mix of ports compared to the Air.

You might still consider buying the M4 MacBook Pro if you find it on sale at a steep discount. Now that the M5 version is out, I expect third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy to regularly sell it for at least $100 off. (The Apple Store has discontinued it.) The two models are identical save for their chips, which have a modest difference in performance, so you can save some money without losing any new features or fixings. But if they're the same price when you go to upgrade, just take the M5 plunge for future-proofing's sake.

Read Mashable's full review of the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M5).

The smaller MacBook Pro has always been the most well-rounded laptop in Apple's lineup. That continues to be the case with the new 14-inch M5 model, even though its biggest selling point is new silicon, this time optimized for running AI models on device. (It's a carbon copy of the M4 model in all other respects.) The addition of an OLED display or touchscreen capabilities would've made for a more exciting refresh — watch out for the M6 version, says the rumor mill — but it's a superb laptop nonetheless.

Performance is the most notable gen-to-gen change, so let's get right into it. The M5 MacBook Pro earned a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 17,470, which makes it 15 percent faster than its predecessor. That's not a terribly exciting jump, but it's a jump nonetheless, and one that continues the MacBook Pro's reign as one of the fastest laptops out there. The only models in our database that outperform it are the 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro and a few gaming laptops that cost $3,599.99 or more. The base M5 MacBook Pro starts at $1,599.

The M5 MacBook Pro is slightly less portable compared to the Air, but not by much. (It's less than 0.2 inches thicker than both sizes and 0.1 pounds heavier than the 15-inch model.) Still, this affords it enough room for extra fixings like an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, and a bonus Thunderbolt port, as well as an awesome hi-fi sound system with force-cancelling woofers.

The M5 MacBook Pro looks as spectacular as it sounds, as per tradition. (Apple hasn't made any drastic design changes to it since 2021.) Its mini-LED "Liquid Retina XDR" display offers a resolution of 3024 x 1964 pixels, a peak brightness of 1600 nits in HDR, and a 120Hz refresh rate. Compared to the M4 MacBook Air's standard Liquid Retina screen, it's crisper, brighter, and smoother when displaying visuals in motion — not necessary for all users, again, but nice to have if you can swing its price. It can hit the $2,000 mark pretty fast if you tack on more RAM, storage, and its nano-texture (matte) display option.

As a final note, I'm still comfortable recommending the M5 MacBook Pro even though we haven't put it through our battery life test just yet. It's rated at up to 24 hours of video playback per charge, just like the 14-inch M4 model, which lasted 16.5 hours in practice. I expect the M5 model to match or surpass that time.

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Compared to its 15-inch counterpart, the 13-inch M4 MacBook Air makes a better pick for students because of its greater portability and even cheaper price.

Apple's education discount makes it just $900 to start, but third-party retailers frequently put it on sale for even less. It usurps the M1 MacBook Air as my top budget pick whenever it's marked down to $799, its lowest price on record.

The 13-inch MacBook Air downgrades a couple of the 15-incher's specs to come in under $1,000 without being a dramatically worse laptop. One of said specs is its M4 GPU, which has eight cores instead of 10. You can remedy this for $100 more, but it's unnecessary if you're just using your MacBook for standard everyday tasks like browsing, emailing, and word processing.

If you are willing to spend a little extra, I'd splash out on 512GB of storage instead, which is what most top public universities recommended for college students entering the 2025 fall semester. With the 256GB base model, you'll probably need to get an external hard drive eventually.

The other key difference between the 13- and 15-inch M4 MacBook Airs (besides their screen size) lies in their sound systems. The 13-incher has four speakers, while the 15-inch model has six with force-cancelling woofers. I haven't personally listened to anything on the former, but according to our sister site PCMag, that quad-speaker setup "[produces] decent sound, enough to enjoy the occasional movie or video call without headphones." For $999 (or less), I'm content with that — in my experience, tolerable laptop speakers are few and far between.

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Apple's bigger MacBook Pro, powered by the upgraded M4 Pro chip, is a blisteringly fast laptop with the best battery life of a MacBook — and a price tag that's just as high as its Geekbench 6 multi-core score. As such, only creative pros like animators, graphics designers, and photo and video editors should look into it. It's excessive for the other 99 percent of the population.

Read Mashable's full review of the 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro).

It's fast. It's just so, so fast.

More specifically, the 16-inch, M4 Pro-powered MacBook Pro is the best-performing laptop in our entire testing database — not just the best-performing MacBook. There's really no competition either. With a multi-core score of 22,758, it blows past the $3,599.99 Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 (Gen 10), our second-place winner with a score of 20,369. Throw whatever you want at this thing. It's certainly "not designed for amateurs like myself — people who think 'intensive' means opening 100 Google Chrome tabs and praying one's laptop doesn't self-combust," Gedeon wrote. "No ma'am."

Impressively, it's also the longest-lasting MacBook we've ever tried, running for almost 21 hours on a single charge. Its power efficiency is unreal.

There are some external differences between this larger M4 Pro model and the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro. It has a higher-resolution display; three Thunderbolt 5 ports, the latest version of the Thunderbolt connectivity tech; and a thicker, heavier build. At 4.7 pounds, it's about as hefty as your average gaming laptop — leave it at home.

That it costs significantly more than the regular M5 MacBook Pro should be obvious. It starts at $2,499, and our upgraded review unit with 48GB of RAM, 2TB of storage, and the glare-reducing nano-texture display upgrade costs $3,649. Maybe you can put it on the company card?

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For shoppers on the strictest budgets, the 13-inch M1 model is the cheapest Mac laptop you can still reliably buy new these days. (As of late 2025, it's almost always on sale for $599 at Walmart, Apple's exclusive retailer partner.) Its ideal buyer will have a very basic workload that generally involves one task at a time.

That said, the 13-inch M4 MacBook Air has been on sale for as cheap as $799 before. If the two models are within $200 of each other when you're ready to buy, and your budget has some flexibility, the M4 version is the indisputably better pick.

Read Mashable's full review of the 13-inch Apple MacBook Air (M1).

This M1 model was the very first MacBook Air to run on an M-something chip. It debuted in late 2020, making it a grandma in laptop years — but since Apple didn't formally discontinue it until early 2024, it still has some hardware and software support in its future.

Here's a crash course on its spec sheet's notables: Its M1 chip is more than 50 percent slower than the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air, as previously mentioned, getting a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 8,783 in our CPU benchmark. However, it outperforms the other $600 to $700 laptops we've tried (all of them Chromebook Plus devices), and its fanless design ensures it runs super quiet. Its battery life isn't great, but it should last you a full workday depending on the apps you use.

The M1 MacBook Air has two older Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, and one of them needs to be reserved for charging, but it can support one external monitor with its lid open. Its webcam has a fuzzy 720p resolution, but it lives in a thicker upper bezel instead of an obtrusive notch like the current MacBooks' cameras. It also has squared-off corners instead of round ones.

Its keyboard is almost identical to those on the M4 models, just with shorter function row keys.