M5 MacBook Air: Too powerful for its own good (and my wallet)

Table of Contents

The newest MacBook Air from Apple is a near-perfect machine, but it's not getting a near-perfect rating. And it's not just because it arrived with a base price increase. It's because this sleek and lightweight laptop, now powered by Apple's M5 silicon, is too powerful for its own good, which means its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.

Don't get me wrong — it's undoubtedly one of the best laptops and MacBooks in the world right now. And if you decide to invest, I don't think you'll regret it.

I'm still stress testing the M5 Air, so consider this a review in progress. A full battery run-down test is coming soon.

The M5 MacBook Air performs like a Pro

The new MacBook Air is definitely an iterative upgrade. Like its predecessor, it comes in 13.6 and 15.3-inch models, and you can choose from silver, sky blue, starlight, and midnight black. It's a mere 0.44 inches tall and a measly 2.7 pounds.

It's remarkably thin and lightweight, yet it never feels fragile or flimsy in the slightest. On the contrary, the MacBook's signature all-aluminum body makes it a very durable laptop.

The big difference, of course, is the M5 chip inside. When we put it through the Geekbench 6 benchmark test, it scored 16,099 on the multi-core test. On the single-core test, it scored 4,025, even higher than we expected. The multi-core score puts it within spitting distance of the M5 MacBook Pro released late last year.

For almost all intents and purposes, it is a MacBook Pro. Minus the fans, of course.

The single-core score is a good proxy for everyday performance (what our laptop expert calls "snappiness"), and that lines up perfectly with my testing so far. When exporting or importing large files, it barely flinches. It can handle video editing software, complex Apple Shortcuts, and even some gaming.

Please note that I tested the 15.3-inch model, and you may see some slight variations in performance with the 13.6-inch model.

The M5 MacBook Air is too powerful, in fact

In 2020, Apple introduced the M1 chip, its first in-house processor, and the beginning of a bit of a revolution in the laptop world. The M1 chip absolutely destroyed the competition, and the original M1 MacBook Air is probably the most award-winning laptop ever. It's a legendary device that's still popular six years later, which is unheard of.

As Apple introduced the M2, M3, M4, M5, and now M5 Pro and Pro Max chips, the MacBook Air and Pro laptops have become extremely powerful. In early benchmark tests, the M5 Max chip scored 29,000 on the Geekbench 6 test, putting the competition to shame. It's so powerful that pro laptop reviewers are struggling to test it properly.

As I wrote in my MacBook Neo review, I know professional film editors still working on M1 and M2 laptops. In 2024, my colleague Stan Schroeder wrote that "Apple's M series chips are too good for their own good." That's doubly true today.

The new MacBook Air is more powerful than ever, and it now comes with 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD storage, and a higher starting price of $1,099. That's $100 more than the previous gen's starting price. Yes, Apple boosted the starting storage from 256GB to 512GB, but Apple experts like Bloomberg's Mark Gurman say that's just Apple's way of softening the blow of a price increase.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Traditionally, the MacBook Air has been a popular laptop for college students, early-career professionals, and more casual users. If you're running complex programs like Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Adobe Suite, then you go with the Pro. But today's Airs are perfectly capable of most professional work.

Only hardcore superusers are going to come close to taxing the M5 Air, and those kinds of users should be using a Pro or Mac Studio anyway.

So, in a world with the $599 MacBook Neo — a surprisingly capable laptop that matches the M1 Air in performance — I'm not quite sure we needed a newer, even more powerful Air. The recipe was already just right.

We gotta talk about the price

Now, technically, the M5 MacBook Air only carries a $100 starting price increase, and you get twice the starting storage. But in reality, the M3 and M4 MacBook Airs are often on sale at Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers. Mashable readers have certainly gotten used to buying the MacBook Air on sale at Amazon for $799.

And that's what makes the $1,099 price tag a lot harder for me to swallow. There's no denying that this laptop justifies its price with plenty of storage, the newest WiFi and Bluetooth tech, and a fast chip with no true competition in the Windows market. For the performance and specs, $1,099 is a great value. But I think most people will be just as happy with an M3 or M4 Air that costs less.

Again, I'm not saying the M5 MacBook Air is a bad laptop. I'm literally saying the opposite.

I just wish Apple had kept selling the M3 or M4 MacBook Airs for under $1,000 for another year or two. Those laptops already had enough performance for the typical Air customer.

If I were you, I would wait to buy the new Air until we find out what the inevitable sale price will be. Amazon has already discounted this device by 50 bucks to $1,049, and I expect it will go even lower for the Amazon Big Spring Sale or Prime Day 2026. (Of course, given the worsening global memory shortage, a further price drop isn't a given.)

For $899, or even $949, I'd find this laptop irresistible.

Seriously, though, it's a damn fine laptop

When you evaluate the M5 MacBook Air purely on its own, it's a dangerously impressive piece of machinery. Even as a professional product reviewer, it's hard to believe how thin and light it is, and I'm a big fan of macOS 26 Tahoe and Liquid Glass. The default screensaver that plays is completely mesmerizing, and sometimes I find myself staring at it for minutes on end, enjoying a nice moment of zen in the middle of a workday.

On top of that, you get all the premium features you expect in a modern MacBook: An incredibly sharp Liquid Retina display, Touch ID, a 12MP Center Stage Camera, Magic Keyboard, and more.

To be clear, it only suffers in comparison to the other laptops Apple offers in 2026.

M5 MacBook Air review: Final thoughts

So, is the new M5 MacBook Air worth it for $1,099? Personally, I'd wait for it to go on sale. But if you have the coin, and if you want 92.5 percent of the power of the MacBook Pro (that's the difference in their performance scores) but in a lighter and more portable body, then you could spring for the new and improved Air.

However, if I were the one spending your hard-earned money, I'd get the M4 MacBook Air while it's still available. Best Buy still has it in stock for $899.