The 3 best MacBooks to buy in 2026, including the new budget MacBook Neo

Apple's new MacBook Air packs the blazing-fast performance of the M5 chip inside a predictably polished ultraportable. It's a great daily driver that can do basically anything the average person needs a laptop for. Yes, it's several hundred dollars pricier than a MacBook Neo (see below), but it's a much better, more future-proofed computer in every way. It's worth the upcharge.

I think most folks will make good use of the larger screen on the 15-inch M5 MacBook Air, which starts at $1,299 (we tested that one). But if you want a more portable, slightly cheaper option, there's also a 13-inch size that starts at $1,099. It has two fewer speakers and its base model has two fewer GPU cores, but otherwise they're exactly the same. They're both configurable with up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of storage.

Read Mashable's full review of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Air (M5).

The M5 MacBook Air successfully beats the awkward middle child allegations. It easily handles the workloads of tab-happy multitaskers, and it has some premium features that won't feel outdated in a few years (without going too overboard on nice-to-haves).

Design-wise, this is largely the same laptop as the M4 MacBook Air — which isn't a terrible thing, since it slapped. (It just makes for a boring update.) It has a crisp 12MP Center Stage webcam, a vivid Liquid Retina display, amazing speakers, a snappy backlit Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, 16GB of base RAM, and a sleek all-aluminum build. Per usual, you can take your pick from four neutral finishes: sky blue, silver, starlight, and midnight.

The gen-over-over upgrades are located under its hood. Apple bumped the MacBook Air's wireless connectivity tech on top of swapping its processor for the newer M5 chip (first seen in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, below). It also now starts with 512GB of storage, which brings it in line with mid-range Windows laptops. It's $100 more expensive than last year's M4 MacBook Air, but I wouldn't call that a true price hike since the M4 model started with half the storage. (The 512GB M4 Air was actually $100 pricier, so if anything, you're getting more for your money.) Long story short, the MacBook Air remains as good a value as ever.

The M4 chip closed the performance gap between Apple's MacBook Air and Pro series, and that continues in the M5 era: The 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro is less than 10 percent faster than this here Air in intensive tasks like video editing. The most notable difference between them lies in the way they handle the stress of these tasks over a longer period of time. Heavy workloads are a breeze for the MacBook Pro, which has fans, but they can make the fanless MacBook Air get a bit warm. If you're occasionally editing videos or playing some light games, you're totally fine with an Air. If you're a professional content creator who toils over demanding software on a daily basis, you probably need the Pro.

Note: Our M5 MacBook Air battery life test is still in the works, but Apple has it rated at up to 18 hours per charge, just like the M4 version.

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The new MacBook Neo is the best choice for casual users and budget buyers, including the vast majority of students. It's not as well-rounded as a MacBook Air, but it's an amazing starter laptop with the same great build quality (and livelier color options). It also makes a good secondary laptop for entertainment and online shopping if you like leaving your daily driver at the office.

The MacBook Neo comes in two configurations. There's a $599 base model with 256GB of storage, and a $699 version that doubles your disk space and adds Touch ID. Those prices get even more reasonable if you utilize the Apple Store's education discount, which is open to college students, their parents, and school faculty.

Read Mashable's full review of the Apple MacBook Neo.

The Neo doesn't have a ton of pizzazz or multitasking brawn, but it's great for what it is: a very cheap MacBook. It outclasses similarly priced Windows laptops and Chromebooks.

Inside the Neo, you'll find an A18 Pro chip with a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU, which is a lesser version of the processor inside 2024's iPhone 16 Pro. A laptop running on a smartphone chip? How does that work? Very well, actually, per our benchmarking. (Modern smartphones have been holding their own against PCs for some time now.) In basic single-core tasks, the Neo scores on par with an M4 MacBook Air. In other words, it feels just as snappy as a much more expensive MacBook when you're browsing the web, sending emails, and streaming videos.

In heavy multi-core tasks like video editing, the Neo scores about as well as an M1 MacBook Air from 2020 — not too shabby. Mashable Tech Editor Timothy Beck Werth had no trouble using it for a simple Final Cut Pro edit. But keep in mind that its 8GB of fixed RAM is really going to limit your ability to juggle a bunch of apps or files. The archetypal Neo user will only have a couple of browser tabs open at any given time, maybe with Spotify running in the background. Anything too demanding will make it pokey.

The Neo is a 13-inch laptop that weighs the same as a 13-inch MacBook Air (which technically measures 13.3 inches across), but it's slightly thicker. It has a pretty Liquid Retina display, a clicky mechanical trackpad, and excellent speakers with Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio support. Its 1080p webcam is located in its upper bezel, so unlike a MacBook Air or Pro, it doesn't have an uggo notch jutting down into its screen.

Apple ditched features like keyboard backlighting, True Tone display technology, touchpad haptics, and fast Thunderbolt ports in making the Neo affordable, but it didn't skimp on build quality. It has an all-aluminum design that's just as sturdy and premium-feeling as any other MacBook. (Most cheap laptops have plastic components.) It also comes in some fun blush and citrus colors.

In terms of battery life, the Neo lasts for around 15 hours per charge. It dies much sooner than an Air or Pro, but you shouldn't be in trouble if you forget your charger at home. For what it's worth, the Windows laptops and Chromebooks in our current testing database have median battery lives of 14 hours and 10 hours, respectively.

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The M5 MacBook Pro is my top pick for power users and deep-pocketed shoppers who want a MacBook with the nicest, most future-proofed specs. It's overkill for the average person, but it's worth the splurge for content creators, developers, AI enthusiasts, and other professionals with consistently demanding workloads. It's available in one 14-inch size that makes it well-suited for on-the-go lifestyles.

As of March 2026, the M5 MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for $1,699 — a $100 dip from its identically specced predecessor. (Apple no longer sells a $1,599 M5 MacBook Pro with 512GB of storage, but you can still find it in stock at third-party retailers like Amazon for the time being.) It maxes out with 32GB of RAM and 4TB of disk space, and there's an optional nano-texture display upgrade that costs $150 extra.

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

Some creative professionals will look at the M5 MacBook Air and find its specs a little lacking — more "adequate" than "amazing." For you, there's the M5 MacBook Pro.

To date, this guy has the best performance-to-battery-life ratio out of any MacBook we've tested. In multi-core scenarios, it scored higher than more than 90 percent of the laptops in our current testing database, including many Windows laptops that cost more than $2,000. It's only nine percent faster than the M5 MacBook Air when multitasking, but again, its fans make it better at handling chunky workloads over a long period of time. Thermal throttling is more likely with an Air.

The M5 MacBook Pro held out for 21 hours and 17 minutes in our battery life benchmark, lasting almost 30 percent longer than its M4 predecessor (an impressive gen-over-gen bump). It's our battery life champ among MacBooks.

The M5 MacBook Pro is slightly less portable than 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. 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. I've tested dozens of laptops over the course of my career, and none of them sound better than a MacBook Pro.

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 M5 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 very nice to have if you can swing the spend.

Take your pick from two finishes: space black or silver. Just be mindful that the former is a fingerprint magnet.

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