MacBook Air with M5

This is the best laptop for the general consumer around $1k.

  - it has no annoying fans, it is completely silent
  - a high res display with no PWM flickering and reasonable response times, no burn-in issues, enough brightness for outdoor use
  - best-in-class hardware, very very efficient, amazing single thread performance, good multi thread, very good GPU
  - no Microsoft Windows annoyances, ads, bloatware, broken stuff all the time
  - much better real world performance on battery than x64 processors (!). you can get reasonable perf by setting Intel/AMD CPUs to high perf, but then goodbye battery life and get ready for very loud fans. this is simply a point not emphasized enough, the real world battery perf of Intel/AMD laptops is very sluggish on default power modes and despite that, they consume more battery than the M5
  - amazing battery life
  - good workmanship, no creaking, good hardware overall (mics, webcam, keyboard, touchpad!)
  - very good speakers

There is simply nothing comparable in the Windows laptop world. You can maybe get a cheaper Windows laptop but it will be terrible in almost everything - the new Apple budget MacBooks will probably be a much better choice. And around $1000, there is no comparison. I wish it was different.

I'm glad the air now comes standard with 16GB of RAM and 512GB disk space.

It's not that the M1 with 8/256GB was slow at all, but even browsing the web gets into 12GB of usage and exhausting the 256GB is fairly easy if you backup your 256GB phone, try to edit a few videos, download enough Gradle/Go/Cargo/Node packages, or install enough 20GB office apps.

Any apple silicon with 16GB / 512GB of stage (even the M1 series) should have a much longer useful life and avoid disk/storage aging as rapidly from the constant swapping.

The one thing that interests me most when it comes to laptops these days is weight. So I jumped right into the tech specs section and looked it up. Since this is the "Air" laptop of the company that is popular for thin and lightweight devices, my hopes were high.

But ...

The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Which has a 14 inch screen and can run Linux.

I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.

I refuse to buy macbooks/apple products and advise my people to do the same.

I make it clear it's not about specs, it's not about UI, its about the fact that apple makes the world actively worse so they can sell you a better alternative.

You cant have iMessage anywhere else because they don't want you to, you are locked into apple stores because they refuse competition, you cant repair your own device because they get that money back in repair fees.

Its not about the operating system or the specs, I feel investing in Linux is the best way to create a more sustainable future for me and the ones I love and changing that take will require systemic changes, not these spec bumps and UI overhauls people fixate on.

I was hoping they would move one of the usb c ports over to the right side. this is the only thing I dislike about the M4 air

I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread.

The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper.

This is a solid product, that continually receives incremental improvements and delivered at a lower price point (when spec'd out).

In NL I can buy a base Macbook Air with 16G memory and 512G SSD voor 1199,- inc tax.

I just looked up my M1 receipt: in 2020 I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16G memory and 512G SSD for 1399,- inc tax.

I did not expect the price for a base machine to go down in 2026.

Does the chip actually improves? I’m still on a specced out M1 Max (64GB RAM / 2TB SSD) and it still feels like a beast for my daily work. It’s wild that we’re at the M5 now, but it’s hard to justify an upgrade when this machine still handles everything I throw at it so well. Seeing 512GB finally become the baseline is great, but I think I’ll be holding onto this M1 for a while longer.

The new cheap Macbooks have also been more or less confirmed.

Macbook Neo, probably coming with the iPhone A-series chips https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/03/apple-accidentally-leak...

I love my MacBook Air 15" M3 so much. It is large fast and light. While I really appreciate the improved M5, my main ask is actually a brighter screen. The current 500 nits is a bit low if you are ever not in a dark room.

Anyhow, because the differences between my M3 and the new M5 are just the CPU/GPU and I am not actually hurt much by the current CPU speed, I won't be upgrading.

Is it weird to anyone else that the M5 keeps the same limitations of the M4, and tops out at 128 GB of RAM?

If one wants to serve large-ish LLMs locally, an M3 Mac Studio w/ 512 GB/RAM is still a super compelling option, and I was hoping that the M5's would bump us up to 1TB of unified memory.

Don't get me wrong -- seeing them use LMStudio as the benchmark for measuring local LLM inference is super awesome for the local / open-source LLM community, but seeing this have the same 128GB cap as the M4 is... disappointing?

M3 Studio is still the best option if one wants 512GB.

Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).

I bought the M4 air given that the consensus was also that it was the best value for 1k, but I ended up returning it and went for pro base model for a few reasons (still valid for M5 AFAIK from a bit of research):

- pro motion (120hz screen).

- better display brightness which is important when there is a bright sun outside.

- 1 more USB-C port and HDMI port (no dongle hell).

- 20% more battery life.

- This is more personal, but 13" is too small and 15" is too big, so 14" MBP worked best for me (~25 HFOV with a stand + KBM).

It's hard to justify saving 400 bucks given the gap between the models, but the decision is closer since the air has 16GB memory by default since M4 AFAIK.

Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in

Seems to be the expected relatively small refresh, mostly just adding the M5?

The language towards the end of the press release implies to me that they're targeting last-gen Intel MacBook Air users thinking about upgrades more than anyone with an M2/3/4 MacBook.

The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.

I have yet to understand myself why did I pay $2300 something for M4 Pro with 512gb storage. Like, for that kind of money, I should have gotten at least 1 TB.

My worst purchase thus far.

I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5

I should top up my m3 ram damn I really regret it, cant even open android studio and emulator in will be on yellow zone

I've been using Macbook Pros for a long time. I usually spend 3-4k on them. I recently purchased an 14" Asus ZenBook for $1300 and loaded Omarchy Linux on it. I wanted to have something less expensive and lightweight for traveling. I really like it a lot! I notice that it is a little slower than my Macbook Pro, but the performance completely acceptable for most things.

Why wont they put a usb-c port on both sides? So iritating to be limited on where i can sit when i charge.

m1 has perfect performance. Screen is the issue. Having all modern devices with 90-120Hz and good brightness, Im feeling headache switching on air on regular basis.

No Nano-texture display option. Damn you, Apple!

Wow it's so exciting. And next year there will be a M6 MacBook looking exactly the same with slightly different specs.

Hardware is completely boring now. That also applies to Phones

I’m still running a 2013 MacBook Air. 4gb of RAM, no CPU to speak of. Still works.

I’ll probably buy this, unless the cheap one they release tomorrow is better. A current MacBook is something like 30x more powerful than my ancient one. It’s going to be insane.

Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts:

1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world.

2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.

lol the iPhone of the laptop world (literally)

next year we get the M6 Titanium and then the M7e

What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?

Finally the specs which were actually needed!

What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.

  The difference is in the number of GPU cores. One chip has an 8-core GPU, while the other has a 10-core GPU.

I'm wondering why they would have a 2 GPU core option. Maybe the 6 GPU one is binned since it is only available with 16G RAM? But no, the 10 GPU core is also needed for any storage increase....

Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4.

Time flies...

Not exciting at all, but a nice incremental upgrade. I always enjoy incremental upgrades from Apple as they're usually significant, and 4 years worth of increments add up to big leaps, to the point my 8 year upgrade cycle is usually quite exciting.

Though a bit disappointing that it came with a $100 (almost 10%, above inflation) price bump. There's not much point to a spec bump when it's paired with a price bump, and faster specs for more money is usually an option. This negative price-sensitivity is particularly important for a model (Air) that caters to casual users, who typically aren't at all begging for spec bumps, and certainly not willing to pay much extra for them.

Yes the new cheap macbook will fill the gap below it, but the new MBA's don't seem like great value play. I recently bought a new old M2 model for roughly a 40% discount for my girlfriend and the value is insane. Same ports, screen, battery life, same formfactor/weight/keyboard, same software, storage, memory. Only it doesn't have the latest fast M5 chip, but for almost all Air users I think that's not a necessity. Certainly my gf wouldn't experience a difference in the next 6-8 years of use I think she'll reasonably get out of this thing.

Which is a fantastic position to be in, Apple creates so much value here that older models are amazing and affordable. But new models just don't seem very interesting to buy.

What I find interesting is how over a long period Apple had to basically reverse everything Johnny Ive was probably responsible for before he left and how we got back to where we were 10-15 years ago in many ways.

Remember how cool MagSafe was? Tripping over a cable no longer meant smashing your laptop. In the late 2000s, this was amazing. Then they made the laptops thinner so we got MagSafe 2. Annoying if you had chargers but whatever. And then... gone.

Macbook Air? The 2008 version I don't count. It's a weird and bad product. But the 2010/2011 products were rock solid and nobody could compete with Apple's value proposition for the hardware. Nobody. And they continued to be amazing but suffered from a screen that didn't get an upgrade from 2011 (IIRC). Where was the retina display? It was such an obvious upgrade.

But then Apple killed it for the 12" Macbook, which was a horrible product. Too many compromises. A single port. Ugh. That was Johnny Ive's baby.

Oh and let's not forget the whole butterly keyboard debacle, all for an estimated 0.5mm decrease in thickness. It failed because it got dust in it. It was expensive to replace. It was just a terrible design decision.

Oh and the Touch Bar? Please.

It was clear that Apple just wanted to increase the ASP of hheir laptops. So getting a good laptop for $1000 was no longer on the cards. Instead we were forced into the 13" Macbook Pro at the better part of $2000.

And here we are in 2026. MagSafe is back (has been for a few years obviously). The butterfly keyboard got ditched (again, some years ago). And they of course killed in the 12" Macbook and brought back to Macbook Air (again, some years ago).

But my point is that in many ways the 2026 Macbook air looks a lot like the 2010-2015 Macbook Air. Updated specs of course but it sits in that same segment of being "good enough" for most people and being excellent value.

One simply cannot overstate the importance of being able to walk into an Apple Store and just buying one. For me, this alone kills buying almost anything else. Even getting a charger for non-Apple laptops could be nontrivial. It's less of an issue now with USB-C charging but a lot of higher end Windows laptops can't draw enough power so still have their own chargers.

I like 16GB/512GB as the new baseline. Given what AI has done to RAM and SSD pricing, a slight price bump to $1099 seems perfectly acceptable to me.

Their problem is that it looks great and all, but there's just zero reason to upgrade my M2 MBA -- until I'm forced to install Tahoe. When it's time to buy, I'll grab one of these or whatever's latest, I'm sure, and I'll get another Mac without thinking twice about it, but I'm not even sure I'd notice the giant speed difference?

I did get tricked into putting Tahoe (or whatever the iOS version is called) on my iPhone 12 Pro though, and my phone is now sluggish and sad, so I am going to have to upgrade it, which I'm carrying quite a lot of resentment about. Hoping I can hold off until the fold phone.