MacBook Air M5 review: A small update to the ‘just right’ Mac.

Not much has changed in the new 2026 MacBook Air: it now has an M5 chip, Wi-Fi 7, and faster storage starting at 512GB instead of 256GB. It’s a great computer just like last year’s model, even if it’s unfortunate that it’s $100 more expensive.

The biggest change has happened to Air. the MacBook Neo It’s out now, and it’s a great little PC for $500 less than the basic 13-inch Air. The presence of the Neo doesn’t invalidate the Air or make it meaningless, and I doubt the Neo will eat up much of the Air’s sales. The Air is a more capable, faster and more elegant machine. Having Neo underneath him paints him in a new light. It’s now an incremental upgrade from the Neo that still frees up plenty of room for the larger MacBook Pros above it.

But is Air Now an awkward middle child or an ideal compromise? I have good news on this front.

Everything from My review of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs M4 This seems true in the new M5. (This time I only have the 15-incher, but the changes are the same at both sizes.) The screen is bright, colorful, and accurate enough for some color-sensitive work. The keyboard is solid. The 12MP central camera is the best built-in webcam ever. The battery easily lasts a full work/school day and much more. (I easily got 13 to 14 hours on a full charge while browsing the web, messaging, and streaming a little music and video with minimal sleep and brightness between 50 to 100 percent.) And the 15-inch model’s six-speaker setup is still quite loud for such a thin laptop.

The biggest changes in the new MacBook Air are about speed, taking an already good-performing laptop and making it a little faster. The new M5 chip with 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU is similar to the one I tested last year in the update MacBook Pro 14 inch. As you can see below in our benchmark tests, the new 15-inch M5 Air scores slightly lower across the board than the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5, which is to be expected considering the Pro has a fan for its thermal advantage. The M5 Air is slightly faster than last year’s M4 Air, with the biggest gains in GPU performance and some multi-core tests (such as 3D rendering in Cinebench).

But the M5 Air’s biggest gain is in its storage speeds. According to our Amorphous disc sign In tests, read and write speeds are just over twice as fast as the M4 Air, just as Apple claimed. It puts the Air on par with the M5 MacBook Pro and very close to astronomical cost MacBook Pro M4 Max 16 inch I tested in 2024 (although the new version The M5 Max has since blown the doors off everything With double read and write speeds of its own).

These higher speeds make transferring and copying files faster, and help keep the Air running when you actually hit it and hit the swap memory. As a simple test, I simultaneously imported over 1,000 50MP RAW images into Lightroom Classic while exporting 4K video in Premiere and also Downloading a game on Steam while leaving 17 Chrome tabs open. The Air immediately maxed out its RAM and went to nearly 20GB in the swap. It slowed to a crawl and overheated, but did not crash. (Of course, if you do all of these things at the same time, you need a MacBook Pro.)

If you bought one of the M4 MacBook Airs last year, there’s little reason to think about upgrading or even be envious — you’ll still have an excellent laptop for a long time to come. Yes, the new M5 Air is another generation, and its powerful chip, faster storage, and Wi-Fi 7 support make it more future-proof. But I wouldn’t bother upgrading unless you’re using an M1 or an older Mac — maybe an M2 Air, and only if you’re pushing it so hard that it becomes sluggish and frustrating.

This brings me to MacBook Neo. If you’re a first-time Mac buyer or using an Intel MacBook No more OS updatesA $600 or $700 MacBook Neo might be all you need. If you’re the type who dabbles in creative work like Adobe applications, the Air is worth the extra money. And if you live day to day in the field of content creation, then you should once again decide to go higher on some version of MacBook Pro.

This is the blessing and curse of Apple’s upgrade path. There’s something for everyone, and there’s always an upgrade to tempt you into the series: bigger screen, more storage, more RAM, more powerful processor, etc. No matter your needs, Apple likely has a beautiful aluminum-encased computer that’s just right for splitting your money.

The MacBook Air was the default choice if you were willing to spend around $1,000 — not a small amount, of course, but it’s usually the level at which laptops get Really good. There’s now a great $600 option with the Neo for lighter users. And pro is still meant for actual professionals (and tech nerds who just want something better, if we’re being honest with ourselves).

The MacBook Air now sits comfortably in the middle. It is very thin and suitable for travel. It’s well-balanced performance for all but heavy content creation and graphics-intensive work. It also has amenities like fast Thunderbolt 4 ports, fast MagSafe charging, an oversized tactile trackpad, and a backlit keyboard. These are all reasons why this week I directed a close friend to catch a deal on a file Refurbished 13 inch M4 Air Instead of buying Neo. I knew his needs required more power, and he would have appreciated more protection for the future.

With the MacBook Neo at the moment, I see the MacBook Air as the jack of all trades. This is still one of the best laptops out there, and it gets the latest M-series chips to ensure that any time you hop on this train, it’ll be for a long time – perhaps as much as seven or maybe even 10 years. Even if the Air is now the middle child between the Neo and the Pro, for many people it’s still Apple’s “just right” Goldilocks laptop.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge