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Today Apple revealed M5 chip And I updated three of my Pro devices with the new silicon: the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro headphone. Other than the Vision Pro’s new strap, the announcements only amount to internal upgrades, with last year’s M4 chip being replaced by this year’s M5 chip.
Given the lack of additional features or design changes, I’m in no rush to buy a new MacBook Pro, despite Apple’s claims of improved M5 performance.
the MacBook Air 15 inch With the M4 chip it will still be my favorite everyday laptop. I still think it’s the best MacBook for most people, offering the perfect combination of screen size and portability with more than enough performance for a great price.
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15-inch Air vs 14-inch Pro
The 15-inch MacBook Air and 14-inch MacBook Pro sit in the middle of Apple’s MacBook lineup, with the 13-inch Air at one end and the 16-inch Pro at the other. Students and shoppers on a budget will find a lot to like in the smaller, cheaper products MacBook Air 13 inch. Power users who demand the best performance and largest display will pay a hefty sum for this MacBook Pro 16 inch.
If you’re not shopping at one end of the MacBook line, which is the better choice: the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the latest M5 or the 15-inch MacBook Air with the M4 chip?
Unless you need the extra performance, I’d recommend choosing the 15-inch Air. Here’s why:
Low price
The 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 starts at $1,599, the same price as last year. The 15-inch MacBook Air M4 starts at $1,199, $100 less than the previous version. If you doubled the 15-inch Air’s storage to a 512GB SSD to match the space of the base MacBook Pro, it would still be $200 cheaper.
Bigger screen, lighter weight
The MacBook Air’s 15.3-inch screen gives me more space to juggle multiple open windows and Chrome tabs during the workday, and I love watching YouTube TV and Netflix on the larger screen in the evening.
Working on the 14.2-inch MacBook Pro can start to feel cramped, to the point where I wish I had an external monitor or two. This feeling is reduced when I’m using the 15-inch Air, so you get the extra screen real estate without paying the price for portability.
The 15-inch Air is not only thinner than the 14.2-inch Pro; It is also lighter. The 15.3-inch Air weighs just 3.3 pounds. Despite giving up more than an inch in screen size, the 14.2-inch MacBook Pro weighs slightly more at 3.4 pounds.
The only pro feature I wish the Air had
My biggest pet peeve about the near-perfect 15-inch MacBook Air is its lack of a ProMotion display. The Air’s 15-inch Liquid Retina display is clear and bright but has a base refresh rate of 60Hz. The Pro’s 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR display, which is brighter and higher-resolution, has an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz (called ProMotion).
Although I don’t notice the difference between the displays when watching videos, I see it clearly when scrolling through web pages. Text remains clearer on the Pro as you scroll down the page. On air, letters and words become blurry, making it more difficult to continue reading while scrolling.
The next MacBook Air update could offer a ProMotion display. With Apple’s iPhones, the ProMotion feature was exclusive to the pricier iPhone Pro models until a recent update last month, where Apple added a ProMotion display to the baseline iPhone 17.
Overall, unless you’re sensitive to video stutter on a 60Hz display or absolutely need the generation-over-generation performance boost from the M5, the thinner, lighter, larger, and cheaper 15-inch MacBook Air is a better choice.