MacBook Air M5: Before You Buy, Watch This

[00:01] M5. Now, I've been using the 13-in as my daily driver probably for the last 2 weeks or so, and guys, it really caught me by surprise. I have to say, I absolutely love it. The Air is just the sweet spot. It is the laptop that most

[00:15] people should buy. It really does just get the basics right. It's very for light use, everything's going to feel very snappy on it. You can even run professional apps, so long as the projects you're working on are simple.

[00:29] just going up in price, it's awesome that the Airs really haven't. So, in 2026, the Air it just brings tremendous value to the table. Compared to the Neo, an Air is a much safer buy. Compared to Windows laptops, they still can't get it

[00:44] whistles that the Air doesn't like an OLED screen, but they also have a lot of cons that as a whole just makes them worse. Take Dell's XPS 14, it would have destroyed this laptop if it didn't have a crap keyboard and cost an arm and a

[00:58] leg. At least for the config we recommend with the X-chip and a tandem That being said, I would avoid specking up the Air to try and make it something Air's performance, and adding more memory it may not help. Apple's upgrades

[01:12] are also very expensive, and they significantly reduce the laptop's main selling point, which is its incredible value. With that said, here's my review, but first a very quick thank you to Best Buy who helped us get these in. Folks,

[01:25] we spent tens of thousands of dollars this year buying pretty much every MacBook for our reviews, and we've got a lot of content coming. So, it was really nice that Best Buy helped out here. All right, since the M5 chip is basically

[01:38] the main thing that's new here, I'm going to start with Geekbench. It pretty much tests a bunch of common performance tasks. It doesn't push the laptop to its limits though, which is why in this test the Air with the M5 performs around the

[01:50] same as the MacBook Pro 14, also with the M5. Compared to last year's MacBook Air with M4, this new one it's around 13 to 15% faster, so a modest bump up. If you are upgrading from an older Air with M1 or M2, the bump though it is really

[02:04] significant. It's around twice the multi-core performance. If you're open to what Windows has to offer, Intel's new Panther Lake H-chips, they do trade blows with M5. In this test, their multi-core performance it is similar.

[02:16] However, Apple still wins in single-core. But, those Panther Lake H-chips, they're often found in more expensive laptops. You see, Apple's MacBook Airs, they cover a large price range that does include some of those,

[02:28] but it also includes plenty of the lower end non-H Intel chips. So, we've added two versions of Dell's XPS here with each of those chips. You can see that the M5 chip, it smashes that non-H base Intel chip. Okay, moving on to

[02:42] performance. There are a couple of big takeaways here. Firstly, the MacBook Air with M5 is not that much faster than the Air with M4, at least again, not in this test. The MacBook Pro 14 with the M5 chip, it does beat the Air by around

[02:56] 25%. It has the same number of CPU cores, which is what this test tests. Now, the reason for this difference is because the Pro has a fan to cool its processor. This means it can feed it more power for longer. It feeds it an

[03:09] average of 26 W, whereas the Air averages at 12 W. That being said, there are huge diminishing marginal returns of doing this. The CPU just becomes far less efficient. You're essentially feeding it 117% more power for 25% more

[03:23] performance, not worth. Back on Cinebench, for sustained high performance loads, Intel and AMD's performance chips, they do have an edge over M5. That's in overall multi-core performance, not single-core. Now, as I

[03:35] said, the Air straddles the price of Windows laptops with these chips and less powerful ones. If you are comparing the base Air to a non-H Intel chip, one with eight cores not 16, the Air just smashes it. In terms of power

[03:48] efficiency, in this test, the M5 chip when in the Air, it is significantly AMD have on offer. Now, if you think getting the M5 chip in the larger 15-in Air would mean it would perform better because it has a larger

[04:01] well, you'd be wrong. It's a rounding error when it comes to the difference. And if you're considering the Neo, you can see how poor its max CPU performance is. If you're coming from any MacBook Air with the M3 chip onwards, it's a

[04:14] major jump up in performance from the Neo. All right, if you plan to use the definitely capable, but not for everything. It really depends on what you're doing. In Photoshop, it performs very well. It even beats out the Legion

[04:27] 7i, which is a gaming laptop with a dedicated GPU. It also smashes Intel's Panther Lake X-chip. Those are the ones with a more powerful B390 integrated GPU. Now, in this test, all that extra power fed the M5 chip when it's placed

[04:40] in the MacBook Pro 14, it doesn't really result in any extra performance. Moving over to video editing, we ran the new Puget benchmark. Here, you can really see how much better a laptop with an Nvidia GPU performs. By the way, the

[04:53] Legion to show is that it's quite compact for a gaming laptop. It's also going to be priced similar to the high-spec Airs. Now, Premiere Pro, it benefit of moving up from the M5 eight-core GPU that comes in the base

[05:08] 13-in Air to the M5 10-core GPU. That's available in the 13-in Airs as an upgrade, and it also comes in all of the 15-in. Now, at least it's a benefit in some apps. Compared to the prior M4 Airs, you can really see a big jump in

[05:22] performance here. Our MacBook Air with the M5 eight-core GPU beat out our older the M5 eight-core GPU beat out our older Air with the M4 10-core GPU. So, clearly Apple's new GPU cores are much improved. Since Premiere Pro saw such a big

[05:35] improvement gen on gen, I actually wanted to see, could I edit one of our videos on the Airs? So, I loaded up one of our recent ones and tried playing back 1 minute from the timeline. I performed that exact same test on each

[05:47] of our MacBooks. On the Air, playback was unfortunately very stuttery. I measured over 400 frames dropped at full resolution. However, when I dropped that playback down to half resolution, it actually dropped only 19 frames. That

[06:00] of our timeline, so I personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable moving over to an Air. Now, if you step up to a MacBook Pro with the M5 chip, it actually performed a tad worse, which goes to show the fan doesn't always help. It

[06:14] For our videos, you have to move up to a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip to be By the way, you may think the reason our MacBook Pro and the Air did badly here is because they only have 16 gig of memory, whereas the M5 Pro MacBook Pro,

[06:28] it has 24 gig. We don't think this is the case. You see, we've had an identical MacBook Pro with M5 in before with 24 gig. Although we didn't try this specific test back then, it's a new test for us, we did try

[06:40] an export of one of our videos, which is very intensive, more so than what we're showing you here. We saw no benefit moving from 16 gig to 24. Now, obviously, that's a different test. If you think that we need to go buy a 24

[06:53] gig MacBook Air to confirm this, drop a comment down below. All right, if you use Resolve, it's a bit of a similar story to Premiere Pro. actually run on our lower powered laptops. Okay, if like me, you want to

[07:06] pretty decent so long as you're playing lighter titles and your titles run natively on macOS. League of Legends, which I play, it is a good example of this. It ran really well, well over 100 frames per second when gaming at high

[07:19] resolution with maxed out settings. To see where the Air stacks up, we actually ran Still Nomad Light. It's a benchmark that runs natively on Metal for Macs and DirectX for Windows. Here, you can see that the Legion with its dedicated

[07:31] mid-range 5060, it completely annihilates M5, over twice the annihilates M5, over twice the performance. Intel's B390 integrated GPU in that Panther Lake X-chips, it also beats M5. Pay particular attention to

[07:43] the XPS 14 here. It only feeds its CPU 25 W like the base MacBook Pro does, yet it still beats them. We found Intel's B390 to be very power efficient. In Wildlife Extreme, a Vulkan test, the story is the same. In Cyberpunk, which

[07:58] one, the Airs were pretty much unplayable. The MacBook Pro 14 with its fan did a little better. So, overall, you can game on the Air, but if gaming better options. All right, let's talk annoyances like hidden fan noise. Well,

[08:13] fan, so obviously, there is no fan noise. The MacBook Pro with M5, it does have a fan, and it gets loud under load. I could definitely hear its fans going under any sort of performance test. When it comes to internal temperatures, the

[08:27] M5 chip in the Air 13 and the Pro, it's kept around the same temperature. So, the Pro having a fan is just allowing it to consume more power while remaining at the same core temperature. The M5 in the Air 15, on the other hand, got

[08:39] noticeably warmer, which is kind of weird and surprised me. But, what you'll probably care more about is how much heat you actually feel. The Pro, it felt noticeably cooler, particularly on the underside. Now, this was under a max

[08:52] performance load. In my real-world use, when I was gaming or video editing, I difference in warmth between all these laptops, the two Airs and the Pro, at where my hands are. All of them just

[09:06] notice was the fan noise on the Pro. That was more annoying. I want to make a note here. I feel the problem is how we measure the heat you feel for our graph. You see, we measure as far up as the number row, but your hands are rarely

[09:19] there. In the case of the Air, that's where most of the heat is. Guys, we're you feel we should measure the heat right up to the number row, inclusive of it, or can we go one row less? All right, let's talk battery life. We hit

[09:32] the Airs with our new tougher battery test. Screen brightness at 300 nits, office tasks on repeat until the battery dies. The 13-in lasted 8 hours and 13 minutes, while the 15 lasted around the same. The Air 15 does have a larger

[09:45] battery, but it is negated by its larger screen. Overall, it's a little don't last longer than last year's models. The MacBook Pro 14 with M5, it does give you around 2 hours more battery life, so that's a big benefit of

[09:59] stepping up a model. Dell's XPS 14 though, it is our overall battery king. powerful Panther Lake X chip and the better tandem OLED display, it lasted a whopping four hours longer than the Air's. And the entry-level XPS with its

[10:14] lower resolution display and less powerful processor, it literally doubled the Air's battery life. But, let's talk about the real world here. When I used the Air, its battery life was absolutely excellent. I personally used it for two

[10:27] hours and a half when unplugged just writing the script for this very video. It only drained 20% of its battery during this time. Lastly on battery, to perform at their max when they are unplugged. You may actually notice all

[10:41] they're unplugged. I've got a theory for this. When the laptop is charging, it gets a little warmer and that's why they perform better when they're unplugged. laptop. I'm going to move rather quickly as not much else has changed. The Air

[10:56] Air's are one of the best looking laptops out there. I think the MacBook Air 15 in particular looks really special. It's just how thin it is for how large a footprint it has that makes it look so magical. And of course, the

[11:09] Air's continue to feel very well built. They feel rigid and there's no keyboard deck flex to make the typing feel mushy or any kind of flex for that matter. of these Air's continue to slide into our light and portable classification.

[11:22] The display though is the one part of the Air that would probably hold me back on permanently switching to it as my daily driver. Look, it's not a bad panel a wide color gamut, and a high resolution. But in 2026, a 60 Hz IPS

[11:37] panel in a premium laptop, pretty disappointing. The 60 Hz refresh rate the kind of task that I'm doing on a MacBook Air, I don't really need more than 60 Hz. But I definitely noticed how bland the Air's colors looked coming

[11:50] screens are just so much more vibrant with their better contrast and inky blacks. Also, the notch unfortunately still here. Again, beyond overdue for Apple to sort out. That being said, I didn't notice it when I was actually

[12:03] using it. Finally, the bezels are starting to look a little on the larger side nowadays. The keyboard is fine. The Air's keyboard feels a little low travel for my liking. I have thoroughly used and compared all the MacBooks together

[12:16] including all variants of the MacBooks keyboards. I find the Air 15's feels the most low travel. I don't know if it's just our unit, but there it is. The Air 13 was a slight step up in typing comfort and it felt similar to the

[12:28] MacBook Pro 14 with the base M5 chip. The MacBook Pro's with a higher end M5 Pro and Max chips, they feel a little deeper and more comfortable to type on. To quantify this, I'd give the Air 15's typing comfort a six and a half out of

[12:41] 10. The Air 13's and the base MacBook Pro 14 are seven, and those higher end MacBook Pro's are seven and a half. Guys, I'm not sure if there's a I've consistently found that the Air's have a lower travel feeling keyboard

[12:54] than the higher end MacBook Pro's with the Pro and Max chips. Anyway, great. The backlight doesn't bleed around the keys, the keys are quiet to type on, and the layout continues to be standard with nothing to mispress. Yay.

[13:07] Next, Apple's trackpads continue to be the best in the business. Tracking feels trackpads, there's no palm rejection issues. Speakers are fine, but in 2026, they're certainly not the best out there in a small laptop. Take a listen.

[13:44] convenient if you want to plug into something that's on the right side. Apple, please give us a port on the right side. Port speeds haven't changed, certainly isn't bad. The external displays that are supported still the

[13:58] same too, which I think's going to be fine for most people. Wi-Fi on the other hand has changed. These new Air's come with Apple's proprietary N1 chip. This promises Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, but there's a catch. It doesn't utilize the

[14:12] full bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7. You see, the N1 chip, it only uses the 160 MHz channel on the 6 GHz band. It doesn't use the 320 MHz channel. So, we were only able to see a slight performance increase versus Wi-Fi 6E in last year's

[14:26] M4 Air. We've seen far better results with Windows laptops supporting the full Wi-Fi 7 spec. Finally, let's talk pricing. You may think the Air's price has gone up as its starting price is now $1,100 up from $1,000, but this year's

[14:41] model comes with 512 gig of storage rather than 256. most people buying a laptop in 2026 should be buying it with 512 gig. a custom config top grade to that which cost the same amount. But I like this

[14:56] year's approach better. Since this is now a stock config, you can buy it from a retailer and retailers tend to discount their laptops. Previously, you'd have to buy that custom config from Apple who doesn't discount their

[15:08] laptops. Or, you'd have been forced to step up a config at a retailer that comes bundled with stuff you may not need like the two extra GPU cores. Actually, if you don't need GPU power at all, I'd recommend looking for an older

[15:20] M4 Air on a sale. The CV performance difference to M5, pretty minimal. It's different. And the only other notable change is Wi-Fi 7 which Apple didn't fully implement. If you are going for this year's model though, I'd think

[15:34] twice about specking up the Air with something like more memory. For [snorts] creators, it's probably not the limiting factor, it's the processor itself. Plus, diminishes especially as you're forced to buy other things when you upgrade

[15:49] that memory that you may not need. The only people I can see doing that are people like programmers because the Air CPU is plenty powerful enough for you. you may want to run things like virtual machines. On the PC side of things, the

[16:03] laptops that cost the same as the base M5 MacBook Air, at least right now, they have the lower end Panther Lake chip and that is very uncompetitive in every aspect other than battery life to the M5 chip. Dell's XPS 14 with its X chip and

[16:16] a great competitor to the Air if its price was lower. It's got a longer battery life, and it has better But you would have to be able to handle its keyboard. It is really dreadful,

[16:29] lower travel than the Air's which is not a high bar to clear. Look, last time I saw my therapist, she said to me, "Sometimes boring is good." And that's really the case with these Air's. They are the no-nonsense laptops

[16:43] that just get the basics right, perfect for most people. If you're looking for a different laptop though, then check out our website bestlaptop.deals. recommendations for different types of buyers. Finally, we are really trying to

[16:57] get to 400,000 subscribers. We are so close. If you aren't already subscribed, please give it a go. It's free and easy and it really makes us smile. Till next time, go do something awesome with your day and I will catch you later.