The Ultimate 2026 MacBook Buying Guide

[00:00] Guys, I am so excited for today's video. This year we went absolutely nuts. Not only did we go out and buy every MacBook, but we went out and bought every major configuration of each MacBook.

[00:12] And today, I get to share what we found. I'm going to try to answer all your burning MacBook questions. Timestamps, they're going to be below the video. If you just want to skip ahead, don't worry, I won't feel offended. And if you do decide which MacBook you want to buy,

[00:25] make sure to check out our website, bestlaptop.deals. That way you can be sure that you're getting the best price on your new MacBook. You see, over there we track prices right across retailers so we can actually show you what's

[00:37] a real sale versus bogus one. With that said, let's get this party started. Should you buy the MacBook Neo? If your computing needs are very basic, you're on a tight budget, and you can't find an older MacBook Air for the same price, then it's a yes.

[00:50] You see, the Neo's performance is just very limited. It uses an A18 Pro processor, which is really a mobile phone processor from 2024. In fact, the Neo's version of it is actually a bit cut down.

[01:02] It has one less GPU core. The Neo, it also only has 8GB of memory, and macOS itself isn't half of that, so that only leaves you with 4GB for actual applications. When a laptop has so little memory, either applications won't run at all, or storage

[01:18] has to be used as a substitute. Storage is much slower, and that can make your laptop feel sluggish. Amplifying this issue, the Neo's storage is much slower than a regular MacBook. This all being said, Seth and Sierra, they used the Neo for creating our graphs, writing reviews, doing research and that sort of thing.

[01:35] Both of them felt it was fine. But be warned, most people who buy a laptop, they keep it for several years, unless you're many, you know, switch laptops all the time. In the future, what you want to do on your laptop changes, say you want to make YouTube videos like this one,

[01:50] then Neo is just really going to be extremely restrictive. And yes, guys, I'm totally aware there are YouTubers out there with, you know, clickbait videos, implying that the Neo can do more, like programming or video editing.

[02:03] Can you? Sure. Should you? Absolutely not. So, what should you buy instead, if you're on a tight budget, that is? In the Air, M3 onwards, it's going to be significantly faster than the Neo.

[02:15] And if you can snag one of them with 16GB of memory, it's really going to expand what you can do on your laptop. The Airs also have longer battery life because of their larger battery. Stepping up to an Air, it also gives you a larger display, which is more useful.

[02:29] Get faster ports, a haptic trackpad. Guys, it's a much better laptop. I try to find one at a reputable retailer or even Apple's own refurbished store. Buying from one of them, it means the laptop often comes with a warranty

[02:41] and is covered by their return policy. I'd say $500 to $800, fair price for an older Air, depending on what CPU and configuration you get. Well, what about the current gen MacBook Air with M5?

[02:53] Should you buy it? I'm not going to be my word here, guys. The Air with M5, it is my number one pick for students and anyone who just wants a good all-round laptop for home or office use. In fact, right now, the MacBook Air with M5,

[03:05] it really is the value king of all laptops. At the time I made this video, you could get one with 60-year memory, 512-dig of storage for $950. For that money, you're getting a very portable, all-round,

[03:17] premium machine with no major gotchas. It's got great battery life and its M5 chip, it's going to make day-to-day tasks just feel incredibly snappy. And since it's also got 60-year-old memory, you can do professional tasks on it like photo editing, video editing,

[03:31] and programming, so long as your projects are simple. The MacBook Air, it does not have a fan to call its processor, so if you're doing something intensive for any duration of time, the laptop, it does get very warm to the touch. Also, its performance, it may drop a little.

[03:45] Compared to the Neo, the Air is a monstrous step up and a much safer laptop to get if you can afford it. What about the larger Air 15? Whether to get it over the 13, it's really a choice of whether you want more portability or productivity.

[03:59] There really isn't any other difference. One is lighter weight and the other has a larger display Now on paper you may see that the Air 15 does have a larger battery but it actually doesn last any longer when applied The 15 larger battery it just compensates for the

[04:13] additional power its larger screen needs. Also you may think that since the 15 is larger it can better dissipate heat from its processor and therefore perform better, still causes a touch, but it really doesn't. The Air 13 and 15 they perform around the same and they feel around the

[04:27] while doing so. Lastly, the starting S15, it seems like it costs a lot more than the S13, but that's because the S15 comes with a 10 core GPU variant of the M5 chip. The S13 starts with the 8 core GPU.

[04:40] You actually have to pay more for the upgrade. The GPU tasks like gaming, sure, the 10 core GPU chip is obviously better, but realistically, those two extra GPU cores, guys, they aren't enough to really elevate this laptop into

[04:52] a different category of device, so please don't base your buying decision on that. Talking of performance, should you step up and buy the MacBook Pro 14? Well, there are so many different variants with huge differences in performance and of course price.

[05:06] So I'm going to talk about the base model first, as that has the same M5 chip as the Airs. After that, I'll talk about the more powerful variants with the M5 Pro and Max chips. And on that note, should you buy the MacBook Pro 14 with the base M5 chip?

[05:20] It is definitely a better choice for software developers than anyone who wants to do a bit of creative work, but not for the reasons you'd actually expect. You see, it doesn't perform that much better than the Air's. Instead, pick it for its better display, its better ports, and its longer battery life.

[05:35] The Pro, it has a larger mini LED panel that is just more vibrant, it is brighter, and it has a fast refresh rate. It also has a wider variety of ports, and you can plug in from either side, which is very convenient. It also has a fan to cool its processor,

[05:48] so it does feel a bit cooler to the touch when doing performance faster than the Air does. This also makes it a bit more reliable for things like, say, big drain. If you've got a dance floor full of people, the last thing you want is for your laptop to slow down because it's getting too hot.

[06:03] But as I said, do not choose it because you think it's going to give you a different level of performance to the air. It isn't. Sure, its single-frame cooling solution does mean it can feed its M5 chip more power,

[06:15] but in short, thirsty tasks, which is most of the performance tasks you're probably going to do on your laptop, on your laptop, it actually doesn't make that much of a difference. The Air and the Pro with the same chip, they perform around the same.

[06:27] It also doesn't make much of a difference if you're doing something that hits the GPU hard like gaming. The Air is already able to max out the performance of the M5 chip's GPU. Same goes for video editing. Again, not much of a difference.

[06:40] The M5 chip is really the limiting factor. The only time we see the MacBook Pro pull ahead is during long-running Mac CPU workloads, which Cinebench demonstrates. But realistically, most people aren't doing anything like this on their laptop.

[06:54] And there's actually a downside to this laptop single fan cooling solution. It has to spin its single fan a lot to keep its processor cool. The higher end MacBook Pro 14s with the Pro Max chips, they actually have two fans.

[07:06] So, they don't have to spin each of them as much to cool the laptop. This makes the MacBook Pro 14 with the base M5 chip the loudest MacBook when under a heavy load. That being said, for regular use and even bursty performance like most programming,

[07:20] it's dead silent when you're doing that. Anyway, should you buy a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip? These laptops are really the best choice for anyone looking for very strong CPU performance,

[07:32] or if you want the Thunderbolt 5 ports that these come with. With those ports, you can connect crazy amounts of external displays. Programmers, audio engineers, music producers, and financial traders, you guys are really the ideal buyers of a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro chip.

[07:46] In fact, for creators, these M5 Pro MacBooks are much better than the base M5 chips. Now, there are two variants available. A 15-core CPU that comes with a 16-core GPU, and an 18-core CPU that comes with a 20-core GPU.

[08:00] Both of these are a massive leap up from the base 10-core M5 chip. These bus stops, they also come standard with 24-meter memory, which is plenty for most people. If you choosing between the 2M5 Pro chips I think the 15 core is more than fine The 18 core should only be bought if you must have the absolute fast of CPU performance available or you can make use of those extra GPU cores for something like 3D rendering

[08:25] For CPU tasks specifically, the Max chips which are more expensive, they actually use the exact same 18-core CPU. They do have faster memory bandwidth, but that doesn't make much of a difference for CPU tasks. It mainly helps out with GPU ones.

[08:38] For video editors, the difference between the two M5 Pro chips, it won't make much of a difference to you. Your work is mainly 2D. You're decoding footage, you're making changes to it, and you're re-encoding it, and that uses the media engine.

[08:50] And both of the M5 Pro chips, they have the same single one. There's performance between them, at least for video editors, very similar. That being said, you guys are one of the few users that will see a big benefit of stepping up to a Max chip.

[09:02] And on that note, let's talk about who should buy a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max chip. It's really high-end video editors, those doing intensive 3D work, or those running AI models locally on their laptop itself.

[09:14] You see the Max chip that gives you a second media engine, which really helps for video editing, like I said. When I tested playing back one minute of footage from one of our videos, the M5 Pro chip had no drop frames at all at half resolution.

[09:28] For smooth playback at full 4K resolution, I needed to use an M5 Max MacBook Pro. That's if I wanted to avoid drop frames. By the way, I haven't talked much about photo editing. If that's what you're doing, you really don't need a Max chip.

[09:40] It's just less intensive than video editing. An M5 Pro chip, guys, it's going to be plenty fine for you. Back on people who will benefit from the Max chip, if you're doing 3D work, the additional GPU cores will make a difference.

[09:52] When it comes to running AI on your laptop itself, the Max chips, they allow you to spec your laptop right up to 128GB of memory, if you can afford it. So, you can run larger models locally. The M5 Pro MacBooks, they tap out at 64 GB.

[10:06] When it comes to which of the two M5 Max chips to get, I'd only get the 40 core GPU variant if what you're running will use all those extra GPU cores. I personally actually bought the MacBook Pro 16 with a 32 core Max chip.

[10:19] That's for my video editing. Both have the same two media engines like I said. The difference is really the fast memory bandwidth, and whether what you're editing can make use of those extra GPU cores. Our MacBook Pro 16 is about higher in Max Fit,

[10:32] but was faster to export our videos, but I didn't keep it because it felt warmer to the touch during editing. And this brings me to an important point. There are downsides to stepping up processors. In the MacBook Pro 14 where all three major chips are available,

[10:47] you can see that under a performance load, as you step up a processor, the laptop does feel warmer to the touch. You can also see that the laptop has shorter battery life. of battery life. Unfortunately, we don't measure heat you feel for GPU tasks right now on MacBooks,

[11:01] only CPU ones. That's why I can't demonstrate that the 40 core MacBook Pro 16 feels warmer than the 32 core, but it does. And yes, we are looking at a new test to add to our suite for this. Now, I've kind of jumped between talking about the smaller MacBook Pro 14 and the larger 16,

[11:17] so I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about their differences. Because unlike the Airs, it's more than just portability versus productivity with the 16's larger display. An advantage with a smaller MacBook Pro 14 is that you can buy one with the M5 Pro 15-core chip.

[11:32] With the MacBook Pro 16, you are forced to get the M5 Pro 18-core that you may not need, but will make the laptop more expensive. In favor of the MacBook Pro 16, it has longer battery life, and it's able to get more out of its M5 Pro and Max chips because it feeds them more power

[11:48] and has a larger cooling solution. The MacBook Pro 16, it comes with a 140-watt charger. The smaller MacBook Pro 14s come with either a 70 or 96-watt one. Funnily enough, we actually didn't find that much of a performance difference

[12:02] between the two size laptops. That's when they're running the exact same chip. So clearly, there are diminishing marginal returns of beating these chips as much power as the MacBook Pro 16s do. You can see this in our scatter plot,

[12:14] where the efficiency line is pushed out towards the right, indicating that the MacBook Pro 16s are less efficient But the biggest benefit of getting a Mac chip in the larger 16 is that it feels significantly cooler when doing performance tasks The 14 with that Mac chip is a furnace

[12:30] I'm not saying don't buy that configuration. There is certainly a reason to get it. It's very portable and very powerful. Just be aware of its compromises. All right, so hopefully you now know which MacBook to get and which processor.

[12:43] But should you upgrade its memory? For most people, no. Apple's upgrades are expensive. Actually, with current memory prices, they're not all that bad. But realistically, Apple already does a very nice job of giving you the right amount of memory

[12:55] to match the performance of the processor inside. We actually bought both the 16GB and 24GB models of the MacBook Pro 14 with the Base 10 Core M5 chip, just to check on this. For video editing, we saw absolutely no benefit of going to 24GB,

[13:09] the M5 chip itself. That was the limiting factor. Plus, you need to consider that some memory upgrades, they require you to order the laptop from Apple themselves, and Apple doesn't discount their laptops, only their retailers do.

[13:21] So by doing that, you'd be using it on a retailer sale, effectively making your upgrades cost even more. Also, please don't upgrade your MacBook to future-proof it. You just don't know what you'll be doing in the future,

[13:33] and MacBooks, they hold their value very well in the second-hand market. It's often just far better to buy a base config, on a sale that is, than sell and upgrade more frequently. You'll get more out of doing that. Now, you may be surprised to hear me say that, not to future-proof.

[13:47] when I started this very video saying that the Neo may not be powerful enough for your future needs. Well, that's because the Neo, it just doesn't mean a minimum performance bar for most people's long-term use. The A's and the Pro's, they don't have this problem.

[14:01] Now, the only exception to my please-don't-upgrade-to-memory rule is really for programmers and music producers, and anyone who just wants strong CPU performance, lots of memory, but doesn't care about GPU performance. So for you guys, having to buy a more expensive MacBook Pro with a Max chip just to get more

[14:17] memory, it doesn't really make sense. What I'd instead do is just take a look whether it's cheaper to buy an M5 Pro MacBook with Apple with its memory upgrade, or if it's cheaper to buy a Max MacBook from a retailer

[14:29] factoring in a sale. But I do want to reiterate, many of you guys will be totally fine with 24GB, you don't need to do this. Just check the Activity Monitor's memory graph, it's only if you see red that you truly need

[14:41] or memory. Occasional yellow is fine. Should you go for the Nanotexture display or the Glossy? I've had both. I only get the Nanotexture if you're sure that you'll be using your MacBook in direct sunlight. You see the Nanotexture screen just looks a little grainy compared to the Glossy,

[14:58] and the high brightness of the MacBook Pro's panel combined with this anti-reflective coating that you get on the Glossy, it already does a really great job of combating reflections, at least when indoors. Now, there is a tiny argument to be had

[15:11] that the amount of texture MacBooks lasts a little longer on battery because you don't need to run their brightness as high to combat those reflections. But most MacBooks already have great battery life anyway, and speaking personally, I'd prefer a display that looks better at least to my eyes.

[15:25] Before I go, I want to mention that you should not upgrade your MacBook because the latest ones have Wi-Fi 7. They really don't. Apple's implementation of it does not support of 320 MHz channels in the 6 GHz spectrum, said in English, it really isn't any faster

[15:39] than their older Wi-Fi. Well, I hope this video helped you pick your next MacBook. When you are ready to buy, head over to our website, bestlaptop.deals, to ensure you're getting the best price.

[15:51] Over there, we track price history right across retailers so you'll know whether a sale is actually a good one. But I want to end with the following important point. Buy responsibly. If you can't afford a new MacBook, do not go into debt, credit card debt, or use one

[16:07] of those awful buy now pay later schemes. A new MacBook is a want, it is not a need. As we always say, it's not a Coachella ticket. There are plenty of great older MacBooks available that would love a new home.

[16:19] Like and subscribe if you want to see more videos from us. Until next time, I will catch you later.