MacBook Air M5 review: a small update for the ‘just right’ Mac

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

The bigger change has happened to the Air. The MacBook Neo now exists, and it’s an awesome little computer for $500 less than the base 13-inch Air. The Neo’s existence doesn’t invalidate the Air or make it pointless, and I doubt the Neo will cannibalize too much of the Air’s sales. The Air is a more capable, faster, and sleeker machine. Having the Neo sit beneath it does paint it in a new light, though. It’s now the step-up upgrade from the Neo that still cedes plenty of room to the beefier MacBook Pros above it.

But is the Air now an awkward middle child or the perfect middle ground? I have good news on that front.

Everything from my review of the 13- and 15-inch M4 MacBook Airs rings true in the new M5 model. (This time I only have the 15-inch, but the changes are the same across both sizes.) The screen is bright, colorful, and accurate enough for some color-sensitive work. The keyboard is solid. The 12-megapixel Center Stage camera is the best built-in webcam around. The battery easily lasts a full work / school day and much more. (I easily got 13 to 14 hours on a full charge while web browsing, messaging, and streaming a bit of music and video with minimal sleeping and brightness between 50 to 100 percent.) And the six-speaker setup on the 15-inch model still gets loud as hell for such a thin laptop.

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

But the M5 Air’s largest gains are in its storage speeds. According to our Amorphous Disk Mark tests, read and write speeds are a little more than twice as fast as the M4 Air, just as Apple claimed. It brings the Air on par with the M5 MacBook Pro and pretty close to the astronomically expensive M4 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro I tested in 2024 (though the new M5 Max has since blown the doors off everything with double-fast read and write speeds of its own).

These faster speeds make transferring and copying files snappier, and they help keep the Air going when you really push it and hit swap memory. As a little torture test, I simultaneously imported over 1,000 50-megapixel RAW images into Lightroom Classic while exporting a 4K video in Premiere and also downloading a game on Steam with 17 Chrome tabs left open. The Air instantly maxed out its RAM and went nearly 20GB into swap. It slowed to a crawl and heated up, but it didn’t crash. (Of course, if you actually do all that stuff at the same time… you need a MacBook Pro.)

If you bought one of last year’s M4 MacBook Airs, there’s little reason to consider an upgrade or even be envious — you’re still set for a long while with an excellent laptop. Yes, the new M5 Air is one generation further along, and its bumped chip, faster storage, and Wi-Fi 7 support make it even a little more futureproof. But I wouldn’t bother upgrading unless you’re on an M1 or older Mac — maybe an M2 Air, and that’s only if you’re pushing it so hard it’s getting slow and frustrating.

And that brings me to the MacBook Neo. If you’re a first-time Mac buyer or on an Intel MacBook with no more OS updates, the MacBook Neo at $600 or $700 might be all you need. If you’re the type to dabble in creative work like Adobe apps, then the Air is worth the extra money. And if you live day to day in content creation, then you have to decide once again to reach even higher for some version of MacBook Pro.

This is the blessing and the curse of Apple’s upgrade funnel. There’s something for everyone, and always an upgrade to tempt you up the chain: a larger screen, more storage, more RAM, a more powerful processor, etc. No matter your needs, Apple likely has a nice aluminum-clad computer that’s just right for parting you with your money.

The MacBook Air used to be the default choice if you were willing to spend around $1,000 — not an insignificant amount of money, of course, but typically the level at which laptops get really good. Now there’s a great option at $600 with the Neo for lighter users. And the Pros are still meant for the actual pros out there (and tech nerds who just want something even better, if we’re being honest with ourselves).

The MacBook Air now sits comfortably in the middle. It’s super thin and travel-friendly. It’s a well-balanced performer for all but heavy content creation and graphics-intensive work. It’s even got conveniences like speedy Thunderbolt 4 ports, fast MagSafe charging, a generously large haptic trackpad, and a backlit keyboard. Those are all reasons why just this week I steered a close friend to nabbing a deal on a refurb 13-inch M4 Air instead of buying the Neo. I knew his needs called for more power, and he valued more futureproofing.

With the MacBook Neo around now, I see the MacBook Air as the jack-of-all-trades computer. It’s still one of the best laptops around, getting the latest M-series chips to ensure that any time you jump on this train it’s for a long haul — potentially up to 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