The MacBook Air has a new chip and a lower price (sort of)

Apple today announced new MacBook Air laptops with the M5 processor and a range of other upgrades, as part of its ongoing “big week” of product reveals.

Externally, there are very few differences from last year’s M4 Air, and aside from dropping in weight by a single gram has identical vital statistics. The M5 model comes in the same two screen sizes (13.6 inches and 15.3 inches) and the same four colors (Sky Blue, silver, Starlight, and Midnight). The Liquid Retina display has the same specs, from the 2560 x 1664 resolution to the 500 nits of brightness, and still has a notch. There’s the same four-speaker sound system, the same Center Stage webcam, and the same keyboard. We weren’t expecting a redesign, and haven’t got one.

The differences are on the inside, starting with that M5 chip. Apple is selling this principally as an AI-focused upgrade, claiming the M5 Air delivers “up to 4x faster performance for AI tasks than MacBook Air with M4.” The new Air, of course, runs Apple Intelligence, but the same is true of every Air going back to the M1 model in 2020. It should just handle Apple Intelligence’s AI capabilities more efficiently.

For those with minimal interest in AI, it will be some consolation to hear that the M5’s power should also deliver noticeably better performance in other areas. Unified memory bandwidth has gone up from 120GB/s to 153GB/s, and Apple says the M5 Air can achieve both 3D rendering (in Blender) and image processing (in Affinity) up to 1.5x faster than the M4 model. Needless to say, Macworld will put all of this to the test once we can get review samples into our labs.

Upgraded storage for less

Aside from the processor bump, this year’s Air also has an SSD with 2x faster read/write performance than the previous generation, and comes with twice the storage as standard and throughout the tiers. Compared with the M4’s 256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB options, the M5 offers 512GB/1TB/2TB/4TB. Good news! Sort of.

The twist is the price tag. The M4 Air started at $999 for 256GB, or $1,199 for 512GB. The M5 Air now starts at $1,099 for 512GB. So technically this is a price cut—the 512GB model has dropped by $100—but many customers, particularly those who don’t require much storage or store most of their files in the cloud, will view this as an effective price hike of $100 for the baseline model. It’s complicated.

Apple

There are still two small internal upgrades to mention. Wi-Fi 6E on the M4 Air has been bumped to Wi-Fi 7 here, and Bluetooth from version 5.3 to 6. Apple cites the inclusion of its in-house N1 wireless networking chip for these improvements.

Battery capacities are the same as last year (53.8Wh and 66.5Wh for the 13- and 15-inch models, respectively), and Apple gives the same battery estimates for this year’s MacBook Airs: up to 15 hours of wireless web browsing, and up to 18 hours of video streaming. The only difference we can spot in the power department is the new inclusion of Apple’s 40W dynamic power adapter with a 60W max. Last year’s models came with 30W (single-port) or 35W (dual-port) power adapters, depending on the size and configuration you selected.

The new M5 MacBook Air starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model or $1,299 for the 15-inch model. Preorders begin March 4 at 6:15 a.m. PST, and the machines will go on sale on March 11.