Apple MacBook Air M5 Review: Still the best MacBook for most

Design and Keyboard

• Four colour choices
• Still a good-looking laptop
• Excellent trackpad and keyboard

Aside from being, according to Apple, a single gram lighter, the MacBook Air M5 has been virtually unchanged from the M4 model I reviewed last year. At least with the M4, there was a new colour added into the mix, but this time the four hues are the same: Sky Blue, Silver, Starlight and Midnight.

You can see the Sky Blue in the images accompanying this review. It remains incredibly subtle, almost silver in certain lights. A few people I showed it to didn’t even believe there was any blue there at all. The Midnight is as close to black as you can get, and the silver is the most neutral. Like Sky Blue, Starlight is a very mild gold that could do with a bit more punch.

While it’s nice to have colours, I don’t think any of the four shades here stand out. The MacBook Neo doesn’t have the best colour options, but the Citrus and Pink at least look like the colours they’re supposed to be. With the MacBook Air, you pretty much have three variations of silver and a very dark blue.

It’s a slim and light machine that can slip easily into a bag. Even without any noticeable weight reductions in a few years, and with some of the best Windows laptops now a lot lighter, I don’t find it at all heavy. It feels durable and weighty in a nice way, a reassuring way.

The MacBook Air M5 weighs exactly the same as the MacBook Neo at 1.23kg, something I found odd at first. I expected the smaller Neo to be a more portable machine, almost like the 12-inch MacBook, but in reality, it’s not. In fact, holding both machines next to each other I found the Neo felt denser. The Air remains the sleekest MacBook you can buy.

There are size options: 13-inch and 15-inch, both of which have the same internal options, same port selection and same underlying screen tech. I’ve got the 13-inch one, so all my thoughts are focused on that model, although everything is very much the same. You pay a little more for the 15-inch, but if this is a machine that’ll mostly live on a desk at home, my preference would be to get the larger display.

Ports remain the same as the past few iterations of the Air, and annoyingly, the two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports remain on one side – a pain when you’re trying to plug in larger dongles. Unlike the Neo, which has one slow port and one slightly faster one, both the ports here are the same and can both output to a monitor. 

You can use either port for charging, but you’re best off using the magnetic MagSafe port for this, and this is the cable that’s included in the package. On the opposite side, there’s a headphone jack.

I’ve long since given up hope of Apple adding ports like an HDMI or SD card reader to the Air series, as those are firmly Pro-level additions, at least in the eyes of Apple. If you want to transfer snaps from a camera or plug this into an HDMI monitor, you’ll need a dongle.

The keyboard and trackpad are both fabulous, easily class-leading. Whereas Apple had to make sacrifices in these areas to keep the price of the Neo low, like removing the haptic trackpad and keyboard backlight, the Air doesn’t have such issues.

The keys are well-spaced and clicky, and the trackpad is very large and responsive for scrolling and gestures. If you type all day, this keyboard is wonderful. Every model gets a Touch ID sensor too for biometric unlocking and payments, something the Neo restricts to its £699/$699 variant.

Screen

• Gets very bright
• Same panel as previous models
• Two sizes

The screen on the MacBook Air M5 is, as you might have guessed from the position in Apple’s laptop range, in keeping with its middle-child billing. It’s noticeably better than the Neo, but equally noticeably worse than the Pro.

Compared to the Neo, the Air M5 has a nicer screen. Not only is it slightly bigger (and comes in a 15-inch option, too), but it supports more colours in the P3 colour gamut for a punchier overall look. This is very noticeable when the two machines are next to each other, and photos and videos are playing. I measured the same 490 nits of brightness on both, and that’s good for a laptop, with many Windows machines closer to the 250 nits mark.

The Air also supports True Tone, Apple’s software tech that alters the colour temperature of the screen depending on the lighting and environment. As a result, the Air’s display feels warmer when you’re in brighter rooms. It’s a neat trick, although turn it off if you want the most accurate colour reproduction.

I do like the display on the Air, but it could be so much better. Plenty of Windows laptops in this price range have OLED panels for even punchier colours and faster refresh rates for smoother gaming. The MacBook Pro has had Mini-LED screens with 120Hz ProMotion for years now, and it feels like time that Air got a display upgrade.

Anyone who used one of the OLED-toting iPad Pros, Mini-LED Pros or even an iPhone with an OLED screen will know how good they are. The Air looks a little drab in comparison.

Performance

• The fastest MacBook Air
• Base 512GB storage
• 16GB RAM as standard

It‘s in the performance stakes where the MacBook Air M5 has the most upgrades, and I’m not necessarily just talking about a few benchmark bumps. The M5 chip brings with it support for Bluetooth 6 and WiFi 7; the latter will see vastly superior upload and download speeds when paired with a compatible router. 

There’s support for dual-monitor output too, something that was missing until the M4 generation. I’ve been outputting to an Apple Studio Display without any hit to performance. There’s also a very good 12MP camera on the front, good microphones and speakers that are good for most tasks.

16GB remains the default memory amount, and when ordering through Apple, this can be upped to 24GB or 32GB, although Apple’s upgrade prices are high.

There has been a welcome boost to storage, with the 256GB model finally saying ‘bye-bye’ and the 512GB option slotting in as the base option. That’s great, and very welcome. There’s also a new 4TB SSD option, joining 1TB and 2TB. Again, these must be selected at the time of purchase, and they’re not cheap. For example, 4TB of storage more than doubles the price of the laptop. The memory bandwidth has jumped from 153GB/s to 120GB/s.

There are two versions of the MacBook Air M5 available. The base model has a 10-core CPU, 8-core GPU and 16-core neural engine for AI tasks. For £100/$100 more, you can bump that GPU up to a 10-core version. 

The model I have for review is the base option, so all the benchmarking stats are for the 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU model with 16GB memory. This is likely the one most people will buy, although for the modest upgrade, you will get a bit more graphical oomph from the 10-core GPU.

Like all M-series Macs, this is a fast laptop that can handle everything most people will throw at it. It can edit multiple streams of 4K video in Final Cut and doesn’t baulk when some of the more testing options are turned on. I loaded up lots of huge images of Pixelmator Pro and Lightroom and even played a few games, like Tomb Raider and Death Stranding – nothing caused it to chug.

I say this every year, but the biggest praise I can give M-series Macs is that you don’t ever need to think about performance on a day-to-day basis. They just work, and unless you want to push really intensive multi-core processes or run huge AI models, the M5 is all the power you need.

The M5 isn’t a huge leap forward compared to the M4, which wasn’t a huge jump from the M3, although the extra performance will certainly be noticeable compared to the MacBook Air M1 or those still on Intel Macs. Also, for anyone with an 8GB memory MacBook, there is definitely reason to upgrade if that is beginning to bog you down.

The software here, which at the time of review is macOS Tahoe, includes the same apps, same (although no better) Apple Intelligence features and same updates you get with a Pro or Neo.

Battery Life

• Good battery life
• No charger included in certain regions
• Can be charged via MagSafe or USB-C

In one area, the MacBook Air M5 is a bit of a downgrade from the M4. Apple has, in certain regions like the UK, removed the charger from the box of the laptop, just like it did with phones all those years ago. You can still get a nice braided, colour-matched MagSafe cable in the box; you’ll just have to provide your own plug. 

To get the fastest speeds, find one that supports 70W speeds at a minimum. I love this Anker 100W charger, as it has prongs that fold away and can charge three devices at once. It’s also nice and portable, and not too expensive. With this charger, I got from 0-50% in 32 minutes.

Previously, the cheapest 13-inch model came with a 30W USB-C power adapter. While all other options came with a faster 35W plug with two USB-C ports, so an iPhone could be charged at the same time. In the US, where a charger is still included, the default option is now a 40W adapter that can boost up to 60W.

In terms of endurance, the M5 version of the MacBook Air is on par with the M4 and an improvement over the M3 and older models. I doubt anyone is going to be upgrading from an M4, so most will notice some marginal improvements.

Battery life does very much depend on how the Air is used. When I reviewed the Air M3 in 2024, I said that after an intensive work day of browsing, writing documents, some light image editing and video calls, I was left with 25%. With the M4, the year after, it was closer to 30% – and with the M5, it’s very much around that 30% mark.

Should you buy it?