MacBook Air M5 review: Apple’s best consumer laptop speeds up

. UK edition

Apple 13in MacBook Air M5 displaying the Guardian website homepage.
The 13in MacBook Air is the premium laptop to beat. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Chip upgrade brings pro-level power, long battery life and plenty of storage, but the Air now faces real competition

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.

The M5 MacBook Air starts at £1,099 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) for the 13in version, which is £100 or equivalent more than last year’s excellent M4 version, but comes with at least 512GB of storage. It sits above the £599 MacBook Neo and below the £1,699 M5 MacBook Pro, making the Air Apple’s mid-range machine.

As with the last few versions, nothing has changed on the outside. The Air is still Apple’s thinnest laptop, looking and feeling every bit a quality machine with its recycled aluminium body, rounded corners and one-finger opening.

The 13.6in screen is still just as bright, crisp and colourful, although it is also still limited to a mundane 60Hz refresh rate, with Apple’s smoother, faster 120Hz displays limited to the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and recent iPhone 17 models.

Specifications

Pro-level performance

Inside, the new M5 chip marks a watershed moment for Apple’s laptop line. It is about 10-20% faster than the M4 in the previous edition, which is nothing to be sniffed at. But with the progress over the last few years, the M5 makes this MacBook Air between 75% and 108% faster than the M1 MacBook Air depending on the task. It also beats the once groundbreaking M1 Pro MacBook Pro from 2021 in all metrics, which means you get pro-level performance across the board from the Air.

The Air also has Apple’s N1 chip, which brings welcome upgrades with Bluetooth 6 and wifi 7 for faster and more reliable wifi with modern routers. The new 512GB or greater SSD offers plenty of storage for most and is also twice as fast as the previous version, which helps with more intensive tasks and noticeably speeds up file transfers.

The M5 chip preserves the Air’s other main selling point: very long battery life. It routinely lasts for more than 17 hours of office work between charges, including browsing, taking notes, writing documents, chat and email, plus several hours of photo editing in Affinity and Pixelmator Pro.

When video editing or doing other more intensive tasks, the Air still managed to last about 10 hours, meaning you should be able to get any play or work day done without needing to reach for the charger – a position the PC competition still has not managed to routinely reach.

Sustainability

The MacBook Air is made with 55% recycled materials. Apple breaks down the computer’s environmental impact in its report. The battery should last in excess of 1,000 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity, and can be replaced from £179. Apple offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

Price

The Apple 13in MacBook Air starts at £1,099 (€1,199/$1,099/A$1,799) with an 8-core GPU, 16GB of RAM 512GB of storage. The larger 15in versions start at £1,199 (€1,499/$1,299/A$2,199).

For comparison, the A18 Pro MacBook Neo costs from £599, the M5 MacBook Pro starts at £1,699, the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro costs £1,619 and the Microsoft 13.8in Surface Laptop starts at £1,419.

Verdict

The M5 MacBook Air continues to set the standard for a thin, light and powerful consumer laptop. Its combination of excellent build quality, screen, trackpad, keyboard, speakers, mics and webcam, plus serious performance and very long battery life, just can’t be beat.

Some rivals may have better screens. Others have beefy graphics chips or a better selection of ports – the Air has only two USB-C ports. But none are packaged together as well, unless you specifically need Windows or Linux.

The big new thorn in the MacBook Air’s side is Apple’s MacBook Neo, which can be bought at roughly half the price of the Air and offers excellent value with many good bits, particularly for general light computing. But the M5 MacBook Air is still a better all-round computer and the one to buy if you’re after a premium notebook to go the distance for work or play.

Pros: rapid M5 chip and extremely long battery life, silent and cool running, good 13.6in screen, great keyboard, best-in-class trackpad, MagSafe, good speakers, Centre Stage webcam, Touch ID, wifi 7 and Bluetooth 6, at least 512GB of storage.

Cons: only two USB-C ports, no USB-A or SD card slot, no Face ID, RAM and SSD upgrades are expensive and cannot be changed after purchase, no power adaptor in the box in the UK.