Apple has refreshed its most popular laptop — MacBook Air — with faster performance, twice as much built-in storage, and support for next-generation Wi-Fi 7 speeds. But it's not all good news.
The new MacBook Air starts from £1,099. That's £100 more than the entry-level MacBook Air that launched last year with the M4 system-on-a-chip and improved Centre Stage webcam. The last time the MacBook Air lineup started from £1,099 was two years ago. Apple hasn't revealed exactly why it's increased prices, but the recent worldwide surge in prices for memory, storage, and other core components seems like a safe bet.
The step-up to 512GB of storage on the entry-level model softens the blow. If you'd bought the same storage configuration at checkout last year, your MacBook Air would've carried the same £1,099 price tag – the only difference this time around is that there isn't a more affordable £999 variant with a smaller SSD.
If you're in full-time education, MacBook Air M5 still starts from £999. You'll need to prove your student status to qualify for the discount, which is also available on the 15" model, which now starts from £1,199.
Despite the soaring costs of aftermarket RAM upgrades for PCs, Apple has kept the same £200 price tag for its unified memory upgrades that it's offered since the launch of the M1-powered MacBook Air back in November 2020. You'll need to shell out £1,299 for a 13-inch MacBook Air with 24GB of RAM, rising to £1,499 for 32GB.
Apple Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, said: "The new MacBook Air with M5 brings incredible performance and even more capability to the world’s most popular laptop. With M5, MacBook Air powers through a wide range of tasks, from everyday productivity to creative workloads, and is even faster for AI.
"Now featuring double the starting storage, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, in a sleek and durable design with long battery life, MacBook Air is the perfect laptop for anyone who values the unrivalled combination of performance and portability."
Sky Blue was introduced with the M4 model last year, but is still available on the more powerful MacBook Air M5 across both the 13.6- and 15.3-inch models
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Powering the MacBook Air is the latest M5 system-on-a-chip, which launched alongside the newest iPad Pro and MacBook Pro at the end of last year. For those who missed the announcement, M5 boasts the world’s fastest CPU core to ensure next-level responsiveness as you work within macOS Tahoe. The 10-core CPU is combined with an up-to-10-core GPU that packs a powerful Neural Accelerator in each core.
These Neural Accelerators are specifically dedicated to Artificial Intelligence (AI) tasks, unlocking 4x faster performance in AI tasks compared to the MacBook Air with M4 released just one year ago, and up to 9.5x faster performance compared to the older M1 model released back in 2020.
Whether you're using natural language to scour thousands of photos for a particular person, landmark, or event, running LLMs on-device, or summarising reams of text into a handful of bullet points, AI tasks should be speedier with the M5 doing the heavy lifting. Apple Intelligence is designed to process on-device as much as possible, meaning you can use these AI features without an internet connection.
Apple has paired the M5 with speedier unified memory with 153GB/s of bandwidth — that's a 28% improvement over the M4, which should enable smoother multitasking and faster app launches. The M5 isn't the only custom-designed silicon from the engineers at Apple to make an appearance in this new laptop.
The N1 wireless chip has been fitted, bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the MacBook Air for the first time.
Aside from the upgraded internals, everything else about the MacBook Air M5 is almost identical to its predecessor. It retains the same lightweight all-aluminium chassis, which measures less than half an inch thick, and ships in the same four colourways – Midnight, Sky Blue, Starlight, and Silver.
MacBook Air M5 is available with 13.6- or 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display with 500 nits of brightness. Sadly, there's no option to upgrade to the glare-free screen treatment found on the MacBook Pro.
It retains the Touch ID fingerprint scanner to unlock the laptop without a password, authenticate payments via Apple Pay, and verify your identity in secure apps, like banking.
Apple's 12MP Centre Stage camera enables Desk View, which shows a live feed of the space on your desk in-front of the laptop alongside the view of the person looking into the camera. It's designed for live demonstrations
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The new MacBook Air is equipped with the same webcam as its predecessor. Borrowed from the pricier MacBook Pro lineup, the 12MP Centre Stage offers improved video quality during calls and will automatically keeps people centred in the middle of the viewfinder – even if they move around.
It also supports Desk View, which simultaneously shows you alongside a top-down view of your desk, so you can provide demos in real-time during calls on FaceTime, WhatsApp, and Zoom, to name a few.
According to tests conducted by Apple, MacBook Air owners can expect 18-hours of battery life. If you own one of the last MacBook Air models powered by an Intel-branded chipset, that's an extra 6 hours of battery life before you'll even need to think about searching out a plug.
MacBook Air with M5 supports the latest MagSafe charging, which uses magnets to secure the cable, so that tripping over the cable will not send your new laptop flying across the room. It also sports two Thunderbolt ports for accessories like external storage, displays, and wired accessories.
Thunderbolt can be used to mirror a myriad of connections, including HDMI, Ethernet, USB A, SD card, and more. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack for wired audio. Elsewhere, Apple has included a three-microphone array that should offer improved voice clarity for calls.
Touch ID is built into the keyboard, so you can unlock the MacBook Air with a quick tap of your fingertip. This can also be used to authenticate banking apps and other secure applications as well as Apple Pay payments online
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Apple Intelligence is available out-of-the-box on the new MacBook Air with M5.
You'll be able to use features like Writing Tools, which can proof-read your emails, documents and text messages. It can also rewrite your text to adjust the tone or length. You can also ask Apple Intelligence to transform your writing into a poem, or leverage ChatGPT to add new paragraphs with additional information gathered from across the web.
Apple Intelligence can also be used to summarise lengthy email threads, PDFs, and webpages. Multiple unread notifications will also be recapped by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) to get you up to speed faster.
Siri can now answer thousands of questions about your Mac, offering step-by-step instructions for common requests without searching the internet. You can also type queries to Siri if you're somewhere that barking orders to the hands-free AI assistant could be awkward.
A range of new Writing Tools, powered by Apple Intelligence, will help you summarise, proof-read, and rewrite everything on your Mac in a variety of tones | APPLE PRESS OFFICE Genmoji lets you generate never-before-seen emoji characters based on a brief written prompt. These can be used across macOS, including iMessage, WhatsApp, emails, documents, and more. Likewise, Image Playground is a new app that allows you to tap-into Apple Intelligence to combine concepts, text descriptions, and people from your photo library to create stylised images within seconds.
ChatGPT integration is seamlessly built into Writing Tools and Siri, with no account required for free access. Privacy protections will obscure your IP addresses and ensure no request is stored by OpenAI.
Apple will start taking preorders for its new MacBook Air with M5 tomorrow, before the first laptops begin shipping on March 11, 2026. That's also when you'll be able to head into your nearest Apple Store to test-out this refreshed laptop for yourself.