MacBook Air with M5

sq_

Seems to be the expected relatively small refresh, mostly just adding the M5? The language towards the end of the press release implies to me that they're targeting last-gen Intel MacBook Air users thinking about upgrades more than anyone with an M2/3/4 MacBook.

tempaccount420

Wow, 512GB of storage on the base model! That means the more reasonable 1TB option is cheaper now (+$200 over base).

vampiregrey

I am still waiting for Mac Mini with M5

clouedoc

What about MacBook Pro M5? Waiting for that one.

julianozen

Damn. Will this company ever make a Mac with cellular built in

NoLinkToMe

Not exciting at all, but a nice incremental upgrade. I always enjoy incremental upgrades from Apple as they're usually significant, and 4 years worth of increments add up to big leaps, to the point my 8 year upgrade cycle is usually quite exciting. Though a bit disappointing that it came with a $100 (almost 10%, above inflation) price bump. There's not much point to a spec bump when it's paired with a price bump, and faster specs for more money is usually an option. This negative price-sensitivity is particularly important for a model (Air) that caters to casual users, who typically aren't at all begging for spec bumps, and certainly not willing to pay much extra for them. Yes the new cheap macbook will fill the gap below it, but the new MBA's don't seem like great value play. I recently bought a new old M2 model for roughly a 40% discount for my girlfriend and the value is insane. Same ports, screen, battery life, same formfactor/weight/keyboard, same software, storage, memory. Only it doesn't have the latest fast M5 chip, but for almost all Air users I think that's not a necessity. Certainly my gf wouldn't experience a difference in the next 6-8 years of use I think she'll reasonably get out of this thing. Which is a fantastic position to be in, Apple creates so much value here that older models are amazing and affordable. But new models just don't seem very interesting to buy.

mg

The one thing that interests me most when it comes to laptops these days is weight. So I jumped right into the tech specs section and looked it up. Since this is the "Air" laptop of the company that is popular for thin and lightweight devices, my hopes were high. But ... The 13 inch version is heavier than a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Which has a 14 inch screen and can run Linux.

TZubiri

Damn, it feels like just yesterday they announced the Macbook Air with M4. Time flies...

honeycrispy

I wish they would provide Linux support. I can't stand OSX.

hash_it

Finally the specs which were actually needed!

mattfrommars

I have yet to understand myself why did I pay $2300 something for M4 Pro with 512gb storage. Like, for that kind of money, I should have gotten at least 1 TB. My worst purchase thus far.

mifydev

What about the screen refresh rate? Do they deliberately keep it at 60hz so people would buy a MacBook Pro?

mft_

Looking at the M5 Max specifically, two thoughts: 1) The price for a 14" model with the most powerful Max processor with 128GB of RAM ($5099 with all else left at the default settings) doesn't seem to have jumped hugely considering what's being going on with RAM prices in the world. 2) Interesting/disappointing that they aren't offering a model with even more RAM, further jumping on the local inference train.

thesimp

In NL I can buy a base Macbook Air with 16G memory and 512G SSD voor 1199,- inc tax. I just looked up my M1 receipt: in 2020 I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16G memory and 512G SSD for 1399,- inc tax. I did not expect the price for a base machine to go down in 2026.

teliskr

I've been using Macbook Pros for a long time. I usually spend 3-4k on them. I recently purchased an 14" Asus ZenBook for $1300 and loaded Omarchy Linux on it. I wanted to have something less expensive and lightweight for traveling. I really like it a lot! I notice that it is a little slower than my Macbook Pro, but the performance completely acceptable for most things.

tiffanyh

I'm not sure why the negative tone in this thread. The MBA is an amazing value, and appears to have only gotten slightly cheaper . This is a solid product, that continually receives incremental improvements and delivered at a lower price point (when spec'd out).

bengale

The base Macbook Air continues to be an absolutely great deal.

Xeoncross

I'm glad the air now comes standard with 16GB of RAM and 512GB disk space. It's not that the M1 with 8/256GB was slow at all, but even browsing the web gets into 12GB of usage and exhausting the 256GB is fairly easy if you backup your 256GB phone, try to edit a few videos, download enough Gradle/Go/Cargo/Node packages, or install enough 20GB office apps. Any apple silicon with 16GB / 512GB of stage (even the M1 series) should have a much longer useful life and avoid disk/storage aging as rapidly from the constant swapping.

hermanzegerman

Wow it's so exciting. And next year there will be a M6 MacBook looking exactly the same with slightly different specs. Hardware is completely boring now. That also applies to Phones

bhouston

I love my MacBook Air 15" M3 so much. It is large fast and light. While I really appreciate the improved M5, my main ask is actually a brighter screen. The current 500 nits is a bit low if you are ever not in a dark room. Anyhow, because the differences between my M3 and the new M5 are just the CPU/GPU and I am not actually hurt much by the current CPU speed, I won't be upgrading.