M5 MacBook Air vs M4 MacBook Air: What’s Actually Changed?

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Need-to-knows

• New M5 chip is marginally faster than the M4
• Design and weight remain the same
• No changes to battery life
• Price increase of $100 for the M5 MacBook Air

Apple’s MacBook Air updates have become a bit like meeting an old friend at the pub after a few years apart. You wonder before you see them if they’ll be the same as before, if their personality, sense of humour or appearance has changed. Then they turn up, and it’s the same as it’s always been, apart from the fact that they’re sporting a fetching new jacket.

That’s pretty much the story with the M5 MacBook Air compared to the M4 MacBook Air.

On paper, Apple has updated quite a lot: a new chip, faster wireless, a handful of spec tweaks, and some changes around external display support. In practice, however, this is very much an iterative upgrade. If you already own an M4 MacBook Air, the M5 version isn’t suddenly going to make your laptop feel ancient.

Instead of running through every single spec line-by-line, let’s focus on the changes that actually matter, and whether they’re worth caring about.

At a glance

The M5 chip: faster, but not dramatically so

The most obvious change is the new M5 chip.

Just like the M4, it features a 10-core CPU with four performance cores and six efficiency cores, and it’s available with either an 8-core or 10-core GPU. In this sense, it is the same chip.

Where things differ is in real-world performance. The M5 benefits from efficiency improvements and higher memory bandwidth, 153GB/s versus 120GB/s on the M4, which gives it more breathing room when handling heavier workloads.

More info: M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro

That means you’ll get things like slightly faster video exports, smoother performance in GPU-heavy apps and better longevity as macOS evolves.

That’s all very nice, but the M4 MacBook Air was already ridiculously fast and capable.

Unless you spend your days rendering 3D scenes, editing huge batches of photos, or exporting video projects, you’re unlikely to notice a massive leap from M4 to M5. And let’s face it, who has those kinds of workloads and buys a MacBook Air anyway?

For typical MacBook Air use, writing, browsing, photo editing, and the occasional creative project, the M4 is easily sufficient. More than sufficient, in fact, it’s pretty overpowered.

Check out my MacBook Neo review!

The interesting thing to note here is the existence of the MacBook Neo and how it repositions the MacBook Air. If you are mainly doing those sorts of tasks with the Air listed above, then they could probably be handled by the MacBook Neo too. This points towards where Apple might be trying to steer the discussion: perhaps the MacBook Air should now be viewed as a more capable all-rounder where users shouldn’t be afraid to do things like edit video or model statistics.

Connectivity moves forward

One area where the M5 MacBook Air genuinely moves things along is connectivity.

The M4 model offered:

• Wi-Fi 6E
• Bluetooth 5.3

The M5 bumps that up to:

• Wi-Fi 7
• Bluetooth 6
• Apple’s new N1 wireless networking chip

Related: Find out the best MacBook for you!

Right now, Wi-Fi 7 is still emerging, so most people won’t see an immediate difference unless they already have a compatible router. But this is one of those changes that helps a bit with future-proofing. The latest wireless standards are more of a ‘nice-to-have’ than anything, but it is one of the bigger updates to the M5 MacBook Air.

The N1 chip should again improve connection speeds and power efficiency, but not to any hugely noticeable degree.

External display support has improved

One of the biggest frustrations with older MacBook Air models was external display support. Apple has gradually improved this, and the M5 Air takes another step forward.

The new model supports:

• two external displays up to 6K at 60Hz or 4K at 144Hz
• 8K output at 60Hz or 5K at 120Hz
• dual displays over a single Thunderbolt connection

By comparison, the M4 MacBook Air supported two external displays up to 6K, which was already decent but slightly less flexible.

More: My list of the best iPhones!

For most people, this won’t change anything. But if you use your Air as a desk machine with multiple monitors, the M5 model gives you a bit more headroom.

The design remains…exactly the same

Apple hasn’t changed anything about the MacBook Air’s design this year, and rightly so. There wasn’t any need to go about making drastic alterations to something that is already very portable.

The M5 MacBook Air is physically identical to the M4 version:

• same 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display
• same 500-nit brightness
• same 1.13 cm thickness
• same 1.23 kg weight

Even the colour lineup is the same: Sky Blue, Silver, Starlight, and Midnight.

Battery life

Battery life is identical between the two machines.

Both claim:

• up to 18 hours of video playback
• up to 15 hours of web browsing

The battery capacity is the same, too, at 53.8Wh.

Given how good the M4 Air already was in this department, that’s hardly a complaint. Apple Silicon Macs remain some of the most efficient laptops on the market and that translates into top battery performance.

Big battery: Xiaomi 17 Ultra review

Until Apple embraces new battery tech, like silicon carbide, battery upgrades will remain minor between device generations.

Storage and price

One other large change lies in the storage tiers.

The M4 MacBook Air started with 256GB, which felt a bit restrictive for a modern laptop where many people are performing tasks that involve large files, like videos or photos.

MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

The M5 lineup begins at 512GB, which makes far more sense in 2026 and makes the device slightly better value for money.

To offset that, though, Apple has also raised the price of the M5 MacBook Air to $1,099/£1,099 from $999/£999.

Conclusion: which should you buy?

If you already own an M4 MacBook Air, the answer is a very obvious ‘no’.

There are some minor improvements between the two models, but they will have little impact on the experience of most users. The M5 chip is faster, wireless connectivity is newer, and external display support is better, but the overall experience is almost identical.

If you’re choosing between buying an M4 or M5 MacBook Air today, then it’s a slightly closer call to make. But, because the M4 MacBook Air is so excellent and cheaper than the M5 (especially if you find a good deal), our advice is still to go with that.

If money is no object, then getting the M5 MacBook Air makes sense as you’ll be getting the latest chip, which future-proofs you just that little bit more.

The M5 MacBook Air’s biggest problem is the very laptop that came before it. Apple did such a good job with the M4 Air that it remains the best pick today!