Following the unveiling of the iPhone 17e and the iPad Air equipped with the M4 chip, Apple today announced the latest MacBook Air featuring the M5 processor, along with the premium variant of the MacBook Pro that incorporates the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. These refreshed laptops boast increased storage, Apple’s integrated connectivity chip, and several additional enhancements.
While the company is said to be planning a redesign of the MacBook Pro lineup later this year, suggesting that most users may want to wait a bit longer, the MacBook Air has been notably improved and remains the most sensible choice for anyone considering a Mac.
“The new MacBook Air with M5 delivers exceptional performance and enhanced functionality to the most sought-after laptop globally,” commented John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “With M5, the MacBook Air efficiently handles a broad spectrum of tasks, from everyday productivity to creative endeavors, and it shows notable speed improvements for AI.” Here’s all you need to know regarding the new M5 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models before Wednesday’s pre-sale and their official launch next week.
M5 MacBook Air: Apple’s top-selling laptop sees significant upgrades
Offered in 13 and 15-inch variants, the new MacBook Air featuring the M5 chip delivers 4x increased performance over the prior generation for AI applications, alongside enhancements in graphic processing attributed to Neural Accelerators within each GPU core. Apple claims this laptop excels at running AI models locally, and its unified memory with 153GB/s bandwidth ensures a more responsive experience when customers are editing videos, rendering 3D objects using ray tracing, or processing multiple images.
A remarkable improvement from the prior generation is that the MacBook Air now starts with a minimum of 512GB of storage, expandable to 4TB for the first time. This new SSD also offers twice the read and write speed compared to the M4 model. Additional upgrades include Apple’s innovative N1 chip, an in-house solution for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 that enhances connectivity performance, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a superior 12MP Center Stage camera, and battery life extending to 18 hours.
Furthermore, Apple maintains the same color options as the earlier generation, including sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. Although the MacBook Air may come across as slightly pricier, starting again at $1,099, the doubling of base storage arguably balances that increase.
MacBook Pro boasts significant improvements in the latest iteration
After launching the basic M5 MacBook Pro last year, Apple is now updating the high-end model with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The company claims it provides up to 4x enhanced AI performance compared to the M4 generation, and for those selecting the M5 Pro variant, it begins with 1TB of storage, while the M5 Max option offers a minimum of 2TB.
The new chips are designed with an up to 18-core CPU, delivering performance that is up to 30% faster than the prior generation, and Apple asserts that it features the fastest CPU core globally. The new GPU architecture, combined with the Neural Accelerator, provides a 50% boost in graphics performance over the M4 models, as the company emphasizes these laptops are optimized for processing LLM prompts, 3D rendering, and editing high-quality content. The M5 Pro can now support up to 64GB of memory and offers a memory bandwidth of up to 307GB/s; in contrast, the M5 Max model can accommodate up to 128GB of RAM and up to 614GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Similar to the MacBook Air, Apple has introduced a new SSD which reads and writes data at double the speed of the previous model, achieving speeds of up to 14.5GB/s. It also includes Apple’s N1 connectivity chip featuring support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. This laptop now comes with three Thunderbolt 5 ports and starts at $2,199.