MacBook Air M5

Storage was the headline change on this release. The MacBook Air with M5 doubled its starting capacity to 512GB, where every model since the M2 had begun at 256GB. Apple paired that with a faster SSD, and the base price rose $100 to $1,099 for the 13-inch and $1,299 for the 15-inch. Students and educators paid $999 and $1,199. The four colours carried over unchanged: sky blue, midnight, starlight and silver.

The M5 chip inside has a 10-core processor, four performance cores and six efficiency cores, paired with graphics that now include a Neural Accelerator in every core. Apple says that makes AI tasks up to four times faster than the M4 model and around nine and a half times faster than an M1 Air at processing text prompts. All models come with 16GB of memory as standard, upgradable to 24GB or 32GB. The entry-level 13-inch has an 8-core graphics chip, while every other configuration, including all 15-inch models, uses the 10-core version.

Everything else stayed familiar. The fanless aluminium body is unchanged, so the machine is silent whatever it's doing, and battery life remained at up to 18 hours. Apple's own N1 wireless chip brought Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and the 12MP Center Stage camera carried over. The two Thunderbolt 4 ports stayed as they were, and the display is still a Liquid Retina panel without the higher refresh rate found on the MacBook Pro. 

It was announced on 3 March 2026, opened for pre-order the next day, and reached customers on 11 March 2026.