M5 MacBook Air review: Performance takes another step

The M5 MacBook Air launches tomorrow, and the first review is now available. Here’s what reviewers are saying.

Apple’s mid-range MacBook is more powerful with the M5 chip

The MacBook Air now sits between the affordable, less powerful MacBook Neo and the high-end MacBook Pro. But the review makes it clear that the M5 MacBook Air is still a powerhouse in its own right.

Lance Ulanoff writes at TechRadar:

I got the new MacBook Air M5 13 inch more than capable of doing some heavy tasks.

I started by opening Lightroom and loading in some raw images. I then launched Final Cut Pro and imported the 8K 30 fps video, then made three copies and started editing the video where all four videos would play at once. Next, I loaded Pixelmater Pro and edited the image. I also installed Chrome and opened 25 tabs (tuned to TechRadar, of course). After that, I installed and started playing Lies of P. Finally, I installed Steam and downloaded Inzoi, a rich, open world sim that kind of blew me away with its options and scope.

MacBook Air continued. At one point, I got a system message indicating that Inzoi was consuming a lot of system processes and battery, and that I should consider switching to low power, but when I exited the game the battery was still close to 90%. Overall, I found it hard to emphasize the M5 and its 16GB of RAM.

In direct comparison with the M4, Tom’s guide shared a few test results. Tony Polanco says:

In Geekbench 6, which measures overall CPU performance, it pulled a solid multi-core score of 17,276. That’s a significant jump over last year’s model (14,921)…On our Handbrake test, which runs the laptop through transcoding 4K video to 1080p, the MacBook Air M5 finished in 4 minutes and 34 seconds. That’s more than 20 seconds faster than the previous model

This is a modest improvement. But as noted by Dan Moren at Six Colorsthe M5 offers powerful advantages especially for anyone with an older MacBook Air.

He says, “go back to M3, M2, M1, and you’re talking jumps to 38%, 57%, and 75% range of motion for one spine.”

Faster SSD speeds exceed Apple’s claims

Another change of the M5 MacBook Air that contributes to the performance benefit is the faster SSD.

Apple claims the latest SSD is up to 2x faster than the M4 model. And reviewers confirmed that—and more.

Dan Moren writes in Six Colors:

One place where you’ll find a noticeable bump is in storage. The Air now starts at 512GB of SSD storage, double that of its predecessor, and offers up to 4TB, the same maximum as all but the M5 Max-configured MacBook Pros. That increase in capacity comes with an improvement in speed as well: Apple says the new SSDs are twice as fast as the previous generation and my tests agree. Compared to my own M4 MacBook Air, the M5 registered a 125 percent improvement in reading speed, and more. 219 percent write speed improvement, according to Blackmagic disk tests. Those numbers were so impressive, I used AmorphousDiskMark as a comparison and came up with the best: at least a 250 percent improvement.

M5 MacBook Air: Who should upgrade?

The new M5 model is not intended to attract M4 MacBook Air users. It only offers a few changes compared to last year’s model.

However, reviewers generally suggest that anyone with an M2 or higher can see a decent improvement.

Zarif Ali writes on Pocket-lint:

If you’re using an M2 Air or an older model, that’s when you should consider upgrading if your workflow requires it. The M5 offers enough logical improvements in chip headroom, memory bandwidth, and storage infrastructure to make the leap in productivity worthwhile if your current machine is struggling. For anyone on an M1 Air or an Intel-based MacBook, the M5 represents a revolution in everyday responsiveness, AI power, and longevity that no frame of reference can adequately capture.

Are you planning to upgrade to an M5 MacBook Air? What is your current model? Let us know in the comments.

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