Apple updates MacBook Air with M5 SoC, double the base storage, and WiFi 7

The MacBook Air has finally been granted the M5 treatment, bringing it on par with the rest of Apple's MacBook family. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been no design changes to the product at all.

Courtesy of a 10-core setup consisting of 4 performance and 6 efficiency cores, the M5 SoC is roughly around 20% faster than its predecessor, the M4, in CPU benchmarks. GPU performance should be around 30% faster overall, with massive improvements in AI workloads due to the addition of neural accelerators to each GPU core. According to Apple, there should be an impressive 4x improvement in AI-based tasks compared to M4.

Moreover, the MacBook Air now sports WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6, thanks to the inclusion of Apple's N1 chip. Similar to the MacBook Pro lineup, storage is now stated to be twice as fast as before, with the base variants being equipped with 512 GB - twice as before. Unsurprisingly, pricing for the entry-level variants have also been updated.

The displays remain the same, sporting the exact same 13.6" and 15.3" IPS LCD panels as its predecessors. Apple claims peak brightness of 500 nits, as well as support for the DCI-P3 color gamut. There is no support for higher refresh rates or mini LED backlighting, however, which is natural.

The base variant of the MacBook Air 13" now starts at $1,099, shipping with a cut-down M5 SoC with an 8-core GPU, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. The 15" variant with the full-fat M5 SoC and the same amount of memory and storage costs an additional $200. Customers can also equip the MacBook Air with up to 32 GB of RAM and a 4 TB SSD. The color options also remain same as before - Sky Blue, Silver, Midnight, and Starlight.

Pre-orders are open now, with shipments starting from March 11, 2026.