Apple has raised the starting price of the MacBook Air with M5 by $100, but it now gives you double the base storage and faster SSD speeds, which makes the new pricing easier to justify. The 13-inch model now starts at $1,099, up from $999 on the M4 version, and Apple has brought the entry configuration back to the price older MacBook Air models once had.
At the same time, Apple has doubled the base storage from 256GB to 512GB and now ships the laptop with 16GB of RAM as standard, which means you no longer need to upgrade memory on day one just to get comfortable performance for daily work.
Apple announced the MacBook Air with M5 and confirmed that pre-orders begin on March 4, with availability starting March 11.
“The new MacBook Air with M5 brings incredible performance and even more capability to the world’s most popular laptop,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Price Increase, But Better Value
The price goes up by $100, but the hardware jump is clear:
- Base storage increases to 512GB
- Maximum storage doubles from 2TB to 4TB
- SSD offers 2x faster read and write speeds
- Standard memory now sits at 16GB RAM
You also get faster unified memory at 153GB/s bandwidth, along with improved AI performance compared to previous generations.
Performance and Features
The M5 chip brings a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core, which improves AI workloads and creative tasks. Apple says the laptop handles demanding apps like Blender and Affinity much faster than M1 models, and even improves over M4 in key workflows.
The MacBook Air remains available in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, and comes in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. It keeps its thin aluminum design, fanless build, Liquid Retina display, 12MP Center Stage camera, up to 18 hours of battery life, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports with support for two external displays.
The higher price stands out at first, but the doubled base storage and stronger default specs make this update more practical for long-term use.
