I upgraded to the MacBook Air M5 at last — and, boy, is it fast
I upgraded to the MacBook Air M5 at last — and, boy, is it fast
Publish Date: 2026-04-25 13:00:00
Source Domain: www.techradar.com
If you’ve read many of my pieces on TechRadar, you’ll know I’ve been threatening to buy a new MacBook for a long while now. In part, this is because my laptop was a MacBook Pro 13-inch 2017 and its performance was getting decidedly dicey during demanding tasks. A far bigger motivation was the professional embarrassment of still using an Intel-based machine almost six years after the brand switched to using its far more powerful Apple silicon chipset.
So when the MacBook Air M5 was announced, I knew I was going to be pulling the trigger. Not only was every MacBook Air M5 review I read glowing, but I knew it was such a substantial step up from my existing machine that I would be getting enormous value out of every dollar I spent.
After much deliberation — by which I mean two weeks solid of full-blown choice gridlock — I finally settled on my chosen spec. Upgrading to 24GB of RAM was a bit of a no-brainer. While the MacBook Air 13-inch’s default 16GB is already double that of my last MacBook Pro, I wanted to make sure I was fully future-proofed for increasing software demands.
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And thanks to the enormous size of some music-making tools and audio sample packs that I use regularly, I’ve had issues with SSD space in recent years, requiring regular trawls of my files to find things to delete. In light of this, skipping over the base 512GB drive to the 1TB seemed to make perfect sense
Now that’s not the cheapest spec for one of the best laptops by any means. In fact, it set me back a cool $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399, which is a fair step up from the $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799 charged for the base edition. But coupled with the M5 chip, that gives me a whole lot of power to play with, especially compared to a model so old that it was still running an Intel-based chipset.
My mind finally made up, I finally ordered my new MacBook Air after more than a year of posturing. And just…
