MacBook Air M5 review: Boring has never been this good
MacBook Air M5 review: Boring has never been this good
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-macbook-air-m5-review/
Publish Date: 2026-06-22 08:11:00
Source Domain: www.digitaltrends.com
MacBook Air M5
MSRP $1,099.00
“Performance stopped mattering. Excellence remained.”
Pros
- Great battery life
- Thin and light
- Good performance
Cons
- No OLED yet
- That display notch
Quick Take
The MacBook Air M5 is what happens when Apple keeps refining an already excellent laptop instead of reinventing it. On paper, the upgrades feel modest. The design is unchanged, the display is still 60Hz, and the M5 chip isn’t delivering the dramatic leap that makes last year’s model instantly obsolete. Yet after spending two weeks with it, none of that really matters.
What stands out is how effortless everything feels. The M5 delivers more performance than most users will ever need, battery life remains excellent, the keyboard and trackpad are still among the best in the business, and macOS Tahoe continues to benefit from Apple’s tightly integrated ecosystem.
The lack of an OLED display and the continued presence of the notch prevent it from being perfect, but they are minor complaints in an otherwise outstanding package.
If you’re coming from an Intel Mac, an M1 MacBook Air, or an ageing Windows laptop, the MacBook Air M5 is one of the easiest laptop recommendations I’ve made in years. It’s not revolutionary. It’s just exceptionally good at almost everything.
Apple MacBook Air M5 Specifications
| Specification | Apple MacBook Air M5 (13-inch) |
|---|---|
| Model Name | Apple MacBook Air M5 |
| Operating System | macOS 26 Tahoe |
| Processor | Apple M5 (10-core CPU) |
| NPU | 16-core Neural Engine |
| Graphics | Apple 8-core GPU |
| Memory | 16GB Unified Memory |
| Storage | 512GB SSD |
| Display | 13.6-inch Liquid Retina IPS Display |
| 2560 × 1664 resolution | |
| 60Hz refresh rate | |
| 500 nits brightness | |
| P3 Wide Colour Gamut | |
| True Tone Technology | |
| Support for 1… |
