M5 MacBook Air 15-Inch Falls Close to 13-Inch Pricing as Apple Pushes Bigger Discounts on Amazon (15.3-inch Liquid Retina Display)
Publish Date: 2026-05-15 10:25:00
Source Domain: gizmodo.com
The Apple MacBook Air 15-inch with M5 chip is the larger-screen version of Apple’s mainstream consumer laptop, the model aimed at users who want a bigger display than the 13-inch Air but don’t need the higher brightness, ProMotion refresh rate, or extra ports of the MacBook Pro line. You get a 15.3-inch Liquid Retina display, Apple’s new M5 chip with significant AI performance gains over the M4, a fanless design that runs completely silent under load, and up to 18 hours of battery life per charge. Base configuration ships with 16 GB of unified memory and a 256 GB SSD, both of which are double the previous-generation Air models’ starting amounts.
You can pick up the 15-inch MacBook Air with M5 for $1,149 on Amazon, down from the list price of $1,300. That works out to a $151 discount, or about 12% off.
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A powerful MacBook perfect for both casual and hardcore users
Apple has greatly improved the Neural Engine in the M5, enabling on-device AI functions to run about 3.5 times faster than on the M4. On-device AI-related functionality, such as image generation in Pixelmator Pro, responses from Apple-intelligence AI-based applications, and AI-assisted photo editing in Photos, is now much faster than before. In addition, CPU and GPU performance have been improved by 15-20% over the M4, resulting in faster video export and less lag while playing games built specifically for macOS.
The 15-inch screen features the same 2880 x 1864 native resolution as its predecessor and provides a full 500 nits of continuous brightness and a full P3 wide color gamut. With the larger display, you can multitask with two or three windows open side by side, read lengthy documents without constantly scrolling, and watch videos without feeling too confined.
Battery life remains one of the strongest reasons to choose the Air. Apple rates the 15-inch M5 model at up to 18 hours of video playback or roughly 15 hours of mixed productivity per charge, which…