If you were bummed that the new M5-powered MacBook Air cost $100 more than last year’s model, we’ve got some good news: it’s now cheaper than its predecessor. You can currently buy the latest 13-inch MacBook Air with an M5 chip, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD on sale for $949.99 ($150 off) at Amazon and Best Buy. If you prefer a larger screen, the 15-inch model — which is almost identical but adds a louder six-speaker system — is also $150 off, starting at $1,149 ($150 off) at Amazon and Best Buy.
If you want a laptop that can handle everyday work, streaming, and even some graphics-heavy tasks, the latest MacBook Air is one of the best you can buy. It’s Apple’s fastest entry-level laptop yet, now starting with double the storage of its predecessor, along with significantly faster read and write speeds that rival the M5 MacBook Pro. That translates to quicker file transfers and smoother multitasking. In testing, my colleague Antonio Di Benedetto imported 1,000 50-megapixel RAW images into Lightroom Classic while exporting a 4K video in Premiere, downloading a game on Steam, and keeping 17 Chrome tabs open. The system significantly slowed down, but impressively, it didn’t crash.
Beyond performance, the latest Air still nails the basics. Like the previous model, the latest Air lasts up to 14 hours on a single charge and features a sharp 12-megapixel Center Stage camera, which is one of the best webcams you can get in a laptop. It’s also more futureproof with support for Wi-Fi 7 and should hold up well for several years to come. All in all, it’s a fantastic jack-of-all-trades laptop and a worthwhile upgrade if you’re coming from an older system, especially an M1 MacBook Air or earlier.
