Posts tagged with "macbook air"

M5 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air Review Roundup

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The reviews are in, and it looks like my initial impressions from last week’s press releases hold up pretty well.

The M5 MacBook Pro

What was clear to me from what Apple said is that the M5 MacBook Pro is an especially nice upgrade, even from the M4 models. As Jason Snell put it on Six Colors:

The pace of Apple silicon progress is breathtaking, not just at the base level that powers the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but up here at the level of bespoke chips designed for Apple’s most powerful systems.

Jason reviewed a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro (18-core CPU, 20-core GPU) chip, which he reported is overall 23% faster than his personal M4 Max laptop. Even with its 32 GPU cores, Jason’s M4 Max was only 14% faster than his M5 Pro MacBook Pro review unit, which has just 20 GPU cores. I’ve noticed similar GPU improvements between my M1 Max Mac Studio and the M4 Pro Mac mini. I’m working on a story about my recent tests, which show that even the last-generation M4 Pro can run circles around the M1 Max’s GPUs. It’s astonishing.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

What I find remarkable about this is that it has allowed Apple to embrace both ends of the computing spectrum at once. The longevity and capabilities of prior generations of Apple silicon chipsets allow for laptops like the MacBook Neo, which by all accounts is a champ at tackling day-to-day workloads. At the same time, the M5 Max exists, which is the sort of chipset that AI workflows and other pro use cases demand. The spread of capabilities has never been wider, which is great for users who can dial in exactly what they need better than ever.

Cameron Faulkner at The Verge was a little less enthusiastic:

People who bought the last-gen MacBook Pros aren’t missing out on a ton, save for the incredibly fast read/write SSD speeds. But if you bought the M2 Max three years ago and you’re already pushing it to its limits, the M5 Max looks like a significant upgrade.

I can’t disagree that if you have an M4-series MacBook Pro, you already have a powerful laptop that most people don’t need to upgrade, but buying decisions aside, I don’t think you can downplay 2× faster SSDs and significantly faster CPUs and GPUs. Given the right workload, those factors matter.

The M5 MacBook Air

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

In many ways, I find the M5 MacBook Air just as exciting. It’s not as powerful as the M5 MacBook Pros, but I’m intrigued by the 15” model. I’ve been using a 14” MacBook Pro for quite a while, and it has convinced me that I’m not interested in going back to a 13” laptop.

What interests me most about the 15” MacBook Air is using it as a companion to my desktop Mac Studio. The reality is that when I’m away from my desk, I rarely need the power of a MacBook Pro or Mac Studio. Instead, most of what I do on a laptop can be accomplished with the Air, connecting via Screen Sharing to my desktop Mac as needed for heavier workloads.

As Dan Moren put it at Six Colors:

The Neo may vie for the title of Apple’s bestselling Mac, but it’s got its work cut out for it: the crown remains the MacBook Air’s to lose and if you come at the king, you better not miss.

For Dan, the SSD performance was a highlight coming in at a 125% improvement over the M4 Air for read speeds and 219% of the M4 Air for write speeds, using Blackmagic’s disk testing tool. That’s better than what Apple claimed in its press releases and the sort of difference that will have practical impacts when working with large files.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

I also found Lance Ulanoff’s perspective on the Air interesting:

The M5 brings the level of performance we’ve previously seen in the MacBook Pro — I had trouble finding anything the laptop couldn’t do.

Consistent with what Jason Snell said of the M5 MacBook Pro, it’s the pace of progress that’s so astonishing. What the MacBook Pro could do yesterday, the M5 Air can do today.

Based on these reviews, I expect the Air will continue to be the best overall laptop in Apple’s lineup for most people. I’m intrigued by the Neo and love what the Pro can accomplish, but the Air sits in a sweet spot that makes it a great value even though it’s no longer the lowest-priced laptop Apple makes.

With these new laptops arriving on customers’ doorsteps and in stores today, I’m sure we’ll hear more firsthand accounts of their capabilities soon. From where things stand today, though, Apple’s laptop lineup has never looked better.

Apple Reveals the New M5 MacBook Air

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

In a third announcement today, Apple revealed the M5 MacBook Air. The design and colors of the new Air remain the same, but its capabilities have been enhanced with the M5 chipset and other updates to the hardware.

John Ternus hits the highlights in Apple’s press release:

The new MacBook Air with M5 brings incredible performance and even more capability to the world’s most popular laptop. With M5, MacBook Air powers through a wide range of tasks, from everyday productivity to creative workloads, and is even faster for AI. Now featuring double the starting storage, as well as Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, in a sleek and durable design with long battery life, MacBook Air is the perfect laptop for anyone who values the unrivaled combination of performance and portability.

Apple says that the M5 Air can perform AI tasks up to four times faster than the M4 model and up to 9.5 times faster than the M1 Air. That’s thanks to the M5, which features 10 CPU cores and up to 10 GPU cores with Neural Accelerators.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

But there are other hardware changes that boost the Air’s performance as well. Its unified memory is now 153GB/s, a 28% improvement over the M4 model. SSD storage is two times faster, starts at 512GB (double the M4 model), and can be configured up to 4TB, the most ever for the Air. Apple’s N1 chip means users will enjoy Wi-Fi 7 speeds and Bluetooth 6, too. Also, Apple rates the M5 Air’s battery life at over 18 hours.

Sadly, the M5 MacBook Air remains a Thunderbolt 4 laptop with two ports available and support for running two external displays. While I would have liked to see the Air add Thunderbolt 5 support, the practical circumstances where I’ve wanted Thunderbolt 5 over 4 are few, so the limitation is understandable.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

It’s telling that for both the M5 Air and M5 Pro and Max MacBook Pros, Apple is comparing performance against the M4 models as well as earlier laptops. Even just one generation on from the M4, the M5’s gains are impressive. Of course, most users will be upgrading from an even earlier model, where the differences are more pronounced.

The M5 MacBook Air comes in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. The starting price for the 13” model is $1,099, and the 15” model is $1,299, with educational buyers paying starting prices that are $100 less for each. The MacBook Air will be available for pre-order tomorrow, March 4, with deliveries and in-store availability starting March 11.

Just the Best: MacStories’ Black Friday 2025 Picks

Black Friday deals started very early this year, and we’ve covered a lot of ground on the MacStories Deals Mastodon and Bluesky accounts since publishing our Early Black Friday Picks. A lot of those deals are ongoing, so it’s worth revisiting that story as you start your holiday shopping in earnest.

However, today, I wanted to hit the highlights of what we’ve covered over the past week on MacStories Deals and add some new deals to the mix that you probably haven’t seen yet, so buckle up, it’s time to go shopping.

MacStories Pixel Icons

All three MacStories Pixel Icon sets are 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Two of the icon sets are specially-designed for Shortcuts. We’ve all been there. You work hard on a shortcut and want to give it the perfect icon, only to realize that Apple doesn’t offer what you want in the Shortcuts app. The MacStories Pixel Icons fill that gap with an extensive set of painstakingly hand-crafted icons with multiple color options created by MacStories’ long-time designer, Silvia Gatta. We also offer a set of Perspective icons that are perfect for OmniFocus Pro and other uses.

Visit our dedicated MacStories Pixel page today to preview all three icon sets and purchase them for 40% off until Monday, December 1.

Apple Hardware

There are a lot of Black Friday deals on Apple hardware, but most of them are good, not great. I’m picky, so I’m only going to focus on just the great deals.

One of the best deals on Apple hardware during Black Friday is the M4 13” MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. If you want more memory or storage than that, you’ll have to settle for a smaller percentage discount, but even with more memory and more storage, you’re still doing better than any other deal this year. The 15” M4 MacBook Air with 16GB of memory and a 256GB SSD is a good deal, too.

Among the many iPad deals, the best is on the 128GB iPad mini with an A17 Pro chip. I’ve had a mini since they were released and love it. The size makes it an excellent reading and video-watching device.

AirPods 4 are also heavily discounted for Black Friday. Apple’s most affordable wireless earbuds come with active noise cancellation and without. The model with no active noise cancellation slightly edges out the model with ANC as far as the discounts are concerned, but both models are a bargain.

However, the very best deals available from Apple in terms of the percentage discount are a 4-pack of AirTags and the Apple Pencil Pro. If you need either, now is the perfect time to buy them.

Smart Home

The holiday season is a great time to catch up on projects and start new ones. For me, that’s often tuning up my smart home setup and setting up some new devices thanks to Black Friday sales. Here are the best ones I’ve seen:

Aqara already makes some of the most affordable smart home devices out there, so you really can’t go wrong with their Black Friday deals. One of my favorites is the FP2 Presence Sensor. It’s far more sophisticated than a simple motion sensor. To start with, it can tell when you’ve left a room, which motion sensors can’t do. I’ve used an FP2 Sensor in my office to control lighting for a couple of years, wrote about it for Club members, and have been really happy with it.

Other great deals from Aqara include its U100 Smart Lock that works with Apple Home Key and HomeKit, the Aqara M3 Home Hub that I recently set up at home and love, and 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro, an outdoor HomeKit camera that I reviewed earlier this year.

My Aqara 4MP Camera Hub G5 Pro is paired with an Ecobee Smart Video Doorbell, which is also on sale for Black Friday. I’ve used various Ecobee smart home products for years and have never been disappointed. The same goes for its smart doorbell. I’ve had it installed for over a year, and it’s been reliable despite facing the sun on some very hot summer days.

Black Friday is also a great time to buy a robot vacuum and mop. There are lots of deals, but the model I’ve tested for the past couple of months and love is the Narwal Freo X10 Pro. It handles vacuuming and mopping, navigating via LiDAR and does an excellent job compared to other robot vacuums I’ve tried. I’ll be reviewing the Freo X10 Pro about it soon, but now’s the time to get it at a steep discount.

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The Best Labor Day Deals on Amazon Right Now

It’s almost Labor Day in the U.S., and like most holidays, it’s a time to save money on your favorite gadgets. Before we get to that, though, I want to thank everyone who has followed MacStories Deals on Mastodon and Bluesky.

We brought back MacStories Deals after a seven-year hiatus because I wasn’t happy with any of the deal sites or social media accounts I was following myself. The volume of posts was too great, and the quality of the deals was often suspect, but in the end it all came down to a case of French’s Yellow Mustard.

One day while scrolling through Ivory, I came across a deal for a case of 12 bottles of mustard for $9. That’s a pretty great deal, but it’s not what I wanted.

Amazon and Apple’s stores are full of deeply discounted products, but most of them aren’t what I want to see. The websites and social media accounts following those deals aren’t very discriminating, either, because they’re all about getting people to click links at scale.

Our bet with MacStories Deals is that we can succeed in a much different way. Our occasional deal roundups here and the media picks and deals on MacStories Unwind showed us that the deals we share are popular with the MacStories community because we’re picky. You can get a firehose of deals anywhere, but what you get from us – and now from MacStories Deals – is an editorial filter that respects your time by eliminating the noise.

So instead of sharing as many deals as possible, our approach is to share just a handful of deals each day and supplement MacStories Deals with the occasional post on the site when the deal volume warrants it. In an era when AI is flooding the zone with slop and lowering the common denominator for all content, we believe that experience and editorial constraints will serve the MacStories community better.

So thanks again for following MacStories Deals on Mastodon and Bluesky. It’s just one small project of many that are in the works, but I hope you all appreciate the approach and take advantage of a deal here and there while we earn a small commission from your purchases.

Now, on to the Labor Day deals.

M4 MacBook Airs

The 2025 13-inch M4 MacBook Air in Midnight.

The 2025 13-inch M4 MacBook Air in Midnight.

Students are returning to school, and many will be looking for deals on Mac laptops. Currently, every M4 MacBook Air in both the 13-inch and 15-inch configurations is at an all-time low price on Amazon. The MacBook Air is one of my favorite portable computers of all time, and now is a great time to pick one up.

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Apple Introduces the New MacBook Air

Today, Apple announced the new MacBook Air with the M4 chip, a new sky blue finish, and a reduced starting price. This update brings the latest generation of Apple silicon to the MacBook Air while keeping the external hardware mostly the same – save for a new color option.

The M4 chip comes with a 10-core CPU, an 8-core GPU (configurable up to ten cores), 16-core Neural Engine, 16 GB of RAM (configurable up to 32 GB), and 256GB of storage (configurable up to 2TB), offering up to 2x the speed of the M1 chip according to Apple’s metrics. The new chip enables the MacBook Air to output to two external 6K displays in addition to its attached display, which remains available in 13-inch and 15-inch variants. The device’s built-in LED Liquid Retina display remains unchanged at 500 nits of brightness and 224 pixels per inch.

The MacBook Air’s I/O includes two Thunderbolt 4 ports (upgraded from the previous generation’s Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 ports) a MagSafe 3 charging port, and a headphone jack. It also continues to feature Touch ID, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3. Apple claims the M4 MacBook Air can run for up to 18 hours on a single battery charge.

The device’s camera has been upgraded to the improved 12MP version seen on last year’s MacBook Pros. It records video at 1080p resolution and supports Center Stage as well as Desk View.

The most noticeable change to the device is the new sky blue color option, which replaces space gray. Apple describes the finish as “a beautiful, metallic light blue that creates a dynamic gradient when light reflects off of its surface.” The MacBook Air is also available in starlight, midnight, and silver.

With this update, Apple has lowered and simplified the MacBook Air’s pricing structure. The M4 MacBook Air starts at $999 ($899 for education) for the 13-inch model and $1,199 for the 15-inch model. Previously, those starting prices were reserved for older MacBook Airs, not the latest generation, with current-gen models costing $100 more. Now, MacBook Air purchasers don’t have to choose between the newest chip and the best price.

While this update to the MacBook Air is mostly about the M4, that chip does bring along some niceties, and the upgraded camera and new color option are welcome additions as well. Add the new, lower price point on top of those changes, and this is an upgrade worth getting excited over for those in the market for a MacBook Air.

The new MacBook Air is available for preorder now with deliveries and in-store availability starting March 12.

Logitech’s Casa Pop-Up Desk Elevates Your MacBook for More Comfortable Computing

When I’m sitting at home in my office, the ergonomics are perfect. I have a comfortable chair with plenty of back support, my keyboard is at the right height, and my Studio Display is at eye level. The trouble is, that’s not the only place I work or want to work. As a result, I spend time almost daily using a laptop in less-than-ideal conditions. That’s why I was eager to try the Logitech’s Casa Pop-Up Desk that debuted in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand last summer and is now available in North America, too.

Logitech sent me the Casa to test, and I’ve been using it on and off throughout the past 10 days as I work at home, away from my desk, and in various other locations. No portable desktop setup is going to rival the ergonomics of my home office, but despite a few downsides, I’ve been impressed with the Casa. By making it more comfortable to use my laptop anywhere, the Casa has enabled me to get away from my desk more often, which has been wonderful as the weather begins to warm up.

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The M3 MacBook Air: Two Displays, Faster Wi-Fi, and Better Performance

There’s not much to say about the M3 MacBook Airs that Apple revealed earlier this week. Last year’s M2 redesign was universally praised, and this year’s M3 version one-ups it with support for two displays, faster Wi-Fi 6E, and performance improvements, thanks to the M3 processor.

But, as Jason Snell of Six Colors explains, that’s okay:

The truth is, unless you’ve been waiting to plug in a second monitor to a MacBook Air, this upgrade isn’t going to blow anyone away—and that’s okay. The chips keep getting faster, 2022’s MacBook Air design refresh remains great, and the 15-inch model offers a large screen for people who don’t need MacBook Pro prices or features. The MacBook Air is Apple’s most popular Mac, and now it’s even better.

One additional tidbit from Jason about the exterior design that I found interesting is the new coating on the midnight MacBook Airs:

The single change to the exterior of the M3 Air to previous versions is a new fingerprint-resistant anodization seal on the dark “midnight” models, which do show fingerprints more than the others. This is apparently the same approach that Apple took with the Space Black M3 MacBook Pro.

Be sure to check out Jason’s full review for more details on the screen resolutions supported by the new Airs and benchmark tests.

MacPad: How I Created the Hybrid Mac-iPad Laptop and Tablet That Apple Won’t Make

Hello, MacPad.

Hello, MacPad.

It all started because I wanted a better keyboard for my Vision Pro. I had no idea that, in looking for one, I’d accidentally create the hybrid Apple computer of my dreams.

As I quickly discovered after working on the Vision Pro daily, you can get by without an external trackpad, but a keyboard is necessary if you want to type something longer than a passcode. That’s where my journey began: if I wanted to write and edit articles on the Vision Pro, what would the best keyboard-trackpad setup be?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve tested all the options at my disposal. I started with an Apple Magic Trackpad and Keyboard, which I then placed inside a Twelve South MagicBridge (it was too uncomfortable to put on my lap for longer stretches of time). Next, I tried using different types of “trays” for these two accessories that offered a laptop-like layout (comfort was better, but lack of palm rejection was an issue). I even attempted to revive an old Brydge keyboard and use it with the Vision Pro, but, alas, third-party trackpads aren’t supported on visionOS at the moment.

Eventually, I settled on the solution that I should have known was coming for me all along: the best keyboard and trackpad combo for a Vision Pro is a Mac laptop. So I started using my MacBook Air every day, taking advantage of Mac Virtual Display and Universal Control to get work done with the Vision Pro in a mix of classic desktop apps and new visionOS experiences. I’ll write more about this soon, but, so far, it’s felt powerful and flexible in a way that iPadOS hasn’t made me feel in a while.

But something kept nagging me.

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Apple Introduces New M3 MacBook Airs

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple has unveiled new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs that feature the M3 processor, Wi-Fi 6E, support for two external displays, and up to 18 hours of battery life.

The M3 chipset features an 8-core CPU, up to a 10-core GPU, and up to 24GB of unified memory. Apple says that makes the new Airs up to 60% faster than the M1 Air and 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based Air, but they do not compare it to the M2 Air. The M3 MacBook Airs also include Apple’s latest media engine, which supports AV1 decoding for video streaming services.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

Apple provided other points of comparison between the new M2 MacBook Airs and the M1 and fastest Intel models based on tests conducted in January:

  • Game titles like No Man’s Sky run up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M1 chip.
  • Enhancing an image with AI using Photomator’s Super Resolution feature is up to 40 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 15x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.

  • Working in Excel spreadsheets is up to 35 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 3x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.

  • Video editing in Final Cut Pro is up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch model with the M1 chip, and up to 13x faster for customers who haven’t upgraded to a Mac with Apple silicon.

  • Compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor, MacBook Air delivers up to 2x faster performance, up to 50 percent faster web browsing, and up to 40 percent longer battery life.

In its press release, Apple also says the M3 MacBook Air’s 16-core Neural Engine and CPU and GPU machine learning accelerators make it the best laptop for AI, too.

Source: Apple.

Source: Apple.

The new 13-inch MacBook Airs start at $1,099 ($999 for education customers). The new 15-inch models start at $1,299 ($1,199 for education customers). Both models are available to order today in midnight, starlight, silver, and space gray, with deliveries and in-store availability beginning Friday, March 8th.

In addition, Apple has dropped the price of the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air to $999 ($899 for education customers).