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The M4 MacBook Air was almost perfect, and now Apple has the M5 MacBook Air sitting next to it. I put both laptops through the same set of real world tests to see how much faster the M5 actually is, not just what the spec sheet promises. If you already own an M4, or you are shopping and trying to decide which one to buy, this is for you. If you are on an older M1, M2, or M3 Air, the answer is going to look very different, and I will get to that at the end.
The best MacBook Air yet, but the gains over the M4 are subtle. Great upgrade from an older Air, not worth trading in an M4.
- Neural accelerators roughly double local AI speed
- Starts at 512GB SSD with double the read and write speed
- Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 from the new N1 chip
- Higher memory bandwidth and a dynamic power adapter
- 24GB of RAM gives a real boost across heavier apps
- Only subtle gains over the M4 in most tasks
- Starting price went up by $100
- Display is still standard Liquid Retina with no 120Hz
- Intro: Who This Is For
- Design and Hardware: Spotting the Differences
- The M5 Chip and Local AI Performance
- SSD Speeds and the $100 Price Increase
- Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and Connectivity
- Memory Bandwidth and the Dynamic Power Adapter
- AI Benchmarks: Gemma 3 and Diffusion Bee
- Creative Pro Tests: Lightroom and Logic Pro
- 3D Rendering: The Blender Barbershop Scene
- Video Editing: Final Cut Pro and 4K Exporting
- The RAM Factor: Is 24GB Worth It?
- What Is Still Missing
Intro: Who This Is For
This comparison is for two kinds of people. The first is anyone already on an M4 MacBook Air who is wondering if the M5 is worth the trade. The second is anyone buying their first Apple Silicon Air, or coming from an M1, M2, or M3, who wants to know what the newest chip really adds. I ran both machines side by side on the same jobs I do every day, so the numbers here are real world results, not just Apple’s marketing figures. If you want the full data, I keep every result in a spreadsheet, and I have personalized Mac buying help over at adamtalks.tech/mac.
Design and Hardware: Spotting the Differences
At first glance these look like the same exact computer. Apple has not changed the physical design at all, other than removing some of the labels from a couple of the keys. You get the same display, the same MagSafe port, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a headphone jack on the side. Typing and trackpad performance is identical on both. The trackpads are very accurate, and the keyboards are great and accurate to type on. If you set these two down next to each other, you would struggle to tell them apart, so everything that matters this year is on the inside.
The M5 Chip and Local AI Performance
The biggest difference is the M5 chip itself, and there is really one subtle feature that sets it apart: the neural accelerators. This is what makes the laptop feel quite a bit faster for running local AI software. Apple is promising up to four times the performance running LLMs on the M5, but in my testing I was typically getting about double the speed over the M4. Running LM Studio, the time to first token was faster, and the tokens a second also improved. For image generation the story was different. There the upgrade was very marginal.
SSD Speeds and the $100 Price Increase
One of the other big changes is the starting SSD capacity. The M4 MacBook Air started with a 256GB SSD. The M5 starts with 512GB, and the starting price went up by $100. That is not terrible when you consider the new SSD is double the speed of the older one. You can now get about 5,300 MB a second on the read and write with the M5. The M4 topped out at about 3,300 MB a second. So you are paying more, but you are getting twice the storage and a much faster drive to go with it.
Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and Connectivity
Another improvement is the N1 wireless chip, which brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 to the MacBook Air. For most people you are not going to notice a huge difference day to day, but what this does is give you better connectivity over longer range on Wi-Fi, faster Wi-Fi speeds, and lower power draw over Bluetooth. It is the kind of upgrade you feel later rather than the moment you turn the laptop on.
Memory Bandwidth and the Dynamic Power Adapter
Apple also raised the memory bandwidth from 120 GB a second on the M4 to 153 GB a second on the M5. That leads to faster speeds for the CPU and GPU talking to the RAM, which is a nice bump. There is also a new dynamic power adapter in the box. It starts at 40W of power but can deliver up to 60W max, which helps the M5 charge a little faster. Both machines can actually pull up to 70W, so if you use a larger 70W charger you will get faster charging speeds on either one.
AI Benchmarks: Gemma 3 and Diffusion Bee
For the AI tests, I put LM Studio on both machines with Gemma 3 and had it summarize a long article. The time to first token was 5 seconds on the M4 and dropped to 2 seconds on the M5, with a slightly improved tokens a second speed on top of that. For all these tests I used the M4 MacBook Air with the 10-core GPU and 16GB of RAM, and the M5 MacBook Air with the 8-core GPU and 16GB of RAM. I also ran the tests on a 24GB M5 to see what the extra memory does.
Next I used Diffusion Bee, an image generating app, to make a cat working on a laptop eating nachos on the side. It went from 18.8 seconds on the M4 to 16.24 seconds on the M5, and on the 24GB machine it dropped all the way to 13.64 seconds. The extra RAM helped quite a bit across the different AI tasks I ran.
Creative Pro Tests: Lightroom and Logic Pro
Moving to creative work, I put Lightroom Classic on both computers and loaded 500 raw images. Exporting all 500 down to full quality JPEG went from 9 minutes and 2 seconds on the M4 to 8 minutes and 8 seconds on the M5, and it was even faster with 24GB of RAM. A lot of the Adobe and non-Apple applications really appreciate extra memory.
Then I loaded Logic Pro. The M4 handled 104 MIDI tracks at the same time, and the M5 went up to 120. Bouncing 64 of those MIDI tracks down to an audio file took 37 seconds on the M4 and 30 seconds on the M5, right in line with the performance benefits I was seeing across the board.
3D Rendering: The Blender Barbershop Scene
For 3D, I loaded the Blender Barbershop scene, which is pretty tough to render. It took 6 minutes and 28 seconds on the M4 and 5 minutes and 53 seconds on the M5. With the 24GB M5 it dropped to 4 minutes and 49 seconds. Blender was another area where adding more RAM helped a lot, more than the chip change on its own.
Video Editing: Final Cut Pro and 4K Exporting
Final Cut Pro ran very similarly on both machines for the editing tasks I normally do. It ran well, with the one exception that multicam on a MacBook Air will drop a few frames. I ran an 18-second Final Cut Pro magnetic mask, and it went from 34 seconds on the M4 to 28 seconds on the M5. The extra RAM did not help with that one.
I also exported a 3-minute 4K project with a few different effects, multicam, audio effects, and titles. It took about 1 minute and 51 seconds on the M4 and 1 minute and 32 seconds on the M5. That difference is really nice on longer projects, where every bit of speed you can pull out of the Air is appreciated. All of this lines up with the Geekbench 6 scores, which went up very subtly going from the M4 to the M5.
The RAM Factor: Is 24GB Worth It?
If there is one takeaway from every test I ran, it is that the 24GB of RAM was worthwhile. Across the board it boosted everything up a little, especially on the software that is not optimized for Apple Silicon. Diffusion Bee, Lightroom, and Blender all posted their best times on the 24GB machine, not just on the newer chip. If you are choosing where to spend money on an M5 Air, the memory upgrade did more for my heavier tasks than the jump from M4 to M5 did on its own.
| M4 MacBook Air | M5 MacBook Air | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting SSD | 256GB | 512GB |
| SSD read/write | ~3,300 MB/s | ~5,300 MB/s |
| Memory bandwidth | 120 GB/s | 153 GB/s |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 6E | Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 |
| LM Studio time to first token | 5 sec | 2 sec |
| Diffusion Bee image | 18.8 sec | 16.24 sec |
| Lightroom 500 raw export | 9 min 2 sec | 8 min 8 sec |
| Logic Pro max MIDI tracks | 104 | 120 |
| Blender Barbershop render | 6 min 28 sec | 5 min 53 sec |
| Final Cut 4K 3-min export | 1 min 51 sec | 1 min 32 sec |
What Is Still Missing
Even though the M5 MacBook Air is improved over the M4, there are still a couple of things I feel Apple is missing, especially at this price point. The display still does not have 120Hz, and it is still a standard Liquid Retina panel. I wish it had something like mini-LED technology, or the tandem OLED from the iPad Pro. We can only hope the M6 or a future model brings those features. For now, the screen is the one part of this laptop that has not moved in a while.
The Verdict: Should You Upgrade?
You probably should not upgrade from the M4 MacBook Air to the M5 MacBook Air. There are some subtle quality-of-life improvements, and they make this a nice machine, the best MacBook Air we have ever seen, but it is not worth the price of trading in your computer to get them. The gains are real, they are just small.
If you have an older M2, M1, or even an M3 MacBook Air, this is a different story. That would be a worthwhile upgrade, especially if you are doing anything beyond standard productivity, like local AI, photo work, or video editing. If you want personalized help picking out a MacBook Air, contact me at adamtalks.tech/mac and I am happy to give you Mac buying advice.
