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The M5 MacBook Air is close to a perfect computer. It is thin, it is light, and for most people it is all the Mac they will ever need. But there are three things holding it back, and if Apple fixed them, the MacBook Pro would become almost irrelevant to me. Here is exactly what I want to see in the M6 Air and beyond.
The display is the biggest thing holding it back
The Air still ships with a standard Liquid Retina display, and that is the single biggest drawback right now. Apple should move it to the same mini LED technology used in the Pro lineup, or go all the way to OLED. Either one would give you better colors, better contrast, and higher brightness.
The gap is not small. The Air tops out at 500 nits, while the Pro is double that at 1000 nits. The Pro also supports HDR content, which the Air still does not.
ProMotion needs to come to the Air
While we are on the subject of the display, Apple needs to bring ProMotion to the Air too. That 120Hz refresh rate makes a real difference in everyday use.
Moving your cursor around the screen, resizing apps, and interacting with the OS all feel noticeably smoother. It is one of those features you stop noticing until you go back to a 60Hz panel.
A cellular modem would change how I travel
This next one is a bit of a pipe dream, but it would be huge. I want a cellular modem in the Air so you could drop in an eSIM and connect anywhere.
That would make the Air the perfect travel machine. If you work out of coffee shops or you are always on the go, you would not have to hunt for local Wi-Fi or tether to your phone. Yes, almost any phone can act as a hotspot, but that eats into your phone’s battery, and then you are either plugging in a cable to keep it charged or dealing with one more connection to babysit. Having it built in and always ready to go is worth extra money to me for the convenience alone.
Thunderbolt 5 would close the gap with the Pro
The last one is Thunderbolt 5. I know a lot of people will say Thunderbolt 4 is plenty fast, and for many uses it is. But Thunderbolt 5 unlocks a few things that matter.
It allows faster external SSD speeds that can match the internal drive of the Air. It also helps if you run a docking station, and a lot of the new docks are shipping with Thunderbolt 5. They are still backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4, but Thunderbolt 5 reserves extra bandwidth for external displays to push higher refresh rates and higher resolutions. That extra headroom would let you keep more external devices plugged in at once.
Air vs Pro: why I would still take the Air
Fix those three things and the MacBook Pro becomes almost irrelevant to me. I know the Pro already has Thunderbolt 5 if you get the M5 Pro chip, and I know it has the better display.
But the Pro weighs 0.7 pounds more than the Air. That does not sound like much on paper. Pick up the Air, then pick up the Pro, and you will feel the extra size and weight right away. For a lot of people, that weight is the whole reason they want the Air in the first place.
Bottom line
As it stands, the M5 MacBook Air is almost perfect. A mini LED or OLED display with ProMotion, a cellular modem, and Thunderbolt 5 would take it the rest of the way. If Apple builds those into the M6 or a future generation, this becomes the perfect computer for most people, and I would have a hard time recommending anything else.
What would you add to the list? If you need help picking the right Mac right now, I put together personalized buying advice at adamtalks.tech/mac.
