Apple Doubles Down: The New M5 MacBook Air Packs More Storage and Wi-Fi 7
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We’re on day two of Apple’s “three-day flurry of announcements” this week, and today Apple is bringing its entire MacBook lineup into the M5 generation, with the long-awaited M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models joined by a new M5 MacBook Air that arrives right on schedule.
While Apple launched the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro on what’s become its normal fall schedule, the more powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max were held back until today while Apple perfects its new Fusion Architecture for those chips. On the other hand, the M4 MacBook Air arrived on March 5, 2025 and the M3 MacBook Air on March 4, 2024, so the M5 model is basically right on time.
Apple unveiled the M5 MacBook Air today in a Newsroom announcement , where it touted many of the new capabilities the M5 chip brings to the table. However, as with Apple’s other recent MacBook announcements, all the big changes are in the silicon; the external design is identical, and Apple hasn’t even added any new colors this year. You also get the same RAM, battery life, camera, mics, and speakers as the previous model.
That’s not to say that the new MacBook Air doesn’t pack in a couple of surprises. Chief among these is that Apple is using its most popular mid-tier MacBook as the proving ground for its new N1 chip, making it the first Mac to gain Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support.
The N1 chip debuted in Apple’s fall 2025 iPhone lineup, and while it later came to the M5 iPad Pro in October, it was conspicuously absent from the M5 MacBook Pro that was released at the same time, and we weren’t too surprised when today’s more powerful M5 Pro/Max models also omitted it, leaving them behind on Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
That makes the adoption of the N1 by the MacBook Air pretty significant. While the M5 chip inside is identical to what you’ll get on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the addition of the N1 chip means that M5 MacBook Air users can now enjoy faster and more reliable Wi-Fi connectivity — provided they’re hitting a compatible access point, of course.
The other surprise is that Apple has doubled the storage across the board, although that comes with an important asterisk: The M5 MacBook Air now starts with a 512 GB SSD and raises the maximum storage to 4 TB, but you’ll also pay $1,099 for the entry-level model.
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.
John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering
This effectively resets the pricing back to the 2024 M3 MacBook Air. Apple shook things up a bit last year by offering a $999 configuration of the 2025 model with a binned M4 chip. That version still exists — an M5 with eight GPU cores instead of ten — but that’s the new floor; the full 10-core M5 configuration now starts at $1,199. The silver lining is that educational discounts are still available to shave $100 off those prices, so teachers and university students can still get in at $999 for the base model.
In 2024, Apple kept the previous-generation M2 MacBook Air on the market to fill that $999 price slot, but presumably didn’t want to repeat that with the M3 model, which was discontinued when the M4 MacBook Air was released. The same has happened this year, with the $1,099 M5 MacBook Air being the most affordable model available — at least as of right now.
By all accounts, Apple plans to fill that gap in a whole new way, with a budget sans-suffix “MacBook” that’s widely expected to be unveiled tomorrow, on day three of Apple’s big week. The pricing on this could range between $599 and $799, depending on configuration, so it’s not hard to see how a $999 MacBook Air will blur the lines.
Pricing and Availability
The M5 MacBook Air comes in 13-inch and 15-inch versions, both of which are available in the same sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver as last year. The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099 with 16 GB RAM and a 512 GB SSD, while the 15-inch model starts at $1,299 for the same configuration.
The new MacBook Air models will be available for pre-order on the Apple Online Store tomorrow, March 4, and are slated to arrive in stores next Wednesday, March 11.
