I transitioned from the M1 MacBook Air to the M5, and here’s what has changed for me.

      After approximately four years with the M1 MacBook Air, I finally decided to upgrade to the M5, managing to avoid Apple’s recent price increase by just eleven days, a situation I've recounted elsewhere and one that still fills me with a bit of smug satisfaction. Switching from the M1 to the M5 represents a significant generational upgrade for me—not in the specifications listed, but in ways that have genuinely transformed my daily work.

      This is particularly relevant in 2026, when the consumer electronics market faced a memory crisis so severe that even major companies like Apple had to relent. The MacBook Air M5 launched at $1,099 but later increased to $1,299.

      Though the screen isn’t a substantial improvement, and the speaker quality has actually decreased, after using the laptop for about two months, I’ve determined that it remains one of the most competitive options in its class, particularly for users who don’t require a discrete GPU and the added bulk that comes with it.

      I must confess that the 13.6-inch display on the M5 doesn’t feel markedly different from the 13.3-inch panel on the M1, and I have some thoughts on the notch, none of which are positive. It's somewhat ironic that, as phones moved away from notches years ago, Apple’s best-selling laptop still features one in 2026.

      The 100-nit increase in peak brightness doesn't make a significant difference either, and surprisingly, the speakers on my six-year-old M1 MacBook produced a fuller and louder sound. That realization was a bit disappointing.

      However, that wraps up the disappointments quickly. The most noticeable change for me was the Midnight color, specifically how its matte finish shifts between charcoal and nearly silver, depending on the light.

      This finish doesn't photograph well but looks remarkable in real life, which I believe is the ideal situation.

      Next up is MagSafe. I hadn't realized how annoyed I was by searching for a USB-C port in the dark until I no longer had to do it. MagSafe connects smoothly by touch alone, which is genuinely helpful at a standing desk or when reaching around cables in low light.

      It also frees up both USB-C ports for actual work, whether that’s connecting an external drive or running a monitor without using your primary data connections.

      The M5 makes multi-monitor setups much more feasible

      On that note, the M5 MacBook Air can now support two external monitors at the same time, a feature that the M1 couldn’t manage. I personally don’t use external displays, so I didn't test that feature, but it’s a substantial improvement for designers and video editors who rely on multi-monitor setups.

      Thunderbolt 4 on the M5 also doubles the minimum PCIe bandwidth to 32 Gb/s, up from 16 Gb/s on the M1, making multi-gigabyte project transfers that used to take a coffee break now happen in a fraction of the time.

      The performance upgrade is unmistakable

      My daily tasks involve keeping a considerable number of Chrome tabs open simultaneously: news feeds, articles, AI tools, YouTube, streaming services, Google Docs, and several web dashboards. With the M1 and 8GB of RAM, the limit was about 15 to 20 tabs before performance slowed and the machine began to struggle.

      The M5, featuring a CPU that’s about twice as fast and 16GB of unified memory, seamlessly handles 50 to 60 tabs. In other words, I can comfortably run four times the number of Chrome tabs.

      During the recent Amazon Prime Day, I had 78 tabs open at once while searching for deals across multiple retailer sites. There was no lag or stuttering—just a mild warmth from a machine that was actually performing well instead of complaining. My old MacBook Air would have struggled around the 30-tab mark, leaving me feeling frustrated.

      It does utilize memory swapping, a macOS method where a portion of the SSD acts as overflow RAM, but even with that, the experience genuinely feels fast rather than just acceptable.

      The battery life has significantly changed my usage habits

      With all the Chrome tabs and a few Apple apps running in the background (Music, Calendar, Notes, and Pages), the M5 Air provides approximately 13 to 14 hours of screen-on time on a single charge with average use (around 20 tabs and four to six apps in the background). My M1 offered nine or ten hours, which was quite impressive, but the extra four hours have altered my habits.

      I now charge my MacBook every other day. When I leave for the day, I confidently leave the charger behind and don’t even think about it. That might seem trivial, but if you’ve ever missed an important presentation or been late because you forgot to charge overnight, you understand its significance.

      I narrowly escaped the Macflation crisis

      What continues to surprise me is that I paid about $1,000 for this