24 hours with the MacBook Air M5 it's already faster than the M4 MacBook Air

Date:
Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:02:57 +0000

Description:
We unboxed the MacBook Air M5 and instantly put it to the test and now we have the first benchmark numbers.

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It's early days in the life of the MacBook Air M5 , which Apple unveiled this week along with a new iPhone 17e , a new MacBook Pro , and that wild MacBook Neo , but I can now confirm that it is faster than the MacBook Air M4, one of our favorite laptops.

Granted, I've run just one set of test moments after unboxing and updating
the laptop to macOS Tahoe 26.3.1, but it was enough to prove that even in the more mainstream and ultra-popular MacBook Air, the M5 delivers. After installing Geekbench 6.6 on both the new 13-inch MacBook Air M5 (in Starlight finish) and my 13-inch MacBook Air M4 (in Sky Blue), I ran the core CPU benchmark in a side-by-side test. You may like The MacBook Air M5 has landed here's what's new on our favorite laptop I can't believe I'm saying this, but a more expensive MacBook Air M5 is wonderful news here's why The MacBook Pro M5 Pro and M5 Pro Max are official here's what's new Geekbench shows, by the way, that the M5 is clocked slightly higher than the M4, 4.46Ghz on the M5
and 4.41GHz on the M4. Naturally, both chips are also 10 Core with the same number of performance and efficiency cores (4 and 6, respectively). But those numbers don't tell the full story. Single and multi-core scores are
measurably higher on the MacBook Air M5, as you can see from the results
photo below (M5 is on the left). (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future) Swipe to scroll horizontally Row 0 - Cell 0

Single Core

Multi-Core

MacBook Air M5

4190

17073

MacBook Air M4

3832

15034 The results are in line with the M5 scores we saw last year on the then-new 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip.

The differences are even more pronounced on the GPU score, where the M5 SoC brings a neural accelerator to every GPU Core. The leap is substantial on OpenCL scores and more modest on the native Metal results. Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Swipe to scroll horizontally Row
0 - Cell 0

GPU (OpenCL)

GPU (Metal)

MacBook Air M5

47171

49557

MacBook Air M4

30132

48075 Obviously, all of these results are preliminary. I haven't run Cinebench; I haven't yet tested the speed of the supposedly faster SSD. What
I can see, though, even in these early hours, is that the MacBook Air M5 is
up to the challenge of some pretty difficult tasks.

I've loaded: Lies of P, Pixelmator Pro Adobe Lightroom Safari Chrome (25
tabs) FinalCut Pro (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future) And the system is still just chugging along, likely assisted in part by the 16GB of RAM. What
to read next The M5 Pro and M5 Max may be here sooner than you think, but
with a surprise Apple's big March event live the all new MacBook Neo has
just been introduced, and we're there Apple just announced a new iPad Air
with M4 here's what's changed

Basically, we're now seeing Pro-level performance on the MacBook Air, which
is obviously why Apple introduced the M5 Pro and M5 Max for its latest line
of MacBook Pros. Good old Apple, always aiming higher.

More to come as we work through our full review of the MacBook Air M5. @techradar

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