Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (M5)

The MacBook Air with M5 is the laptop most people should buy. Announced in March 2026, it keeps the thin, fanless, 2.7-pound aluminum design and 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, and drops in Apple's M5 — the fastest single-core performance in any laptop, with multi-core that nudges up against last year's M5 MacBook Pro. It runs silent and cool day to day; only sustained heavy work throttles it slightly, since there's no fan. Two upgrades actually matter this year. The base model now ships with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage — double the old base — and the SSD is roughly twice as fast as the M4 Air's. The new N1 wireless chip adds Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and battery life is still all-day: reviewers regularly see 13 to 18 hours depending on workload. The trade-offs are familiar. It's an iterative update — same design, no new colors — the display is still 60Hz with no ProMotion, and there are only two Thunderbolt 4 ports alongside MagSafe and a headphone jack. The base price also climbed to $1,099; Apple retired the old $999 tier now that the $599 MacBook Neo anchors the bottom. For students, professionals, and anyone who wants a do-everything Mac that lasts all day, it's the easy default.