New MacBook Airs come with M5, double the storage, and higher starting prices

Most of Apple’s laptop lineup is refreshed today: High-end MacBook Pros receive updates to the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, and the MacBook Air is upgraded with an M5.

The biggest update might be the storage, though: Apple is increasing the Air’s base storage from 256GB to 512GB, and Apple says the storage will be up to twice as fast as the MacBook Air M4.

But it also increases the starting price of the Air from $999 to $1,099 for the 13-inch model, and from $1,199 to $1,299 for the 15-inch model. Whether you describe this as a price increase or decrease depends on your perspective; the 512GB version of the MacBook Air M4 would have cost you $1,199. But for people who just want the cheapest Air and don’t particularly care about the specs, the price is now $100 higher than before.

Apple is offering two versions of the M5 in the new Airs: one with 8 GPU cores enabled and one with all 10 GPU cores enabled. Upgrading to the fully enabled chip will cost you $100 more, and you’ll also need the fully enabled chip to upgrade to the 24GB or 32GB RAM upgrades or the 1TB, 2TB, or 4TB storage upgrades. All versions of the M5 include a total of four high-performance cores, now called “super cores,” and six efficient cores.

An Apple N1 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip rounds out the internal upgrades.

Like the other products Apple has announced so far this week, the new MacBook Airs will be available for pre-order on March 4, and you can get them on March 11.

The new MacBook Airs are part of a series of announcements Apple is making this week in the run-up to a “special experience” event Wednesday morning. So far, the company has also announced a new iPhone 17e, an updated iPad Air with an M4 chip and additional RAM, new MacBook Pros, and updated Studio Displays.