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Here's How Much Faster MacBook Air Gets With M5 Chip vs. M4 Chip

gusping said:
Whoever posts these Geekbench score articles needs to learn about tables. Having a pure text article for this topic makes zero sense.
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QFT. In fact, allow me to copy-paste my post from last October:

If I can make a suggestion; articles like this one would make sense if you were to compare it to the last 4 or 5 versions of the same hardware. Most people aren't going to bother upgrading to each iteration of said device.

Make a table, make it readable, make it crystal clear what the gains are over the years. That would make for some proper journalism, people will be able to make a sound decision whether to upgrade or not, and they will be happy to read in-depth articles on all differences. And the author will be vastly more proud of said work.
 
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joshwest said:
Need to bring back Space Grey - The Midnight option looks like you've been eating Lay's all day even with clean hands.
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I bought the M2 and M4 MacBook Airs in Midnight, love the color. If I need to clean off the keyboard deck or keys, there's a handy microfiber cloth and rubbing alcohol nearby, easy-peasy.
 
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Fantastic on paper, but 17k multi doesn't mean much in a fanless chassis. It will throttle very quickly under load. The MacBook Pro M5 with the fan is a sweet spot now and a great budget option compared to older Max chips. My M3 max was nearly £5k!

Amazing silicon and the obvious choice but for people looking at this thinking it will compare favourably to a full fat M3 Max they will be disappointed.
 
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Royksöpp said:
Semi-related, but I feel like my M5 iPad pro really only benefits from the increased ram, I haven't noticed a significant performance increase.
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Of course. When you buy a computer that is twice as fast, it does not mean that you can watch a 10-minute YouTube cat video in 5 minutes. Also, when that Amazon web page takes 20 seconds to download, the faster computer will not make it download in 10 seconds. If you want a car analogy, buying a faster car will not get you to work faster. There are only a few cases where a faster CPU will get your job done faster than a CPU that is only "fast enough". Almost all of those cases involve content creation of some kind. How many people do that? Not many.


Ok, it is not so black and white as that, but still, for normal user tasks, a 15% faster CPU will not be noticed if you are reading emails and web browsing.
 
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FasterQuieter said:
I looked up the M3 that's in my MacBook Air and compared it to the A18 Pro in the Neo. I was slightly dismayed to see it's almost a wash. Oh well, at least I have my 16GB RAM.
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Yeah, unfortunately not much (except single core performance) better about the Neo than the M3 MBA . Was hoping it was at least going to be lighter/smaller or better battery life and it would have made me consider it as then there would have been features I'd be willing to sacrifice.
 
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For those going for larger storage BTO, factor in the 512 base for the M5 vs. 256 for M4. We just got a MBA M4 16/1T. Will return it because the MBA M5 16/1T was only $20 more. The is due to the increase from 256 to 1T on the M4 being so much more expensive vs. 512 to 1T for the M5. (Our pricing was via the Apple education store.)
 
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neuropsychguy said:
It will be interesting to see how these benchmark improvements translate into real world performance. macOS 26 has had a lot of optimization since its release. 26.3 is basically neck and neck with 15.7.4 overall but with improvements in Metal 4, SMB, APFS, and some other areas. It uses a little more RAM and battery though.

If people are doing video or 3D work, the Metal 4 optimizations in 26 put it ahead of 15; it's worth the upgrade, IMO. I've also seen a little faster disk I/O with 26 -- not a lot, but maybe 10% faster with large data migrations.
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Users that need better i/o simply need to move up the price ranges: basic-->Pro-->Max chip and MBN-->MBA-->MBP. Adding RAM of course.
 
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azentropy said:
Yeah, unfortunately not much (except single core performance) better about the Neo than the M3 MBA . Was hoping it was at least going to be lighter/smaller or better battery life and it would have made me consider it as then there would have been features I'd be willing to sacrifice.
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Apple is extraordinarily good at keeping their products in a pricing hierarchy where the lower pricing tiers are indeed lower hardware tiers. Anyone that thinks otherwise is just missing something [third party discounting can of course be found, and Apple refurbs are also often good].
 
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Royksöpp said:
Who is doing all of this AI anyways? I know Apple is pushing it, but realistically speaking, it's something most users don't even mess with.
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Not true really. All of computing is very rapidly being interspersed with the usage of AI tools whether "it's something most users don't even mess with" or not. There are times where users can "choose" to use or not use AI, but that is just a subset of the computing world. Even the term AI can mean the now very generic artificial intelligence or Apple Intelligence, but that is just Apple marketing.
 
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Royksöpp said:
Who is doing all of this AI anyways? I know Apple is pushing it, but realistically speaking, it's something most users don't even mess with.
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Don't underestimate AI, it's everywhere but you don't realize, first of all apple intelligence of course, then small ai models and then like image generation models ! It's more and more popular !
 
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Allen_Wentz said:
Users that need better i/o simply need to move up the price ranges: basic-->Pro-->Max chip and MBN-->MBA-->MBP. Adding RAM of course.
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That will do it. I just know there are some people who are avoiding 26 for various reasons but some of them could benefit from an OS upgrade rather than a new machine purchase.
 
california_kid said:
"With the M5 chip, the Geekbench database shows that the MacBook Air is up to 16% faster than the MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip from a few years ago, but it is still slower than MacBook Pro models with the M4 Pro chip and newer."

I can play this game too:

A mouse can run faster than a sloth, but the sloth has more fur than a turtle, but a turtle can live longer than a mouse.
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Yeah, but the mouse has fur too, smart guy. And the sloth is no slouch when it comes to longevity, though it doesn’t quite match the turtle. Haha 😉
 
Allen_Wentz said:
Not true really. All of computing is very rapidly being interspersed with the usage of AI tools whether "it's something most users don't even mess with" or not. There are times where users can "choose" to use or not use AI, but that is just a subset of the computing world. Even the term AI can mean the now very generic artificial intelligence or Apple Intelligence, but that is just Apple marketing.
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A vast majority are not using local AI computing, it all web based. So yes, it is being used, bot not locally. As for Apple intelligence usage, that is a conversation for another day.
 
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