Apple’s New MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Have New Chips, More Storage, and Higher Prices

Also its price is also favorable iPhone 17e and M4 iPad Air Starting Monday, Apple announced some updates to the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and its rarely refreshed desktop display line. Apple appears to be holding off on unveiling its new entry-level MacBook for an in-person event scheduled for Wednesday in New York City, but today’s announcements should please potential upgraders.

The MacBook Air has now been updated to the latest M5 chip. It’s a fairly minor upgrade, but it brings it up to speed with Apple’s latest processors that debuted in the MacBook Pro last year. There are no other major hardware changes — it now comes with 512GB of starting storage with “faster SSD technology” — but you can still get the Air in 13- or 15-inch screen sizes.

This laptop also features Apple’s N1 wireless chip, which includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 for the latest connectivity standards. It still comes with the standard 16GB of RAM, and sadly the price increases by $100 for the additional storage. Its price now starts at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch model. Apple says you can preorder it on Wednesday, with sales starting March 11.

More interestingly, Apple is expanding the M5 chip series with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, now available in the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Like previous generations of Apple silicon, the “Pro” and “Max” configurations feature significantly improved multicore CPU and graphics performance.

New MacBook Air with M5.
Photograph: Courtesy Apple

The M5 Pro and M5 Max can be configured with 18 CPU cores (12 performance cores and 6 “super” cores), up from 16 on the M4 Max. The M5 Pro can boast up to 20 GPU cores, while the M5 Max can boast up to 40 GPU cores. Thanks to four additional CPU cores, Apple says the M5 Pro gets 30 percent better multithreaded CPU performance than the M4 Pro. With four additional CPU cores compared to the M4 Pro, the new CPU architecture in the M5 Pro increases multithreaded performance for pro workloads by up to 30 percent. According to Apple, the M5 Max CPU upgrade is a bit more modest by comparison – just 15 percent more than the M4 Max.

Thanks to higher memory bandwidth, a more efficient Neural Engine, and an improved GPU architecture, Apple says both the M5 Pro and M5 Max have “more than 4x the peak CPU compute for AI” compared to the previous generation and deliver 20 percent better GPU performance.

The new MacBook Pros don’t include any other hardware changes; Things remain largely the same from 2021 onwards – same port selection, mini-LED display, speakers and webcam. Even the claimed 24-hour battery life hasn’t changed from the M4 model, which was revealed in late 2024. Interestingly, as recently as last week, Bloomberg reported that Apple is planning to launch a more significant update to the MacBook Pro this year, which will reportedly introduce the M6 ​​chip, an OLED touchscreen, and a thinner chassis.