MacBook Air M5 Review: Still the Easy Buy for Most People

By Editorial Team | April 2026

The 13-inch MacBook Air M5 wins because it keeps the Air formula intact and fixes one of the annoying old compromises: 512GB is now the baseline. You still get a silent, fanless laptop that feels fast for everyday work, and that’s enough to make it the easiest Apple buy for most people.

Our picks at a glance

Based on hands-on research, expert review consensus (RTings, Wirecutter, relevant subreddits), and current pricing.

Best overall: MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

MacBook Air (13-inch, M5) — £988.97

This is the laptop you buy when you want one machine to do the boring stuff well: email, docs, spreadsheets, too many browser tabs, video calls, and travel. The score is 8.7, and it earns it by staying quiet, light, and fast enough for real work without dragging you toward MacBook Pro pricing.

Why we picked it:

• The M5 chip gives you the headroom to multitask properly, and the 10-core CPU plus 16GB unified memory is the sensible combo for everyday use.
• 512GB as the base storage is the real upgrade here. It stops the constant cleanup routine that made older base Air models feel stingy.
• The 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display is still sharp and bright enough for long sessions, and Wi‑Fi 7 plus the 12MP Center Stage camera make it feel current.

The trade-off: it is still a 60Hz laptop in the same old Air chassis, so you are not getting a modern-feeling display or a design overhaul. If you want sustained pro graphics work, this is the wrong Mac. That said, you can buy the MacBook Air M5 and be done with laptop shopping for a while.

Best upgrade: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition — £2,106.92

What the extra money buys you is a genuinely better work machine: a 14-inch 2.8K OLED screen, 120Hz refresh, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, proper business ports, and a chassis that weighs under 1kg. It is the machine for people who spend their life in Outlook, spreadsheets, and meetings, and who will notice the better keyboard, better display, and better port selection every day.

Worth it if: you want a Windows business laptop that feels more serious than the Air and you will actually use the sharper OLED panel and extra RAM.

Best budget pick: Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Gen 10

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Gen 10 — £549.99

This gets the basics right without pretending to be something it is not. The Ryzen 7 7735HS, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and 15.3-inch WUXGA screen give you a lot of laptop for the money, especially if you care more about screen space and decent performance than Apple’s cleaner finish.

The compromise is obvious: the keyboard is not backlit, and the display and build are a step down from the MacBook Air. But if you want a straightforward productivity laptop for home, study, and streaming, this is the cheaper, less glamorous answer.

Worth it if: you want a roomy Windows laptop for everyday work and you would rather save over £400 than pay for Mac polish.

How we chose

We focused on the things that matter for a daily laptop: portability, battery-friendly design, multitasking headroom, screen quality, storage, and whether the price makes sense. We also checked current expert review consensus and live competitor pricing so the comparison is useful, not theoretical.

Frequently asked questions

Is the MacBook Air M5 good for students and office work? Yes. It is one of the easiest laptops to carry, stays silent in use, and has enough power for documents, research, video calls, and multitasking without becoming annoying.

Is £988.97 fair for this MacBook Air? It is fair if you want the Apple experience and you will use it as a main laptop for years. If you want maximum value per pound, Windows alternatives like the IdeaPad Slim 3 are cheaper, but they do not feel as polished.

Will the fanless design hurt performance? Not for normal work. It only becomes a problem if you push it into sustained pro-level editing or graphics-heavy workloads for long stretches.