Apple’s MacBook Air has received its annual refresh, now powered by the M5 chipset, with more storage and improved connectivity. However, it comes with a price hike of around ₹20,000.
Unveiled alongside the MacBook Pro models featuring the M5 Pro and M5 Max chipsets, the spotlight here is on the MacBook Air M5. Here’s everything you need to know about its price, availability, and more.
Apple MacBook Air M5 price in India, availability
The MacBook Air comes in two sizes, 13-inch and 15-inch, like last year, and the laptop will go on pre-order starting March 4. The 13-inch variant of the MacBook Air M5 will start at ₹1,19,900 or ₹1,08,900 for education, and the 15-inch variant will start at ₹1,44,900 or ₹1,33,900 for education. These laptops will be available in Sky Blue, Midnight, Starlight, and Silver colourways. They will be available starting March 11 across official Apple Stores, the Apple Online Store, and Apple’s authorised resellers.
What is new with the MacBook Air M5?
The MacBook Air M5 gets the brand-new M5 chipset, which, as per Apple, features a much faster CPU and a next-generation GPU with a Neural Engine in every core. It comes with up to a 10-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, and Apple says it delivers up to four times faster performance for AI tasks compared to the MacBook Air with the M4 chipset. It is also up to 9.5 times faster than the MacBook Air with the M1 chipset, its first in-house silicon for laptops, for AI tasks.
Apple says it also features faster unified memory at 153GB per second, which is a 28% improvement over the M4. Apart from this, Apple is doubling the starting storage with the M5 Air and offering a much faster SSD. The MacBook Air M5 now starts at 512GB of storage instead of 256GB, and it can be configured with up to a 4TB SSD. Apple also says this new SSD delivers two times faster read and write speeds compared to the previous generation.
Apple is claiming up to 18 hours of battery life. The 13.6-inch and 15.3-inch variants get a Liquid Retina display with 500 nits of brightness. The laptop continues to feature a 12MP Centre Stage camera with support for Desk View. It also gets Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and N1, Apple’s chip for wireless networking.
