Apple announced its new slate of laptops on Tuesday morning, including new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models that use Apple’s M5 chips. The Pro models were unveiled alongside the brand new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, which Apple describes as its most advanced CPU cores yet.
The company said these updated M5 chips were specifically designed to make the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops better at handling intensive AI tasks, which are becoming more of a focal point for new Apple hardware. Both the new Air and Pro laptops can handle AI tasks up to 4x faster than their respective M4 predecessors, according to Apple.
These AI-centric upgrades may not be immediately noticeable for more casual users who aren’t trying to run a computationally intensive network of AI agents or generate fast 3D renderings. But these advancements permeate other aspects of the laptops as well.
MacBook Air users get perks like 18 hours of battery life (a six-hour improvement compared with the last Intel-based Apple laptops from 2020), as well as a 12MP Center Stage camera for video calls, a three-mic array, and a sound system that supports Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos. The MacBook Air has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MagSafe charging port, and a classic 3.5mm headphone jack.
The new MacBook Air lineup comprises a 13-inch (starting at $1099) and 15-inch model (starting at $1299), with color options in sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. The Air also now comes with starting storage of 512 GB, doubling the previous model’s base storage capacity.
As usual, the MacBook Pro is geared toward more technical users, especially developers working with AI. The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are up to 4x faster at LLM prompt processing than the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and up to 8x faster at AI image generation than the M1 Pro and M1 Max.
Apple says this makes it possible for AI researchers and developers to train custom models on their device, and creative users could benefit from faster 3D rendering, video editing, and music production work.
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The MacBook Pro also features up to 2x faster read/write performance than the last generation, and will start at 1TB of storage for the MacBook Pro with M5 Pro, and 2TB for the MacBook Pro with M5 Max. Apple says these laptops have up to 24 hours of battery life, and with a 96W or higher USB-C adapter, users can charge to 50% battery in thirty minutes. The laptops support Thunderbolt 5 and have a six-speaker sound system.
The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M5 Pro chips start at $2,199 and $2,699, respectively, whereas the models with the M5 Max chips start at $3,599 and $3,899, available in either black or silver colorways.
All of these laptops will be available for preorder on Tuesday, March 4, and will available beginning on Wednesday, March 11.