Apple has just refreshed the MacBook Air line-up, bringing the new M5 chip into the fold along with a much-needed boost to the base storage capacity. It is a solid update for the world’s most popular laptop, especially for those who felt the previous entry-level models were a bit stingy on space.
The new M5 silicon is the star of the show, featuring a 10-core CPU and configurations that offer up to 10 GPU cores. The real talking point is the inclusion of Neural Accelerators within each core, which Apple claims makes AI-related tasks up to four times faster than the M4 version.
Graphics performance should also see a nice bump thanks to enhanced shader cores and a third-generation ray-tracing engine. To keep everything running smoothly, the unified memory bandwidth has been increased to 153GB/s, marking a 28% improvement over its predecessor.
Under the hood, Apple has also tucked in their custom N1 wireless chip, which means the MacBook Air is now ready for the future with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support. Perhaps more importantly for daily use, the base storage now starts at a more reasonable 512GB, with options going all the way up to 4TB. The SSD itself has also been given a speed boost, with read and write performance that is twice as fast as the previous generation.
But the storage increase also comes with an RM200 increase for the 13-inch model. However, the 15-inch model prices remained the same.
Pricing and Availability
If you are looking to pick one up, the 13-inch model starts at RM4,699. The larger 15-inch version begins at RM5,499. Both sizes come in a choice of four colours: sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver. Apple has stayed a bit quiet on the exact release date in Malaysia, simply saying that customers can place their orders “soon”.