Apple has made the unprecedented decision to hike the prices of all its current computers and tablets. iPhone prices remain as they were, for now. Bloomberg indicates that the rather steep price rises have been precipitated by increased costs of memory and storage. One of the most impactful hikes we see is the entry-level MacBook Pro going from $1,699 to $1,999. However, even the recently released but resource-starved MacBook Neo has had another $100 piled onto its price, so now it starts at $699 before tax.

In addition to Gurman’s highlighted price increases, we spotted that the cheapest Mac Studio M4 Max (mini PC desktop) has had its price increased to $2,499 from $1,999. There’s a lot to take in, so check out our at-a-glance before and after table for quick reference.

Bloomberg’s resident Apple expert, Mark Gurman, quoted an apologetic company rep. “We know this is not welcome news, and we are working tirelessly to find solutions,” a spokesperson from Apple told the reporter. Other interesting assertions from that conversation were that Apple had never seen component prices rise so high, so quickly. Moreover, its representative claimed that the firm did all it could to shield customers from any knock-on device price rises, stating the company had "shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products including today’s increases for iPad and Mac."

While newsrooms might be agog at these price rises being implemented today, the writing has been on the wall of the RAMpocalypse for several months. Back in April, Tim Cook publicly forecast that the component shortages and price rises didn’t appear to be going anywhere soon. That statement came in the wake of the withdrawal of the entry-level $599 configuration of the Mac Mini, and Apple softening the blow of higher prices of its latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models by upgrading memory and other tech specs.

Until now, it seemed like Apple’s massive buying power and vertical integration had managed to help it hold off computer and tablet price increases. Today, the brakes came off, pretty dramatically.

The MacBook Neo has been an astronomical hit for Apple, with both critics and consumers responding positively to the company's entry-level laptop. It changed the precedent for what a budget laptop could be, scaring Windows-reliant vendors, but one legacy chipmaker doesn't seem bothered. AMD has just released new marketing material that directly pits a Ryzen 200 series-equipped machine with the Neo, mocking the latter for not supporting 75% of top PC games.

"While 15 of the top 20 PC games do not run on Macbook Neo natively, AMD systems give you access to massive game libraries," said the company. Only 5 of those 20 titles will work on the Neo. Technically, you can use emulation software to still access more games, but AMD specifically covers that ground, too, and mentions "no workarounds required." It then points out how multiple storefronts enjoy universal compatibility with AMD devices.

For the comparison, AMD used HP's OmniBook X Flip powered by the Ryzen 5 220. That's not a new chip; it's a refresh of the company's Hawk Point lineup (8540U), and this SKU in particular features 2 full-fat Zen 4 cores and 4x Zen4c efficiency cores, for a total of 12 threads. It's paired with a Radeon 740M iGPU that's not exactly the most powerful by modern standards. It's the same integrated graphics found in the regular Ryzen Z1 APU, so it's about 2x less performant than the Z1 Extreme.

If you actually look at the reviews of this iGPU, it's a mixed bag. It can run older titles like GTA V at over 100 FPS at low settings, but it struggles with pretty much modern games. Hellblade 2 runs at 8 frames per second, while Alan Wake 2 hits about 11 frames on average. So yes, AMD runs 20 out of the 20 top games on PC, but a good chunk of them will not be smooth enough to be called playable on this specific chip. It's the x86 architecture and the Windows OS that are the real difference makers.

Everyone knows Apple Silicon is more than powerful enough, and the company's Metal API has modern features capable of real-time rendering. But there's simply not enough demand from the community and not a big push from Apple to pitch gaming as one of the platform's selling points. You can still emulate x86 code into Arm using Parallels, Crossover, or even Game Hub, but that's not native compatibility. Therefore, AMD is correct.

The company doesn't stop there; it also highlights how the OmniBook X Flip specifically has a 512GB SSD compared to the MacBook Neo's 256GB of storage. This laptop also features a touchscreen in a 2-in-1 form factor, versus the Neo, which has just a basic screen. Lastly, the port selection is more varied with AMD as well; there are 2x USB-C, 2x USB-A, and 1x HDMI ports on the HP machine, while you only get 2x USB-C on the Neo. And, of course, the Neo doesn't come with a Windows 11 license.

All that being said, the MacBook Neo is still an excellent laptop for the price. If gaming is imperative to you, Intel's Wildcat Lake laptops are also starting to penetrate this segment with similar pricing and impressive value propositions. If you're chasing that Arm efficiency, then Qualcomm's Snapdragon C-series chips also come with Windows, allowing you to at least bypass the OS difference. It's a great time to be in the market for budget laptops, but the simultaneous component crisis is still taming the full potential of this class.

Apple’s M5 Max SoC flagship is one of the fastest pieces of silicon around and can compete with flagship consumer desktop chips from AMD and Intel in at least some workloads. Logically, this also makes it a great gaming CPU if paired with high-end GPU hardware. Software engineer Scott J. Goldman put this idea to the test and found a way to run Nvidia’s flagship RTX 5090 graphics card on an M5 Max-powered MacBook Pro using virtualization and an eGPU dock. His results revealed that gaming on an RTX 5090 via a MacBook can deliver a great experience in modern AAA games, as long as frame generation is enabled.

The setup process was anything but easy. ARM-based MacBooks don’t officially support eGPU gaming with Nvidia GPUs, requiring Goldman to make a plethora of tweaks to enable it, most notably through virtualization with a Linux OS. MacOS does not support Nvidia GPUs (there is no native driver support), and Linux does not natively support Thunderbolt on Apple silicon. Virtualization gets around this problem by leveraging the strengths of macOS and Linux.

A few other quirks the software engineer had to address included setting up PCI BAR and enabling DMA (Direct Memory Access). One strange problem Goldman had to fix was a scheduling issue in QEMU where the default settings caused benchmark scores to fluctuate sporadically, due to a configuration issue in which the virtualization app did not set any priority level for the virtual CPU threads.

Beyond setting up a Linux virtual machine, implementing the FEX translation layer was also necessary to convert x86 instructions into ARM-based instructions that the M4 Max chip can understand. This was necessary as virtually no PC games support ARM.

With this software setup, the software engineer tested his M5 Max MacBook against a couple of other systems paired with an RTX 5090, featuring an older M4 Air, a 2020 Intel-powered Macbook Pro that is critically running Linux natively with no emulation or translation layers, and an i5-12600K gaming PC representing a traditional desktop experience. He also added benchmarks of the M4 and M5 Max devices running off their integrated GPUs.

His performance benchmarks reveal that the eGPU setup on the M5 Max and M4 MacBooks can deliver a smooth gaming experience as long as frame generation is used. Cyberpunk ran at well over 100 FPS on both Mac devices at the RT Ultra preset with frame generation enabled, despite the overhead of FEX translation, a virtualized Linux environment, and the RTX 5090 running off a Thunderbolt eGPU.

However, performance falls apart without frame generation. In Cyberpunk, at the same settings at 1080p, performance drops down to just above 60 FPS on the M5 Max MacBook and below 50 FPS on the M4-powered MacBook Air. Performance on the M4 system is so bad that the Core i7-1068NG7 in the 2020 MacBook Pro with the RTX 5090 achieves almost identical frame rates. By contrast, the Core i5-12600K system achieved over 150 FPS without frame generation. In other games that the software engineer was able to get running without crashing (Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Crysis Remastered), performance was below 60 FPS.

The main bottleneck is the FEX translation layer, which is hampering performance on Apple silicon-powered MacBooks. Goldman states that FEX incurs a roughly 50% performance penalty on the CPU compared to native ARM processing. This is clearly visible from his Geekbench 6 scores, where enabling FEX while using the Linux VM cut single and multi-core Geekbench scores in half. The software engineer also tested several other games and benchmarks, including GravityMark, where the performance drop-off between the eGPU setup and the native desktop experience (the 12600K setup) was only 20%.

Goldman’s results show that gaming on an RTX 5090 with an M5 Max chip is indeed possible, but the best method to game with this hardware combination requires frame generation to overcome the performance losses from the eGPU dock, as well as CPU processing for virtualization and translation. The performance potential is there, and in a perfect world, the RTX 5090’s performance would only be hampered by the eGPU connection. However, right now, the setup process alone makes this configuration far from ideal for gaming. We can only hope that one day Apple will cater to Mac gamers and provide better tools to make eGPU docks work seamlessly on M-series silicon.

For centuries, artisans have adjusted their tools to suit their preferences and work styles. In a similar spirit, software designer and engineer Kent Walters has used a metalworking file to round over the corners of his MacBook. On his blog, Walters shares that “people like to freak out about this,” but we think the DIYing and modding core of Tom’s Hardware readers will probably overwhelmingly support his right-to-disrepair stance.

If you’ve owned or used a modern Apple device, you may sympathize with Walters. “The bottom edge of the MacBook is very sharp. Indeed, the industrial designers at Apple chose an aluminum unibody partly for the fact that it can handle such a geometry,” explains the San Francisco resident. “But, it is uncomfortable on my wrists, and I believe strongly in customizing one's tools, so I filed it off.”

The idea seems fair, but the images Walters shares show that there’s more than a modicum of filing work done to increase the comfort of the palm rest area to an acceptable level. The eased profile is particularly rounded right below the touchpad area. Indeed, Walters says he was concerned that he might file through the unibody when doing this, but thankfully not.

MacBook bullnosing DIY tips

If you are also barely tolerating the sharp edges of your MacBook, Walters has some advice. Inspired DIYers should tape off the speakers and keyboard before lifting their metalworking file, he suggests. That will obviously minimize the ingress of aluminum filings. Clamping the notebook to a rigid surface is also recommended to help you work with accuracy.

To round the edges off the MacBook palmrest, as pictured, Walters started with “a fairly rough file, as that is what I had on hand, and then sanded with 150 then 400 grit sandpaper.” He notes that this work was done months before the pictures, so the finish has earned a few battle scars since – a few scratches and dings.

Finally, thrifty folks who will keep their devices as pristine as possible to maximize resale potential down the road probably aren’t the best match for this kind of project.

Apple is 50 years old. The consumer tech giant, famous for the iPhone, AirPods, and, yes, its Mac laptops and desktops, has a larger footprint than ever. It also now encompasses TV production, music streaming apps, a massive App Store, and even a $599 system for the masses, the MacBook Neo. But all of that is rooted in a tradition of hobbyist computing, starting with the company's first product: the Apple-1.

Apple Computer Inc. was founded in 1976 as a partnership between Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne (of Atari fame, who was at Apple very briefly and worked on documentation). The company was built around the Apple-1, designed by Wozniak, and officially incorporated in Cupertino, California, in January 1977.

In retellings of the Apple legend, Wozniak was the true engineer, who was working at HP at the time. Jobs had an interest in electronics (and was reportedly pretty good at soldering at his job at Atari), but he was more of a marketing guy.

Either way, the pair, along with the early team they built, didn't have a company based on lifestyle – at least not yet. It was based in the hobbyist PC space. The Apple-1 came without a case, a keyboard, or a power supply, but did include a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and four kilobytes of memory. If you wanted to run Integer BASIC, you needed to do it on a cassette. Only about 200 were ever made, mostly for Byte Shop in nearby Mountain View.

At the time, the Apple-1 delivered a surprising amount of convenience for personal computing. Even though you still had to bring many components, the board was built and tested. Wozniak would show it off at the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley, to acclaim.But it was the Apple II that brought Apple's computers to the masses, assembling everything together, including the keyboard and case. You would use a television to serve as the screen. Heck, BASIC was even stored in memory. The Apple II was an iconic beige box that would be popularized by two further advancements in computing: a floppy disk drive and VisiCalc, an early spreadsheet program, which boosted its popularity.

There would be many variations on the Apple II, including the ill-fated Apple III, the upgraded Apple IIe, and the Lisa, the first commercially available PC with a GUI and mouse (inspired by work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, such as the Xerox Alto), which was quite expensive at $9,995.

But in 1984, following an internal power struggle, a second computing group within Apple revealed the Macintosh (later the Macintosh 128K), bringing forward the idea of the "all-in-one" PC, which included a monitor. There would be many variations in the Mac line, but they'd become popularized again in 1998, when Jobs, back from his exile from the company from 1985 through 1997, announced the iMac G3, designed by Jony Ive, in Bondi Blue. That would be followed by multiple colorways on the portable iBook laptops.

There would be hits (the iMac G4, with a modern design between a lamp and a flower) and misses. The Power Mac G4 Cube was a gorgeous machine with cosmetic issues in the injection-molded plastic and cooling issues thanks to its fanless design. The press release about Apple suspending production lives on on its website.

In 2001, Apple released the iPod, promising "1,000 songs in your pocket." The third-gen iPod, in 2003, added support for Windows, helping propel it to be one of the most popular consumer devices of all time. In 2007, Apple would launch the iPhone, which would take over the American smartphone market, become the company's largest focus and flagship product, and introduce the App Store, a huge business success for the company, as well as other services like iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple Pay. (The iPhone would ultimately lead to the death of Flash and the headphone jack on phones, but change the way many people use devices forever.)

But the next biggest hit would be the MacBook Air. By this time, Apple was firmly in its Intel era. Sure, it was extremely expensive when it launched in 2008, starting at $1,799 with an 80GB HDD and a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (a 64GB SSD was an upgrade option!). But when Jobs pulled that computer out of a manila envelope, the tech world was stunned. It was stunned again when, in 2010, Apple redesigned the Air in two sizes: 11- and 13.3-inches, starting at $999 for the smaller model and $1,299 for the larger one (and it got rid of the spinning hard drive).

The MacBook Air would push leading PC companies to chase Apple in laptops for well more than a decade, as Dell updated the XPS line, HP jumped to the premium Spectre, and even Lenovo's ThinkPads saw the X1 series.

The MacBook Air would stay in the spotlight, 12 years later. Following some hum-dum upgrades in Apple's last Intel years, including the lackluster Touch Bar (in fact, in 2018, with little attention, I wrote for Laptop Mag that Apple needed to either upgrade or kill the laptop), it would be one of the first machines, along with the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, to ditch Intel and move to Apple's first in-house silicon, the M1 system-on-a-chip. It was widely seen as a success.

Today, Macs don't have the kind of modularity or upgradeability they had when Wozniak showed off the Apple-1 at the Homebrew Computer Club. But with the release of the $599 MacBook Neo, time has caught up with Apple at 50 years old. There's another computer that feels like an all-in-one package for more people. But there are more challenges to come, as Apple faces a new world focused on AI, with new players and competitors. While the company still seems to be trying to deliver on promises around Apple Intelligence, the company has partnered with Google to use Gemini models to make an AI-focused Siri.

The 50-year anniversary has inspired celebrations, with museum collections, like the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art in Georgia showing off over 2,000 artifacts related to the company's history, and the vaunted Computer History Museum in Mountain View offering special programming. Apple has had an array of concerts and other performances at stores globally. But for most, it's just Wednesday, even if you have an iPhone in your pocket.

With a starting price of $599, Apple’s newly launched MacBook Neo is a solid option for first-time Mac users, students, or anyone looking for an inexpensive laptop for basic tasks. The company has made some compromises to keep the price in check, but one that many users may overlook is the laptop’s thermal design.

The A18 Pro mobile SoC powering the device, also seen on the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max, is passively cooled with a simple graphene sheet and some thermal compound. While that may be sufficient for lighter workloads, stressing the laptop can push temperatures north of 100 degrees Celsius, leading to potential thermal throttling.

In their latest YouTube video, ETA Prime highlighted the same issue when they stressed their MacBook Neo by running No Man’s Sky. The game didn’t perform that well — around 30 frames per second at an awkward resolution of 1408 x 881 — and temperatures reaching 105 C. While he MacBook Neo is not really meant for gaming, with some hardware modifications the YouTuber managed to substantially improve thermals and squeeze some extra juice out of the laptop.

The first modification involves adding a custom copper heatsink paired with an Arctic TP-3 thermal pad to cover the entire mainboard, including the CPU. After removing the bottom cover, the YouTuber carefully removes the stock graphene sheet using a heat gun, exposing the components on the compact mainboard. The graphene sheet is then reapplied over most of the components, with the CPU covered with some Noctua thermal paste, followed by the copper strip. A thermal pad is placed on top to ensure proper contact with the bottom cover, which is made of aluminum and helps spread heat faster.

This modification led to a drop in temperatures by over 20°C with No Man’s Sky now running around 58 FPS. The CPU was also able to draw more power and maintain higher clock speeds. This also resulted in improvements in benchmarks; On Geekbench 6, the A18 Pro SoC performed 9.7% better in multi-core and around 15.2% in single-core tests.

Taking things up a notch, ETA Prime used a thermoelectric liquid cooler to further reduce temperatures on the SoC. Originally designed for smartphones, the YouTuber explains that this unique cooler features a Peltier-style cold plate which is capable of handling up to 50W. The cold plate attaches magnetically and snaps directly onto the bottom metal cover, right above where the CPU is located.

After installing and running the cooler for about two minutes, idle temperatures on the MacBook Neo dropped to around 23 C. Running No Man’s Sky once again, temperatures averaged at 74 C with similar frame rates of just under 60 FPS. Since the SoC gained some extra headroom, it resulted in even better GeekBench 6 scores with an improvement of 18.60% in multi-core and 17.52% in single-core tests.

This experiment shows just how much untapped performance the MacBook Neo is leaving on the table. Apple's decision to rely on passive cooling does help in keeping costs and noise down (and may increase battery life), but even a slightly more robust heatsink could have delivered noticeably better results and sustained performance without dramatically increasing the price.

The MacBook Air has topped our list of the best ultrabooks and premium laptops in recent years because of its mix of premium design, battery life, and performance that make it a go-to recommendation for anyone already on a Mac or looking to make the jump from Windows. The latest incarnation, the MacBook Air with M5 ($1,099 to start, $1,299 as tested), continues the trend, capitalizing on the series of subtle tweaks in its predecessors.

Apple has ditched the $999 starting price for the 13-inch system we're reviewing here, likely a mix of component shortages and pricing strategies related to the new budget-focused MacBook Neo. But $1,099 does get you a larger 512GB SSD over the previous 256GB base spec.

Despite the slight price bump, the mix of power, style, and longevity is still enough to easily recommend the MacBook Air to most people, especially those who don't need to run Windows. And all of the features that the MacBook Air offers still give it a clear space in the lineup that's worth saving up for over the Neo, if you can afford it.

Design of the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The MacBook Air with M5 sports the same design that Apple revealed back in 2022, when the M2 Air was the first Mac hardware built specifically around Apple Silicon. The design has aged well, and this one comes in the same colors as last year. Our review unit is a pale "sky" blue, the color introduced in 2025, which could be mistaken for silver in some lighting conditions.

The same aluminum design remains, with rounded edges and flat surfaces. It's handsome, if a bit familiar at this point. When you open the lid, which features Apple's logo in reflective tone-on-tone metal, you're greeted with the one real sin of this design: a notch into the display that houses the webcam. I've never quite gotten over it (in fact, the cheaper MacBook Neo's thicker bezel helped Apple avoid one completely).

Most of the MacBook Air's ports are on the left side of the notebook. These include MagSafe for charging and a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports. On the right side, there's a lone 3.5 mm headphone jack.

At 2.7 pounds and 11.97 x 8.46 x 0.44 inches, the 13-inch MacBook Air can easily slide into a backpack relatively unnoticed. The Dell XPS 14, a Windows laptop noticeably inspired by the design, is 3 pounds and 12.19 x 8.26 x 0.6 inches. Apple's MacBook Neo, the new gateway laptop to the Apple ecosystem, weighs the same as the MacBook Air and is 0.6 mm taller, but has a smaller footprint at 11.71 x 8.12 x 0.5 inches.

MacBook Air (13-inch, M5) Specifications

Productivity Performance on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The MacBook Air puts Apple's M5 in a fanless chassis. Even without air cooling, the chip is quite powerful.

Our competitors here are the MacBook Pro with M5, which puts the M5 under air, as well as the Dell XPS 14 with a Core Ultra 7 3355 and an Asus ZenBook Duo with Core Ultra X9 388H. For an alternative ARM system, there's the Acer Swift 14 AI with the aging Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100). Lastly, there are some comparisons to the 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 that we reviewed last year.

On Geekbench 6, the Air notched a single-core score of 4,168 and a multi-core score of 17,067. That made the M5's biggest competition itself, but cooler. The M5 MacBook Pro hit a single-core score of 4,288 and a multi-core score of 17,926. Intel's Core Ultra X9 388H had a higher-multi-core score than the Air's M5 at 17,283, but given the Asus that houses it is almost twice the price of the MacBook Air, that's not a huge difference. Apple's M4 didn't do as well as M5, but it's single-core score still beats the Intel chips.

On our file transfer test, the MacBook Air copied 25GB of files at a rate of 1,924.84 MBps, just ahead of the M5 MacBook Pro and faster than both Intel systems tested here.

The M5 MacBook Air took 4 minutes and 41 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake, a slight increase over M4 (4:52). The MacBook Pro did it over a minute faster with air cooling (3:31), while the Zenbook Duo also beat the Air, at 4:22. This was where the Acer Swift 14 with Snapdragon was the most competitive, coming in at 4:46.

On the Xcode Benchmark, the MacBook Air took 165 seconds to compile a large codebase using Apple's developer tools. The MacBook Pro did it in 145 seconds.

It wasn't surprising to see the M5 thermally throttle in this fanless chassis. On our Cinebench 2026 stress test, the chip started with a score of 3,415, slowly decreasing over the first few runs, until it settled in the low 2,300's. Apple doesn't allow monitoring software like TG Pro to access clock speeds, but Cinebench estimates that M5 runs single-core at 4.3 GHz and multi-core at 3.6 GHz in this laptop.

Gaming and Graphics on the MacBook Air

The MacBook Air's integrated 10-core GPU has access to the 16GB of unified memory in our review unit. In this fanless design, the GPU is subject to similar thermal throttling as the CPU.

I tried playing InZoi, the same life simulator game I played on the MacBook Pro with M5 Max, on the Air. In this case, though, I had it set to 1680 x 1050, used MetalFX in performance mode, and very low settings, but still had hardware ray tracing enabled. The game ran between 40 and 55 frames per second, depending on the environment the characters were in.

The Air earned a score of 1,005 on the 3DMark Steel Nomad benchmark, falling behind the cooled M5 in the MacBook Pro at 1,122 and the integrated Intel Arc B390 in the Asus Zenbook Duo's Core Ultra X9 388H (but again, that's a far more expensive laptop). The Air was far more graphically competent than the Dell XPS 14's integrated Intel graphics, which delivered just 532 points. We don't have data for this test for M4, as we've started using it on Macs recently.

Display on the on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The 13-inch screen on the MacBook Air is actually 13.6-inches, making it 0.6 inches larger than the MacBook Neo. The Air's display has a 2560 x 1664 "Liquid Retina" LED display with IPS and Apple's True Tone, which adjusts the screen's color temperature based on ambient lighting.

I used the MacBook Air to watch the debut trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the hero's new red and blue suit shone brightly against grayer, darker backgrounds as he dove off a building and confronted the Punisher.

At 83.1% DCI-P3 color Volume and 117.3% sRGB, the Air was on par with the MacBook Pro, despite the latter's mini LED screen. The Asus ZenBook Duo's dual OLED screens, however, were slightly more vivid, while the XPS 14 trailed the group here.

At 458.8 nits, the Air's display gets suitably bright, but the MacBook Pro got almost 100 nits brighter. The Dell XPS 14 beat the Air ever so slightly at 466 nits of brightness.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The keyboard on the MacBook Air may not have the most travel, but it's quite comfortable. I love typing on it. The layout just makes sense, with full-sized function keys and inverted-T arrow keys. The power button features Touch ID to log in easily.

On the Monkeytype typing test, I hit 114 words per minute with 98% accuracy, which is close to my best.

My only quibble with the MacBook Air's keys is one that is also on this year's MacBook Neo and MacBook Pro lines, as well; Apple has removed the words from the delete, enter, shift, caps lock, and tab keys and replaced them with glyphs that are familiar to those who have used the iOS keyboard. As a touch typist, it's not actually that big of a deal, but I don't think it's as clear as it could be. (For what it's worth, these glyphs have been on alternate language keyboards before. We're just seeing it now in U.S. English.) On the bright side, the modifier keys maintain their text.

Apple's haptic touchpads remain among the best in the industry. They support tons of fluid, accurate gestures, feel good against the fingertip, and have convincing feedback that feels like a real click. Very few others come close.

Audio on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

Apple's quad speakers on the MacBook Pro sound quite good and get loud enough to fill a room. In our photography studio, I listened to Metric's "Victim of Luck" and was pleased by clear vocals, synths, and keys, as well as some snappy drums. The bass isn't as good as the thicker MacBook Pro, but at least there is some, which you rarely get on a laptop this thin.

If you prefer to use the 3.5 mm headphone jack, Apple offers support for high-impedance headphones.

Upgradeability on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

While there are four pentalobe screws on the underside of the MacBook Air, removing them won't get you very far, as the RAM and storage are soldered down. As usual, the recommendation with a Mac is to buy the best one you can at the time of purchase, because you won't be able to adjust down the line.Most people who need repairs are likely to make an appointment at a Genius Bar. For those with access to parts, Apple did drop a repair manual for the MacBook Air on launch day (as well as the Pro and Neo).

Battery Life on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The MacBook Air lasts long enough on a charge. On our battery test, which involves web browsing, streaming video, and light OpenGL benchmarks with the screen set to 150 nits of brightness, it lasted for 15 hours and 28 minutes. That's roughly the same as the 15-inch M4 model we tested last year (15:14).

And while that's nothing to sneeze at, and is effectively all-day battery life, you can go higher. The MacBook Pro with M5, with a larger 72.4 WHr battery, ran for 18:14. The Dell XPS 14 ran for 20:41, albeit with a lower-resolution display. Another ARM-based competitor, the Snapdragon X Elite-based Swift 14, also ran longer at 17:32.

Heat on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

Despite the lack of a fan, the MacBook Air doesn't get uncomfortably hot. We took skin temperatures while running our Cinebench stress test, and while the system heated up, it was never uncomfortable to the point where you couldn't use it.

The center of the keyboard measured 105.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is noticeable, but the touchpad was cooler at 96 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the laptop measured 107.9 F.

TG Pro, which measures system temperatures and can control fan speeds, measured the M5 SOC at 63.24 degrees Celsius.

Webcam on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The MacBook Air has a 12MP webcam in its notch. In everyday usage, I have no complaints. The webcam caught every hair on my head (fortunate!) some wrinkles under my eyes (unfortunate!), and even some detail in our office's industrial ceiling with speckled paint.

The camera, dubbed "Center Stage," is named after a macOS feature that lets the camera focus on you as you move around. I don't use it much, as I tend to sit in one place on calls.

Software and Warranty on the MacBook Air (13-inch, M5)

The MacBook Air comes with the latest version of macOS 26, also known as Tahoe. We went into that more in our review of the Macbook Pro with M5. Tahoe includes the "liquid glass" design overhaul that includes lots of icons and translucent effects, as well as a big update to Spotlight that adds many actions, a built-in clipboard history, and far more automations for shortcuts.

Built-in apps include Safari, Messages, Reminders, Maps, FaceTime, Photos, Apple TV, Music, and more. You still get free versions of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, though newer versions come as part of Apple's Creator Studio subscription service, along with Compression, Motion, FInal Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Mainstage, and Pixelmator Pro.

Apple sells the 13-inch MacBook Air with a 1-year warranty. AppleCare+, which covers repairs, battery replacement, and priority support, is $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year (it is also available as part of AppleCare One for $19.99 per month, covering up to three products). The 15-inch Air drops up to $7.99 per month or $79.99 annually.

MacBook Air (13-inch, M5) Configurations

We tested a 13-inch MacBook Air with an Apple M5 with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a blue "sky" colorway. That configuration costs $1,299.

Apple has eliminated the $999 base price. This year, the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099, albeit with 512GB of storage rather than the 256GB of storage at the previous starting price. That system also has an 8-core GPU.

If you want more than 16GB, you need the M5 chip with the 10-core GPU, a $100 upgrade on its own. From there, 24GB of RAM is $200 and 32GB is $400. That's pricey, but it's not ridiculous given the price of RAM everywhere else these days.

Apple is now selling the 13-inch Air with a 40W Dynamic Power Adapter with 60W Max. For $20 more, you can get either the 35W Dual USB-C port or a 70W USB-C charger.

The 15-inch MacBook Air now starts at $1,299 with the M5 chip and a 10-core GPU.

Bottom Line

The MacBook Air, despite its place as Apple's new middle child in the Mac laptop lineup, is still the best option for the majority of users, if they can afford it. You get a slim design, strong performance and battery life, a comfortable keyboard, an excellent haptic touchpad, and strong base specs at 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Much of Apple's premium competition is actually more expensive now. For example, the Dell XPS 14 starts at $1,349.99 (as of this writing, the price tends to fluctuate) with an Intel Core Ultra 5 325, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 1920 x 1200 screen. That's more money for a lower resolution display and a less powerful chip. (The version we tested, with a Core Ultra 7 355, is up to $1,449.99). Getting Intel's top processors only goes up from there. But if you need to use Windows, you may need to pony up or find alternatives to get a premium ultrabook in your price range.

Meanwhile, Apple's MacBook Neo may be an alternative for some, but if you're doing serious multitasking, the 16GB of memory in the MacBook Air will be a noticeable difference, and you'll also get better speakers, MagSafe charging, an excellent haptic touchpad, a larger, higher-resolution display, better webcam, keyboard backlighting, and a faster chip, to boot. You get a lot extra with the Air, if you can afford it.

That leaves the MacBook Air as a great value in the premium ultraportable space. While I would love to see Apple start bringing its fancier screens and other Pro features down to the Air, this is a laptop that most people can get by on, presuming they're not doing intensive workloads that need constant cooling and heavy graphics prowess. For just $1,100, you can get a lot of Mac. That's getting harder and harder for other companies to say about their PCs, as the RAM and storage crisis continues to drive up prices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the Apple Mac had its best launch week ever for new customers, and if you check out a MacBook Neo at the Apple Store right now, the website says it will ship in about two to three weeks. It seems that the affordable MacBook is on its way to becoming a massive hit for Apple, especially at a time when rising RAM and SSD costs are killing the entry-level PC market.

Cupertino officially announced the MacBook Neo on March 4, 2026, with deliveries beginning on March 11. The laptop had its first full week on sale by March 18, with Cook saying on X, “Mac just had its best launch week ever for first-time Mac customers. We love seeing the enthusiasm!” While Apple hasn’t released official sales figures, it seems that the company is seeing much more demand than anticipated for the affordable device. But unlike the OpenClaw-driven shortage of high-performance Macs and MacBooks, demand for the Neo seems to be coming from new customers switching from Windows to macOS.

Many enthusiasts snubbed the MacBook Neo because it’s lacking in specs — especially its A18 Pro SoC and measly 8GB of Unified Memory. But because this device is designed for students and casual users (and priced accordingly), it does not really need that much performance. Instead, Apple focused on what the average consumer likely wants: a good experience for day-to-day tasks, such as media consumption and basic productivity, and an excellent build that does not feel cheap. And despite its apparent lack of power, the MacBook Neo has been proven to run Cyberpunk 2077 at over 30 FPS.

Asus co-CEO S.Y. Hsu said that it was a shock to the entire PC market, especially as many manufacturers didn’t think Apple would launch such an affordable device. Still, he compared the Neo to a tablet, calling it a content-consumption device.

This would make the MacBook Neo a major threat to Microsoft’s dominance in the sub-$600 laptop market, especially since it fits the budget of many looking for an entry-level device. Furthermore, Apple’s education pricing offers a $100 discount on the laptop, bringing the price to less than $500 and making it attractive to many students and their parents.

Windows still offers a few advantages that Apple cannot match. But as the MacBook becomes more popular and gains market share over Microsoft, that would entice more developers to build for macOS, making it an attractive alternative, especially if you already have an iPhone. PC manufacturers need to step up their game and offer an alternative that could match the MacBook Neo in both price and quality if they want to compete against Apple, but the ongoing memory and storage chip shortage will certainly make that challenge.

The MacBook Neo is Apple's most affordable laptop to date and is tuned for entry-level buyers who need a computer for email, web browsing, video watching, and other simple tasks. However, YouTuber ETA Prime discovered Apple’s latest entry-level device is surprisingly capable for PC gaming thanks to the iPhone 16 Pro SoC housed inside. The YouTuber tested several games and found that the Neo could achieve playable frame rates in AAA titles, including Cyberpunk 2077.

ETA Prime tested several games on the MacBook Neo: Hades 2, Drive Rally, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Hollow Knight: Silksong, BioShock 2, Roblox, Resident Evil Village, RoboCop: Rogue City, and Cyberpunk 2077. Hades 2, Drive Rally, and Roblox ran at 60 FPS at 2816 x 1762. Bioshock 2 Remastered and Resident Evil Village, but ran at significantly lower resolutions to do so. Hollow Knight: Silksong encountered strange behavior during the YouTuber's tests, only achieving 56 FPS average with the built-in display. However, it achieved over 100 FPS when the laptop was plugged into a high-refresh-rate external display.

The most demanding games the YouTuber tested were Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Robocop: Rogue City, and Cyberpunk 2077. Shadow of the Tomb Raider ran at an average of 42 FPS at 1280 x 720, upscaled from 896 x 584. Robocop: Rogue City ran at around 45 FPS using the same resolution and upscaling ratio, and Cyberpunk 2077 ran at around 40 FPS at 1204 x 753, upscaled from 708 x 443. We also benchmarked the MacBook Neo in Cyberpunk 2077 in our review, but only ran the built-in benchmark, achieving 33 FPS.

ETA Prime’s tests prove that Apple’s entry-level MacBook is capable of playing PC games, even AAA games, if you are willing to make sacrifices to image quality. Further, it proves Apple’s modern iPhones have the hardware chops to run PC games since the Neo uses Apple’s A18 Pro rather than M-series silicon. PC emulation on Android is growing in popularity and is already possible on flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered phones such as the Red Magic 11 Pro. The only problem now for iPhones is that PC emulation support is in a weak spot compared to Android.

Earlier this month, Apple released the MacBook Neo, a $599 laptop that impressed reviewers (myself included) with surprisingly good quality for the price.

"Yes, the MacBook Neo is $599. But it rarely feels like it," I wrote in my review. "Apple invested in a premium aluminium chassis, a bright, good-quality screen, and a decent keyboard and mouse. Putting performance aside, those are the parts of a computer that most people care the most about."

I stand by those words, but there are, of course, people who put performance above all else, even at $599. And to those people, I have good news: You can get a Windows PC!

Some table stakes here: We haven't been able to review a ton of budget Windows PCs. In fact, the companies that make them don't usually like to make them available for loans. But we've done a bit of internet window shopping, and using some comparisons from our own data and online, we can more closely evaluate the performance gains that some Windows laptops offer at this price point.

The competition

I browsed multiple big box stores and shops from laptop manufacturers. One quick theme came up: Many laptop deals in this price range are sold by third-party sellers, some of which don't seem so reputable.

I stuck with laptops that are being sold directly from the vendor's store. The MacBook Neo, sold at many stores, will come with a 1-year warranty and support. So these systems had to, also. That weeded out a surprising number of candidates.

To get good pricing, though, some of this had to rely on sales. For example, HP sells a 14-inch laptop on its website with a $499.99 MSRP with a last-gen Intel N150, a 1366 x 768 display topping at 250 nits, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of eMMC storage, and Windows 11 Home in S Mode. At least it has a Copilot key? Shoppers should be aware that they can do better if they shop around.

I chose three major competitors:

• Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x, a Snapdragon laptop with the latest standards, but a two-year old CPU. Sound familiar?
• Asus Vivobook Go 15, a $499 notebook, matching the MacBook Neo's education price.
• Dell 14 Plus, on sale exclusively for $649 at Dell.com, shows what an extra $50 can get you on Windows if you catch the right sale.

Here they are in a table to compare the major specs:

Something for everyone

If you want a premium experience, the MacBook Neo will win. Of these systems, the Neo is the only one with a completely aluminum body. Others, like the IdeaPad and the Dell 16 Plus, have aluminum top covers but are otherwise made of plastic. Apple’s is also the lightest machine of the bunch, at 2.7 pounds, while the IdeaPad and Asus are both more than 3.5 pounds.

The big question most people will want to know is about system memory. The Qualcomm-based IdeaPad and the Dell 16 Plus both come with 16GB, while the Asus sticks with 8GB, like the Neo. All of those are soldered (in Dell's case, it's also on-package because it uses Intel's Lunar Lake architecture).

Apple's A18 Pro, a six-core processor with 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, debuted in the iPhone 16 Pro in 2024. The Intel Core Ultra 5 226V in the Dell, an 8-core processor, was released the same year. Months later, in January 2025, the 8-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100), the least-powerful chip in this laptop lineup, dropped. The Vivobook Go boasts the oldest processor; the AMD Ryzen 5 7520U launched in 2022 with 4 cores on a 6nm process (that platform launched in 2023).

I can tell you from experience that the MacBook Neo's display is significantly better than what you typically see in big box stores at the $599 price point. If you get this Dell 16 Plus while on sale, you can get a 2560 x 1600 screen, which is slightly higher in resolution. But Dell is only promising 300 nits of brightness; we measured the Neo at 452.6 nits. Asus promises just 250 nits of brightness. On paper, the Neo sure sounds better – and it looks quite good in person. The other laptops offer bog-standard 1080p displays, which I would've called good enough for the price until now.

Both Apple and Dell have 1080p webcams. Those vary a ton in quality. I know Apple's is great, I can't speak for Dell's. When I showed Apple's to managing editor Matt Safford, he said, "I'm pretty sure that's the best-looking 1080p [laptop] webcam I've ever seen." The other two have 720p webcams, but hey, at least they have privacy shutters.

All of Apple's competition has larger batteries, though that isn't everything in battery life. In our MacBook Neo review, the Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Plus and a 50 WHr battery outperformed the Neo, so it's possible that the IdeaPad, with a lower-power chip and a 60 Whr battery, and a lower-resolution, likely dimmer, lower screen would go even longer.

Apple's laptop also comes with a 20W USB-C charger. You could use a faster one, but if we're going based on what you get in the box, that's measly. The IdeaPad and Dell come with 65W chargers, while the Vivobook comes with a 45W charger.

One of the biggest issues I had with the MacBook Neo was the lack of backlit keys. Lenovo has backlit keys on the IdeaPad, as does Dell on the 14 Plus. But Asus' Vivobook also has darkened keys.

There’s no doubt that Apple's competitors offer more ports, including mixes of USB-A and USB-C, SD card readers, and even a Thunderbolt 4 port on that Dell. Many of the USB ports are 5GBps, making them slower than the fastest port on the Mac. But if variety trumps speed, then the PC is your friend here.

Single and multi-core performance

The main reason these systems weren't compared in our Neo review was that we didn't have scores in our benchmark database. Just to get a sense of performance, though, we're comparing our Geekbench 6 scores for the MacBook Neo to what we're seeing in the Geekbench database for others. It's not ideal, but it's what we've got to work with.

In this comparison, we see that Apple's Neo with A18 Pro still maintains a strong lead in single-core performance, where most Neo owners are likely to spend most of their time browsing the web, writing documents, working on spreadsheets, watching videos or movies, or doing other basic tasks. That being said, if you do switch into multi-core performance, both the Qualcomm Snapdragon X1-26-100 and Intel Core Ultra 5 226V outdid the Neo. Given the IdeaPad and Dell Plus housing those laptops also have 16GB of RAM as configured, they're more able to run multi-core tasks well in the first place.

Geekbench is great for emulating short, bursty workloads — the kind you're likely to run on a budget laptop. But this may not be illustrative of how these systems perform over a longer duration of time. And of course, a lot depends on what you actually do on your laptop.

What about education pricing?

Apple shaves $100 off the MacBook Neo for education pricing, bringing it down to $499, the same price as the Asus Vivobook. When you compare this head-to-head with the Vivobook on paper, the Neo wins every time, with the Vivobook’s bigger battery. (A larger battery doesn't inherently mean better battery life, though).

That being said, there is one important note to think about: software. While many students will likely be able to get along just fine with macOS, if you're in a specialized high school program or college major that uses software that only runs on Windows, you'll need a PC. If that's the case, leaning towards x86, like that Intel Lunar Lake chip in the Dell, is probably a smart choice; Qualcomm still has some work to do on app compatibility.

But if you're doing most work in the browser, Microsoft Office, or other software available on both platforms, the Mac's price will be extremely enticing here. The best Windows competitors are a bit more expensive.

A new breed of competition?

In general, when I review systems, I review everything about the system, as a full package. And for people doing basic tasks, I maintain that the MacBook Neo is a great value.

That being said, it does have limits. Those who need multi-core performance, more RAM, and more ports (and more properly-labeled ports, at that) do have options in this price range. You just have to give up something else, like build quality and/or a bright screen. That's how cheap laptops tend to work. But on single-core workloads, build quality, and when it comes to the displays, you really do have to hand it to Apple.

In Asus' most recent earnings call, co-CEO S.Y. Hsu said that the MacBook Neo was "certainly a shock to the entire market,” before turning around and saying it was mostly a content consumption device with just 8GB of RAM that you can't upgrade. I would tell him to also look at the Vivobook his company sells.

But that shock will hopefully lay the foundation for better competition from Windows OEMs at lower prices. It will be difficult during this RAM crisis, but raising the bar for budget notebooks across the ecosystem would really be great for everyone, no matter what operating system they prefer. And frankly, Apple's competitors better be ready to answer the MacBook Neo with something that feels as complete as the Neo does, or they'll risk looking out of touch. There are plenty of people who prefer a Windows PC to a Mac, but it's not like Microsoft has been earning fans with its OS lately. There's work to do.

By repurposing a mobile chip and fitting it inside an aluminum chassis, Apple showed just how low the bar really is for the often-overlooked budget laptop segment. The MacBook Neo is a great machine for the price, but clearly, some corners had to be cut in order to minimize costs, like limited RAM and storage. Thankfully, one modder from China is showing how at least one of those things can be solved.

DirectorFeng is an expert repairer and technician who's worked on a number of Apple devices, including iPhones and previous MacBook models. His latest stint involves the MacBook Neo, specifically the base 256 GB model that includes barely enough storage for modern-day usage. Since Apple doesn't allow you to upgrade storage on your own, DirectorFeng will swap the very NAND chip itself with a higher-capacity one, then reflash MacOS so it recognizes the new SSD.

That sounds simple, but it's a job meant only for professionals, which you can tell by watching the video. After the unboxing, DirectorFeng began with disassembling the device; a few screws and a couple of picks later, the back cover was off. He neatly showed off all the parts and described what each of them does, eventually getting to the logic board up top that houses the SSD.

Several undone connectors later, the board comes out. He removed the shielding tape to expose the dense componentry, which includes the SSD. He started heating up the NAND chip, slowly removing the BGA glue around it until it eventually came off. Then, after cleaning the solder pads with some flux, he simply plopped the new 1 TB module on there and warmed up the area again to fix it in place.

The hard part was done, and DirectorFeng then connected the Neo with another MacBook via a USB cable to flash macOS. After the testing was done, he shut down the laptop to reapply the BGA glue on the new chip, after which the entire logic board was thrown into a reflow oven to make the glue set properly. The board was put back in its place in the chassis, and all the connectors were resecured before final assembly.

After quickly checking the device's settings and seeing 994.61 GB under "Macintosh HD," the job was complete. This is the world's first MacBook Neo with a terabyte of storage. That's enough for most people, given the Neo's target audience, but the procedure overall has diminishing returns. For a device as cheap as the Neo, opting for an expensive mod like this almost negates the point of the laptop in the first place.

We can only imagine how much the chip itself costs during a component shortage, and then the labor on top might make an external drive a more sensible purchase. That's before we even begin to think about the data safety issues that could be possible with a modded SSD. But we can't deny the skill on display here, and if you can afford to pay for it, this is some impressive work. Especially when you consider that even the transfer speeds got a little bump at the end.

The stock 256 GB SSD was at around 1,500 MB/s in the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, while the new 1 TB SSD reached up to 1,600 MB/s. Faster storage can make a difference when it comes to memory-deprived situations. Only 8 GB of RAM on the Neo forces macOS to switch to swap very often, so faster interfacing with the SSD could make paging files quicker to access, but that would require a much larger speed difference.

Apple has a new laptop release on the very near horizon, and even though the new, smaller MacBook Neo is priced fairly, you can save even more if you preorder the new computer on Amazon ahead of Wednesday's official release date. The Amazon Spring Deal Days sale is in full swing, and one of those deals is a 5% (£29.03) saving on the MacBook Neo launch price of £599.99, making it just £569.97. This is for only two of the colour schemes, though, the Indigo and Blush coloured MacBook Neo laptops.

• Grab this deal at Amazon

The new MacBook Neo uses the A18 Pro chip, previously used in Apple iPhones, and has six cores, a single-core clock speed of up to 4.0 GHz, and up to 2.4 GHz in multi-core use case scenarios. Other features include a gorgeous 13-inch liquid retina display, 8GB of unified memory, 256GB of SSD storage, and a 1080p webcam.

We reviewed the Apple MacBook Neo and were surprised by its premium feel and looks in comparison to the much more expensive MacBooks. The chassis of the Neo is premium, and the 13-inch liquid retina display is bright, with vivid colours. The touchpad is clickable anywhere on the pad, and overall, it's the most affordable MacBook laptop ever made.

Some things we weren't fans of, however, were the lack of backlighting on the keyboard, which made it harder to see keys in a darkened environment, and the lack of functionality labeling on the USB-C ports. The ports are quite different in the physical tasks they could handle. Apple's operating does notify you if you plug something like a small portable monitor into the USB-C port that doesn't support DisplayPort functionality, but it's a bit of a clunky design choice for Apple.

This is an interesting change for Apple and awesome if you're looking for an eBook-style laptop with a premium feel and build quality for a good price. The fact that you can already make a saving before the MacBook is even released is amazing and definitely something you should jump on if this is a product you're interested in. It's not a gaming laptop, and wouldn't be that effective as a high-productivity software machine, but for general internet activity and work/study use, it's a very enticing bit of kit.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best Amazon UK Spring Deals Days tech sales 2026

Apple's Macs have typically been viewed as pricey, premium devices. While Apple clearly can't ditch its penchant for a high-quality machine, it can make them relatively affordable. With the introduction of the MacBook Neo, starting (and tested) at $599, Apple has made a laptop for most people at a price that is shockingly affordable for the platform. And considering the cost of competing PCs are, in many cases, going up thanks to RAM and storage demands from AI hyperscalers, it’s refreshing to see a major company launch a product at a new low price.

And affordable doesn't mean cheap. The MacBook Neo has the quality aluminum chassis you would expect from any other Mac, along with a bright, clear display. It certainly doesn't feel like it's a bargain bin system.

Apple has made some compromises, though. The two USB-C ports are slower than what many others offer these days, and the keyboard isn't backlit. But if you can live with those cuts, Apple has delivered a surprisingly capable machine that could be one of the best ultrabooks at this mass-market price.

Design of the MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo sure doesn't look or feel like a budget laptop; it's like a magic trick.

The aluminum body does a lot of the lifting here. As soon as you touch a Neo and lift the lid up with one finger, it feels like a premium machine. This doesn't feel less than — it's the real deal. The four colors are fun (I'm fond of the indigo, myself), but I’d still like to see Apple bring colors like they did to the iMac to the Neo; I appreciate that Apple went bold with the yellow-green citrus on our review unit, but I would have preferred a more pure yellow or green. This shade is lost somewhere between a tennis ball and a highlighter. Apple color-matches accents and folders in macOS, so the folders were a light green, too. It's a nice touch if you do like the color you got.

You still get rounded edges and flat sides like the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. The Apple logo is embossed onto the lid in a tone-on-tone style, rather than reflective like on the more expensive laptops.

The premium feel matters a lot. When I step into a retail store, I'm used to seeing cheap laptops that are made of plastic. The ones that do use metal are often covered in stickers, and often use generations-old components. Apple making the Neo feel like the rest of its lineup in that one respect makes you feel like you aren't cheaping out. Instead, you're getting something built solid that happens to be relatively affordable.

With the lid open, you start to notice some of the bigger differences. The bezel around the 13-inch display is thicker than on the Air or Pro, but acceptable for a device of this price in the market today. In fact, there's one gift in the bezel: Apple can fit the webcam in it without a notch.

The keyboard has a hue to it, too, with color-matched keys, though they're a bit more subtle than the rest of the notebook. The touchpad isn't as sweepingly large, but this system also has a smaller footprint in some respects.

The MacBook Neo measures 11.71 x 8.12 x 0.5 inches and weighs 2.7 pounds. It has a smaller footprint than the 13-inch MacBook Air, but is 0.6 mm taller. They weigh the same amount. I don't think you'll be able to tell the difference between the two in a backpack.

All of the ports are on the left side of the Neo. That includes the 3.5 mm headphone jack and two USB-C ports: one USB 3 (10Gb/s, support for DisplayPort) and one USB 2 port. Neither port is labeled, which I think is a mistake. Even putting a little monitor icon for DisplayPort would be a functional enhancement, if not an aesthetic one.

While most people buying a $599 laptop will probably never plug into a monitor (and perhaps just make backups once in a while with Time Machine), you shouldn't have to guess.

Instead, Apple has put notifications into macOS. If you plug a monitor or a high-speed drive into the USB-C 2 port, the system will ask you to move it. It's clunky, and the fact that the ports don't "just work" is the least Apple thing about this entire laptop. (If you have a Thunderbolt accessory, you'll get a different notification, as the Neo doesn't support Thunderbolt like the Air and the Pro).

I get that this is the first computer with an A-series chip to feature two USB ports, and this likely required significant engineering work to get another USB port at all. But if you're not going to label your ports, they need to just work.

In general, a MacBook Neo owner will always be able to use one major accessory and charge the laptop, which will be enough for most people. I just think it could have been done more neatly.

MacBook Neo Specifications

Apple A18 Pro and 8GB of RAM

Apple is powering the MacBook Neo with its A18 Pro. This chip was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro. Reviewers have been saying for years that smartphone chips were overpowered — the A18 Pro, in a sense, proves them right.

The A18 Pro that Apple is using with the MacBook Neo features six CPU cores: two performance cores and four efficiency cores. There's a five-core GPU, which is down one core from the version of this chip used in 2024's flagship iPhone.

The system-on-a-chip also comes with 8GB of RAM. When Apple announced that, some hardware enthusiasts suggested that it wasn't enough. To them, I say this: the MacBook Neo isn't for you.

Would I like more RAM? Sure. But I know what RAM is. Most people use their laptops primarily to send emails, watch videos, do homework, write documents, create spreadsheets, or make purchases that feel too important to make on a phone. In my testing, the MacBook Neo lets you do all of that. It can be slightly slower booting up, downloading large files, or switching between tabs in heavy use, but you'd really only know if you compared it directly to Apple's M-series chips.

At $599, you won't find too many laptops with 16GB of RAM. Many that do will have other compromises. For the people in my life who would buy this kind of laptop, they'll get by for at least a few years with 8GB of RAM, assuming local AI doesn't become some sort of mainstream hobby. If you know you need the RAM, you know to shop elsewhere.

Is more RAM better? Sure. But most people don't know what RAM is, and those who care are willing to spend more money on a more powerful device. The vast majority of the market for a $599 laptop will browse 14 Safari tabs, shop on Amazon, iMessage their friends, write their English paper, and binge-watch The Pitt in peace. If you're looking for more RAM and don't want Apple's latest M-series processor, you can still go look for deals on old stock on M2 and M3 MacBook Airs. Good luck finding one new at this price, and if it's used, you won't have your warranty or as many years of support.

Time will tell how many macOS updates this laptop gets, though Apple has a pretty good track record there. But in the immediate sense, this feels like a totally usable Mac, and frankly, one that I could get by with more often than I care to admit as an enthusiast.

Productivity Performance on the MacBook Neo

OK, you just read all that and you're still here. That means you want to see numbers. Time for some benchmarks. Here, we're comparing the Neo to an M3 MacBook Air — an older one some customers may be considering to try to get a discount right now — as well as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13, an $899 laptop using the mid-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 chip with 8 CPU cores.

On Geekbench 6, the Neo notched a single-core score of 3,535, with the A18 Pro surpassing both the M3 (3,082) and the Snapdragon X Plus (2,486). Single-core is where I expect most Neo users will spend most of their time, doing simple tasks like browsing the web and writing up documents.

On the multi-core test, the Neo and the A18 Pro's six CPU cores came in last place with a score of 8,920. The Surface Laptop 13 hit 11,321 (with an 8-core chip) while the M3 MacBook Air won at 12,087 (the M3 was also an 8-core chip). At least part of why those chips won is because they have more cores in general, and the M3 in particular had more performance cores. Still, it also suggests those are better systems for slightly heavier lifting.

For example, on Handbrake, in which we have laptops transcode a 4K video to 1080p, the Neo faltered, taking 9 minutes and 57 seconds to complete the task. The more expensive Surface Laptop 13 completed the task in under 5 minutes.

The Neo did about as expected for a budget laptop on our 25GB file transfer test, achieving a rate of 654.82 MBps. That's only slightly slower than the Surface, but the MacBook Air was far much faster at 1,167.29 MBps.

I also ran the Xcode benchmark, which simulates compiling a large codebase using the suite of Apple developer tools. It took 6 minutes and 47 seconds on the MacBook Neo, far more than other Macs. That being said, you could do this work, at least if you're extremely patient.

On more premium laptops, we often run a Cinebench 2026 stress test. That's a difficult rendering benchmark. In this case, I ran just one run, with a score of 1,439. More telling was that the run took 14 minutes and 2 seconds. Case in point, this system just isn't designed for that kind of workload. (And like in most other systems, scores would likely drop from there,)

While Apple doesn't allow access to its chips' clock speeds, Cinebench estimates that the A18 Pro has a single-core clock speed of up to 4.0 GHz on single-core tasks and 2.4 GHz for multi-core.

Gaming and Graphics on the MacBook Neo

It would be far-fetched to call the MacBook Neo a gaming laptop in a traditional sense. While Apple has had a few major releases on iPhone, the A18 Pro isn't designed for high-end Mac gaming like its M-series. There's a reason the one game shown on the Neo page on Apple's website is Oceanhorn 3, an Apple Arcade game that can also be played on an iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV.

That being said, light gaming is possible.

And the Neo beat the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (8-core) in the Surface Laptop 13 in benchmarks. On 3DMark Steel Nomad, the Neo earned a score of 369, beating the Surface's 229 points.

On the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, using the "For this Mac" settings, we saw the Neo play at 32.59 frames per second at a resolution of 1,637 x 1,024, which it defaulted to. That preset, a mix of low and medium settings, also included MetalFX dynamic resolution scaling. There are settings that can play games, though playing below 1080p isn't ideal. And this also suggests that there were a number of frames below 30 FPS.

I also played a bit of Stray, a lovely, Mac-native game. But even that much lighter game needed to be turned down to its lowest settings at the low resolution of 1,637 x 1,024 with the game's built-in upscaling to get between 30 and 40 FPS at the game's opening sequence, but it was as low as 20 FPS in other scenes.

Can you game on this system? Yes. Should you probably stick to Apple Arcade games that also work on iPhones? Also yes. Apple isn't selling this as a gaming system. It isn't one. It has fewer graphics cores than the iPhone that originally housed this chip. At this price, that's fine.

Display on the MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo's 13-inch screen, at 2,408 x 1,506, is surprisingly high-resolution for this price point. You'd usually find a 1080p or 1280p screen, depending on aspect ratio, but here you get something a bit closer to 1440p (give or take some pixels on either end). The display has a 60 Hz refresh rate, which makes sense at this price.

The LED, IPS screen is the same type of panel used on the MacBook Air, and I think it was a good investment to spend money on the screen. It is, however, missing True Tone, the feature that uses an ambient light sensor (which this laptop lacks) to adjust the screen's color temperature to your environment.

I was impressed while watching a trailer for The Odyssey using the MacBook Neo. The subtleties of an orange glow on Matt Damon's face from a light on his boat in an otherwise deep blue sea aren't as striking on even basic 1080p screens that come with more expensive notebooks. Viewing angles might be a little dimmer than on some MacBook Airs I used, but if you're looking head on, you're great.

On our colorimeter, the Neo's screen covered 110.9% of the sRGB color volume space and 78.8% of DCI-P3 (though the system itself doesn't support the DCI-P3 color space). The Neo measured in at 452.6 nits of brightness.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Neo

Apple's keyboard on the MacBook Neo is comfortable. It is not, however, backlit. The keys on my Citrus unit are ever so slightly yellowed to create some contrast, though I wouldn't mind darker legends.

For touch typists like me, backlighting isn't really a problem. I know where keys are, I know them by feel, I don't have to look (though I will admit to occasionally getting mixed up on the function row). But lots of people look at keys, and those people do sometimes use computers in the dark. I definitely did as a student while my roommate tried to get some shuteye. My mother likes to have backlit keys at night because she just can't see them otherwise. Point being, people in all of the key demographics could benefit here.

The keyboard itself is good. The 1 millimeter of travel is similar to the keyboard on the MacBook Air. I found that it feels slightly stiffer than Apple's other laptops, though not in a way that tired me. (My guess here is that the Neo's keycaps are using a different kind of plastic for the keycaps). I was still able to speed along and hit 116 words per minute and 98% accuracy on the monkeytype typing test, which is close to my best.

If you get the base model Neo, the top right key is a lock button. On the 512GB version, you get Touch ID, which I think is worth spending the extra $100 just for logging in and paying for things quickly and more easily over the lifetime of a device. Schools using cloud services may decide TouchID isn't worth that bump.

The touchpad on the MacBook Neo is mechanical, rather than the luxurious "Force Touch" haptic touchpads on the MacBook Air and Pro. But Apple's touchpad, unlike many budget machines, lets you click anywhere on the touchpad. All macOS Tahoe's gestures worked flawlessly for me, and the click is comfortable. The ability to click at the top of the touchpad and not be halted by hinge placement really makes this touchpad easy to use.

Audio on the MacBook Neo

Apple has dual speakers on the MacBook Neo, with one on each side of the laptop.

On the one hand, these sound better than the speakers on most budget Windows laptops, and even on some high-end ones. On the other, they're still largely just fine.

Brandi Carlile's "Church & State" delivered clear vocals and guitars, but the song's bass riff (which really stands out among Carlile's music), sounded flat. The speakers could fill the room at max volume, but quieter listening may be a more personal experience.

I felt the speakers, which are located just under the keyboard deck, vibrating with my hands on the wrist rest, particularly at the highest volumes. It happened across all sorts of music, from alt rock (Cannons' "Starlight") to Americana (Noah Kahan's "The Great Divide"), so I can't blame Carlile's bass line. It happens on a lot of competing laptops — even some premium Windows notebooks, but it's still an engineering challenge I would like to see Apple tackle in future revisions of the notebook.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack doesn't have support for high-impedance headphones like the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, but I'm not sure someone using a $599 laptop is also jumping to use studio-grade headphones.

Upgradeability on the MacBook Neo

There's one big choice when it comes to configuring the MacBook Neo: 256GB or 512GB of storage. Think carefully, because you can't change it later.

Sure, you can take the bottom of the laptop off by removing the eight pentalobe screws. And while Apple has added more screws to components like the battery for schools to service, you can't upgrade the SSD, which is soldered to the board. (The 8GB of RAM is packaged with the processor.)

But if you need a repair, chances are you'll be heading to the local Apple Store.

Battery Life on the MacBook Neo

The MacBook's battery life will last quite awhile until you need to charge it, but I wouldn't quite call it all-day battery life. It's good for the price, but the 36.5 WHr battery can only do so much.

On our battery test, which involves streaming video, browsing the web, and running light OpenGL graphics test with the screen at 150 nits, the MacBook Neo ran for 13 hours and 28 minutes.

That's great for $599. The Surface Laptop ran for an impressive 17:14, though that has the advantage of a lower-resolution, 1080p display. Microsoft also uses a larger, 50 WHr battery, though that system starts at $899.

The 13-inch M3-based MacBook Air from 2024 ran for 15 hours and 13 minutes when we tested it.

Apple didn't include fast-charging technology in the MacBook Neo. After fully discharging the laptop, it charged to 22% after half an hour with the included 20-watt charger. Following another 30 minutes, the charge doubled exactly, to 44%.

Heat on the MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo stays remarkably cool. Even under a stressful test that most Neo users won't even consider — running Cinebench, a rendering test — the fanless system stayed comfortable to the touch.

The keyboard measured in at 93 degrees Fahrenheit, while the touchpad was a cooler 82 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the laptop measured 96 F.

Tunabelly Software's TG Pro, which measures Mac temperatures, couldn't detect the A18 Pro during our testing. But the system average across other internal sensors measured 58.58 degrees Celsius inside the system.

Webcam on the MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo hails the return of the 1080p camera, bringing back the "FaceTime HD" brand from the M1 era.

Given that 1080p webcams are a bit of a standard even among some high-end Windows PCs, it's hard to ding Apple for the choice here. Apple did ditch some other camera-focused features, like Desk View and Center Stage (the latter which some video chatting apps may offer in software).

And it's a good camera! Frankly, I'm not sure I've seen a webcam on a laptop under $1,000 that looks this good before. It's color accurate, and in video calls you could make out details like individual hairs on my head and the speckled paint on our industrial-looking office ceiling.

Apple has also gotten rid of the green LED next to the camera to let you know that it's on. It was disconcerting at first, but macOS does have both camera and microphone indicators in the menu bar. But in full screen applications, the menu bar goes away, instead leaving a small green dot in the corner of the screen. I'd prefer to have the physical indicator, especially for younger kids getting their first laptops. But if I've gotten used to these status notifications being in software on my iPhone, perhaps I can get used to it here.

Software on the MacBook Neo

The MacBook Neo comes with the latest version of macOS, Tahoe 26.3.1. It brings the "Liquid Glass" design language that iPhone or iPad users new to the Mac may already be used to. The use of translucent effects and a lot of icons in menus have been divisive among Mac diehards, though I suspect that it won't be as controversial among those coming from Windows, ChromeOS, or just having a phone.

The MacBook Neo has a bunch of pre-installed apps in the box, just like its more expensive siblings. These include the Safari web browser, Messages for texting and iMessage, FaceTime, a new Phone app, Notes, Reminders, Photos, Mail, Calendar, and service-based apps like Music, Apple TV, and News.

Most of this syncs with an iPhone, which will be great for first-time users. If you have an iPhone and a Neo, you can use iPhone Mirroring, one of my favorite features from the last few years, to use your phone from the computer.

There are some free workflow apps built into macOS, like Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Many of the most common apps you may want, like Microsoft Office, are available in the App Store as native apps for Apple Silicon, though they're not included.

While macOS has a lot in the box, it doesn't feel bloated. I've used a lot of cheap Windows laptops, and the companies that make them often fill them with trialware to help make more money off of them. It's great to turn on an affordable system without needing to uninstall a whole bunch of junk I don't want.

MacBook Neo Configurations

Apple has kept the Neo's configuration options super simple.

For $599, you get the A18 Pro chip, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. For $699, you get the exact same computer, except the storage jumps up to 512GB and you get Touch ID. The only other choice you have to make is color.

For individuals, I think spending the extra $100 is money well spent. The extra storage is great for photos, music, and documents, while Touch ID is so much faster than typing in a password.

But if you're a school buying these in bulk for classrooms and have students store assignments in cloud services, you don't need Touch ID. Considering you can save $100 with an educational discount, the $499 for schools or students looks pretty good.

The MacBook Neo comes with a 1-year warranty. For those who want to go the AppleCare+ route for extended protection, it's $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year (or you can add it to an Apple Care One plan for $19.99 per month for three devices).

Bottom Line

Yes, the MacBook Neo is $599. But it rarely feels like it. Apple invested in a premium aluminium chassis, a bright, good-quality screen, and a decent keyboard and mouse. Putting performance aside, those are the parts of a computer that most people care the most about. Add in about 13 hours of battery life, and you get a machine for most people doing the most common tasks, but in a package that feels like it's something special.

The colors, while nice, could be more vivid. My real issue with the laptop is that the ports aren't labeled, and that the hardware relies on macOS as a crutch to correct users. While I'm sure the lack of keyboard backlighting helped bring the cost down, it's the number one usability feature I would bring back to make the laptop more accessible in more situations.

For most people doing most things — web browsing, sending emails, writing papers, shopping, even light photo editing — the MacBook Neo will do just fine. I'm an enthusiast; I'd love to see more RAM. But plenty of people's simple needs will be met by the A18 Pro and its strong single-core performance.

And for those people, the Neo will look very attractive next to the many plastic machines with poor screens you get when you walk into a big-box store. Every other PC company making notebooks under $700 is officially on notice.

Update: March 10, 5:10. p.m. ET: We updated this review with an additional chart detailing display measurements on the MacBook Neo and its competitors.

Apple's MacBook Pro, in its current profile, is trusted among the best ultrabooks. This chassis has been around for a few years. But the company's M5 Max, including an 18-core CPU with Apple's fastest cores ever, as well as a 40-core GPU and 128GB of unified memory, feels fresh, new, and of the moment.

The huge amount of memory and a powerful GPU allow for a wide variety of workloads, including those who are dabbling in local AI.

And if you're not into AI, it's still good at everything else, assuming your software works on a Mac. It's strong for graphics work, video production, compiling code, and yes, all of the usual stuff you would do on a laptop. And it does it all with polish and finesse, including an industry-leading touchpad and the option for a stunning, glare-reducing nano-texture screen.

The system is staggeringly expensive at $5,849 as tested, but this is a tool you use for work, not a personal expense. For real Pros making their living on this machine, all of the speed may be worth it.

Design of the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

At this point, Apple's MacBook Pro design is familiar and well-worn. It's still functional, still pretty, and still focused more on the work you're doing than standing out.

The aluminum chassis, with flat surfaces and rounded corners, is minimalist, with Apple's tone-on-tone reflective Apple logo making the biggest statement on the machine.

With the lid open, you'll see the 14.2-inch screen surrounded by thin bezels, except for the notch around the webcam. Years in, I'm still vaguely annoyed by it, though even I will admit I've gotten largely used to it at this point.

The keyboard sits in a black well in the silver chassis, a signature of the MacBook Pro models that I still love to this day. Speaker grilles line each side, with a large touchpad underneath. It all sits on a sturdy base that feels incredibly premium.

The left side of the laptop houses the MagSafe charging port, two Thunderbolt 5 ports, and the 3.5 mm headphone jack. On the right side, you'll find a full-sized SD card slot, another Thunderbolt 5 port, and an HDMI output.

The MacBook Pro measures in at 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches and weighs 3.56 pounds with the M5 Max.

MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max) Specifications

M5 Max

The M5 Max chip uses the Fusion Architecture, similar to what has previously been seen in Apple's M-series Ultra chips. The CPU and GPU are on separate dies, connected by a high-speed interconnect.

The 40-core GPU, paired with the 128GB of RAM, should be a powerful combo for video editing, VFX, and for local AI development. Because the M5 Max uses unified memory, most of that RAM can be directed straight to the GPU.

Both M5 Max variants have 18-core CPUs. Six of those are Apple's "super" cores, its fastest performance cores yet. The other 12 are "performance" cores, new cores (taking the old performance name - got it?) that can thread the needle between power and efficiency.

Productivity Performance on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

We're comparing the MacBook Pro to a suite of recent laptops. Without a ton of workstations in our database, we're comparing to recent consumer systems. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra may try to look like a Mac, but it pairs an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H with 32GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 discrete laptop GPU. There's also the Asus ZenBook Duo (UX8407) with two screens running off of Intel's latest top laptop chip, the Core Ultra X9 388H with integrated Intel Arc B390 graphics and 32GB of memory. Lastly, the ultra-repairable Framework Laptop 16 puts AMD's Ryzen AI 7 350 and an RTX 5070 together, along with 16GB of RAM.

The M5 Max handled everything I threw at it. Photo editing workloads were a breeze. So were my experiments in Blender. Even my trials in LM Studio running open-source models like Google's Gemma 3 27B left plenty of Apple's 128GB of RAM open, with the system producing new tokens extremely quickly.

In benchmarks, the MacBook Pro with M5 Max devastated the competition.

On Geekbench 6, Apple's super cores were the fastest in single-core testing, with a score of 4,338. In multi-core, the super and performance cores reached 29,430, devastating the rest of the field. The next highest in both was the ZenBook Duo, with scores of 3,031 and 17,283, respectively.

Apple showed off in our file transfer test. It claims its SSDs are twice as fast as the previous generation, and the results speak for themselves. The MacBook Pro completed our 25GB file transfer test at a rate of 3,835.38 MBps. The next fastest, at 1,724.69 MBps, was the Framework.

In our Handbrake video encoding test, the Mac transcoded a 4K video to 1080p in 1 minute and 55 seconds. That’s nearly a minute-and-a-half faster than the next fastest, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, at 3:18.

To compare against other historical Mac chips, we run the Xcode Benchmark, which sees how fast a system compiles a large codebase. The MacBook Pro with M5 Max took 87 seconds, putting it on par with the last Max chip we have in our database, the M3 Max (85 seconds).

Our ten-run Cinebench 2026 stress test started at a score of 8,058 before immediately diving into the mid-7,000's as the heat picked up. The fans did get the score back up to 7,990 at run 5, but otherwise, scores were largely stable.

Because macOS doesn't provide access to clock speeds, we have to rely on other measures. Cinebench 2026 estimates that the M5 Max runs up to 4.6 GHz on a single core and 4.3 GHz multi-core.

Gaming and Graphics on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

The 40-core GPU, with access to much of the 128GB of unified memory, is a powerhouse.

When I played around with the intensive life simulation game InZoi, I followed one of my characters from home to a volleyball game on a pier, with the game typically running between 40 and 50 frames per second at 1920 x 1200 at the high preset before even using MetalFX. That's impressive for a game whose developer recommends desktop GPUs and adding Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR on a Windows gaming rig.

On 3DMark Steel Nomad, the MacBook Pro achieved a score of 3,865. The next best, the Framework Laptop 16 with a dedicated RTX 5070, notched a grade of 3,009.

On the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at ray tracing ultra, which we use for high-end gaming rigs, the MacBook Pro averaged 30.84 frames per second at 1920 x 1200. Using the "For this Mac" setting, it averaged 80.39 FPS at the same resolution, and 35.7 FPS at 3025 x 1890.

Another system we ran that test on at ray tracing ultra, the Framework Laptop 16 with an RTX 5070, reached 38 fps at 1920 x 1080.

Display on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

I've rhapsodized before about Apple's nano-texture displays for the MacBook Pro. I'm going to do it again.

Apple's 14.2-inch screen has a "Liquid Retina" resolution of 3024 x 1964, with a variable refresh rate that climbs up to 120 Hz with ProMotion. The Mini-LED backlighting isn't quite OLED, but it looks pretty great. It also comes with TrueTone enabled, which adjusts the image on your screen to ambient lighting with a color sensor (you may want to turn this off for photo or video editing for more exact colors).

That nano-texture panel is $150 extra and can only be configured on Apple's website. I don't know if I could get myself to cough up the money, but it's really beautiful. I work near a window both at the office and at home, and it does a great job of reducing (or effectively eliminating) reflections. If you're going to use your MacBook Pro for field work like video editing on the go, it may be worth it to you, and you should strongly think about the upgrade.

The screen also delivers with multimedia. When I watched the trailer for The Odyssey, I was impressed by deep black levels, as well as vivid colors like deep blues in an endless ocean and spots of green grass growing in dirt in a forest.

On our colorimeter and light meter, the MacBook Pro proved to be extremely bright, measuring in at 529.4 nits, significantly higher than the 455-nit Asus ZenBook Duo, an OLED screen that was the next most luminous on the list.

The Mac's screen covers 87% of DCI-P3 color volume and 122.9% of sRGB volume, largely in line with the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra and the ZenBook Duo.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

Apple's keyboards continue to be excellent to type on. The chiclet keys are comfortable, include a full-sized function row, and inverted-T arrow keys. It all makes sense.

Yes, some Windows laptops at this price point — especially gaming rigs — beat the MacBook Pro on travel. Some even offer mechanical keys. But I find that Apple's keyboard feels very comfortable, even after long typing sessions. Even the plastic on the keys feels good. On the monkeytype typing test, I reached 118 words per minute and 98% accuracy, which is about as good as I get.

Apple's Force Touch trackpads continue to be the best in the industry with smooth glass, comfortable haptics, and intuitive gesture support in macOS. It also helps that on the MacBook Pro, it's large and luxurious. Short of using an external mouse, I don't have any notes here.

Audio on the MacBook Pro (14-inch M5 Max)

The MacBook Pro's six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers continues to amaze.

The Beaches' cover of "I Ran (So Far Away)" sounded excellent with clear vocals, energetic guitar, snappy drums, and a thumping bassline. It easily filled a photography studio in our office. The MacBook Pro line continues to offer the best speakers on a laptop, period.

If you use headphones for audio production (or just have a fancy pair), the MacBook Pro's 3.5 mm headphone jack supports high-impedance cans.

Upgradeability on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

The common refrain with modern MacBooks is to think very carefully about configuring before you buy. While there are eight pentalobe screws on the bottom of the MacBook Pro's chassis, you can't actually upgrade major components yourself. The SoC and the SSD are soldered, so you can't replace them on your own. If you need a repair, your best bet is probably Apple's Genius Bar.

Upgrades are pricey (see the configurations section, below), though they don't seem as huge as they did before the RAM crisis hit.

Battery Life on the (14-inch, M5 Max)

The MacBook Pro can easily last you a day on a charge. The new Pro topped the charts on our battery test, which browses the web, streams video, and runs OpenGL tests all at 150 nits of brightness. The system ran for 17 hours and 58 minutes, surpassing the next best in the field, the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Ultra, by more than 2 hours.The M5 Max system lasted only slightly less than the vanilla M5 version, which ran for 18:14.

Heat on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

During our Cinebench stress test, I took skin temperature measurements to see how hot the system gets to the touch under a rigorous workload.

The hottest point was actually the center of the keyboard, reaching 116.5 degrees Fahrenheit. While it wasn't too hot to type on, the heat was noticeable.

The touchpad stayed cool at 86 F, while the hottest point on the bottom measured 103.5 F.

We used Tunabelly Software's TG Pro, which measures internal Mac temperatures, to measure the M5 Max. The chip averaged 83.59 C during the test.

Webcam on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

Housed in the MacBook Pro's notch, there's a 12MP webcam. You'll look great using it. It's sharp and can easily highlight every button on a shirt or hair on your head. It supports Center Stage, a feature in macOS that allows the camera to focus on you even as you move around.

The webcam also has "Desk View," which lets you show your desk or table on video calls, which is good for showing anything that might be on old-school paper. But it's always a bit distorted, and I rarely find myself using that feature, in part because of that.

Software on the MacBook Pro (14-inch, M5 Max)

The MacBook Pro with M5 Max ships with macOS Tahoe (we tested with version 26.3.1). With that, it brings "Liquid Glass" a new design language (also found in iOS 26 and iPadOS 26) that makes heavy use of translucent effects, adds a ton of icons to menus, and makes a bunch of aesthetic choices that have been controversial among Mac diehards. We went into that more in our review of the Macbook Pro with M5.

But Tahoe also brings some great new features, including a huge update to Spotlight that adds tons of actions, a built-in clipboard history, and far more automations for shortcuts. That's on top of adding Live Activities from the iPhone to the Mac, as well as a phone app with call screening.

You get a bunch of pre-installed apps in the box. These include Safari, Messages, Maps, Apple TV (the app, which houses the service of the same name), Reminders, Notes, Passwords, FaceTime, Photos, and more. Some users of the MacBook Pro are prime candidates for Apple's new Creator Studio, a subscription competitor to the Adobe Suite (and, to some degree, Microsoft Office), including Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Mainstage, Compressor, Motion, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and Freeform. The latter four still come with free versions preinstalled in macOS.

MacBook Pro (14-inch) Configurations

We tested the 14-inch MacBook Pro in an extremely expensive, $5,849 configuration designed for those who need the most performance and want the beautiful nano-texture display. With an M5 Max boasting 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, 128GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage, along with the glare-reducing panel, this system is truly for those who are using their systems for work.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,599 with an 18-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 48GB of RAM, and 2TB of storage. Upgrading to the 40-core GPU will cost you $300, and the nano-texture screen is $150.

The base M5 Max starts at 36GB of RAM, but our 40-core GPU variant starts at 48GB. From there, a bump to 64GB is $200 more, or the jump to 128GB is a whopping $1,000 more (but really, is that whopping in today's PC industry?). Storage starts at 2TB. A bump to 4TB is $600, while 8TB will cost you $1,800.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro also comes with Apple's M5 Pro, starting at $2,199, or the standard M5 (see our review) beginning at $1,699. The 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,699 with the M5 Pro and $3,899 with M5 Max.

Apple sells the 14-inch MacBook Pro with a 1-year warranty. Beyond that, AppleCare+, which covers repairs, battery replacement, and priority support, is $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year (or is available as part of AppleCare One for $19.99 per month, covering up to three products).

Bottom Line

If you need power for your job or hobbies, there's very little the MacBook Pro can't do. The super cores and performance cores on the M5 Max, combined with a 40-core GPU and 128GB of RAM, can handle anything from rendering to gaming to local AI, assuming you can afford that top configuration's high price tag.

The nano-texture screen continues to be an eye-popper, even if the mini-LED screen, while great, isn't quite OLED. The keyboard and trackpad are comfortable, and it's hard to argue with battery life that runs for almost 18 hours.

If you have a top-end M3 or M4 system, you may not need to upgrade yet. But professionals with older systems may see benefits with the faster SSDs and stronger cores.

The RAM and SSD pricing are still high — very high. But it's harder to criticize Apple than it used to be, with the memory and storage industry in a crisis. Now, everyone's charging high prices for upgrades.

But the 128GB configuration isn't one for a hobbyist. It's for someone making a living with this system. It puts the Pro in, well, Pro. If you need an attractive, portable powerhouse and your workloads can be performed on macOS, the MacBook Pro with M5 Max won't disappoint.

Apple today announced updates to its best-selling laptop, the MacBook Air. The thin laptop (and best ultrabook) is getting a bump up to the M5 processor and will start with 512GB of storage — double the 256GB that the Air used to begin with.

Customers will be able to bump up the laptop to 4TB of storage for the first time. Apple is promising a faster SSD with "2x faster read/write performance compared to the previous generation," a boon for local AI workloads as well as large files for creative work.

In addition, the MacBook Air will get Apple's N1 wireless chip to support Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.

But the new chip, SSD, and other upgrades will come at a cost. The M5 MacBook Air will start at $1,099 for the 13-inch model and $1,299 for the 15-inch version. Those are both $100 increases over the M4 MacBook Air, though it's likely we'll eventually see deals from third-party sellers like Amazon and Best Buy. The new MacBook Air laptops will be up for pre-order tomorrow, March 4, and will go on sale on Wednesday, March 11.

The 4TB option doesn't come cheap, though. It's $1,200 over the base price.

Most of Apple's performance claims position it against older MacBook Air laptops, positioning it as an ideal upgrade. But Apple also suggests that web browsing on the M5 is "up to 50 percent faster when compared to a PC laptop with an Intel Core Ultra X7 processor, and more demanding tasks get up to 2x faster performance."

The 13-inch laptop starts with an M5 with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU, while the bump to a 10-core GPU is a $100 increase. All 15-inch MacBook Airs come with the 10-core GPU, and every system also includes a 16-core neural engine on the chip.

Plenty is staying the same. Apple is retaining the same MacBook Air chassis. Apple has been using since the M2 chip in 2022, a fetching design with flat edges and rounded corners. There are no new colors this year, with Apple settling on sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver — the same as last year.

Apple is reportedly finally releasing touchscreen MacBooks, decades after the first touchscreen Windows laptops appeared on the market. According to prominent Apple leaker Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, the long-awaited feature will finally arrive this year, but during the company’s fall event and not in March, where it’s expected to announce new iPad models and an entry-level MacBook priced between $599 and $699.

Aside from getting a touch-sensitive screen, sources say that the upcoming MacBook Pros will also get an OLED display, while the controversial notch will be replaced by the Dynamic Island, first introduced in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max in 2022. The rest of the laptop will still look the same, though, ensuring that veteran MacBook Pro users will still feel comfortable even if they upgrade to the latest version. Under the hood, it is expected that Apple will debut M6 chips with the OLED models, according to previous reports.

macOS will also reportedly introduce some changes to accommodate the additional functionality delivered by the touch screen. Because fingers inherently cover a larger space than a cursor, it’s reported that the new MacBook Pro will automatically shift the interface depending on the input method. For example, if you touch the menu at the top of the screen, it will automatically enlarge to make it easier to select what you want and prevent any mispresses. A new context menu is also reportedly being developed that will appear around your finger, making access to commands and other shortcuts much more ergonomic. These changes go in line with Apple’s “it just works” philosophy, ensuring that everything would work as intended, whether you prefer using a mouse or the touch screen.

Steve Jobs famously said in 2010 that touchscreen laptops do not work, which is probably the reason why it took so long for Apple to introduce one. In fairness, Jobs was probably right, especially with the available technology back then. But the arrival of Apple Silicon chips that grow more powerful with every generation, while still staying efficient, probably meant that implementing a UI that would smartly and seamlessly switch between cursor and touch controls.

Despite finally adding touch control to the MacBook Pro, Gurman says that it still won’t replace the iPad. In fact, it’s the iPad that’s becoming more like a MacBook, especially with the release of iPadOS 26. Whatever the case, the Apple tablet will supposedly always be touch-first, while the upcoming MacBook Pros will have a blend of touch gestures and cursor movements, allowing its users to choose whichever they like without taking away from the experience of using either input method.

A Ukrainian soldier showed off his 2020 M1 MacBook Air after it got hit by shrapnel during the war in Ukraine. X user @lanevychs [machine translated] asked on the social media platform about the ballistic protection that the laptop offered, especially after his device was able to take a hit from a shell fragment and seemingly survived. Despite the damage, the laptop still continued to work, with the screen showing images in some sections. And although the projectile punctured the screen, it seems that the base and keyboard of the device stopped it from going clean through. The only keyboard casualty being the "K" key.

It’s unclear where the user is based in the country, but chances are that they are near to the conflict. It’s also likely not the first time that the MacBook Air took a hit, as @lanevychs said in the replies [machine translated] that he “recently replaced the matrix (probably the motherboard) on this laptop after an FPV strike.” The MacBook Air is arguably Apple’s thinnest laptop in its generation, with its tapered design giving it a thickness of just 0.16 inches near the edges. It is 0.63 inches at its thickest point, though, making it about 0.02 inches thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Even though this might be imperceptible to the average user, it’s apparently good enough to stop a shell fragment.

Apple uses aluminum alloy for the unibody chassis of its MacBook line-up due to its strength and durability while still being lightweight. Aside from that, it also doubles as a heatsink, which is especially crucial for the fanless MacBook Air models. But even though Cupertino chose this material for its scratch and dent resistance, it seemed that it was also good enough to stop shrapnel. Unfortunately, he also decried the cost of repair in the comments, saying that “the repair will cost as much as a new laptop.”

The battle-damaged laptop shows off Apple’s engineering prowess, where even shrapnel can damage isn’t enough to completely destroy it. Nevertheless, we do not recommend using it as body armor, as it likely won’t be strong enough to stop a direct hit from small arms fire.

When Apple unveiled the 2025 MacBook Pro last week with the new M5 chip, one of the main upgrades it listed was 2x SSD speeds, a claim that rings true in our review of the device. However, a directed comparison between the outgoing M4-equipped MacBook Bro and the new M5 one was still on the cards, and now, we've gotten just that. YouTuber Max Tech put both laptops head-to-head to see whether Apple's claims were true, and it turns out, the company may have actually undersold the new machine's SSD speeds.

In the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, the SSD in the M5 MacBook Pro achieved read speeds of up to 6,323 MB/s, compared to just 2,031 MB/s on the M4 MacBook Pro. It's not like the M4 is "slow" in a vacuum, but the M5 SSD is over three times faster, which is a great generation uplift. Moving to the write speeds, the trend continues but less aggressively, with the M5's SSD reaching a similar 6,068 MB/s while the M4's SSD could only manage 3,293 MB/s, constituting an 84.31% difference. If you average out both results, the SSD in the M5 MacBook Pro is actually ~2.5x faster overall.

These speed improvements could be a result of a better controller allowing the flash to run faster, since PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSDs on PCs can achieve similar numbers. Apple routes 4x PCIe lanes to the SSD on its base chips, but doubles that to 8x on the Pro/Max/Ultra variants of the same silicon. Nonetheless, 6K+ MB/s across both read and write means smoother video editing for professionals that can benefit them in edge-case scenarios, not that it felt particularly slow before. You can also expect better random read/write speeds that should make the OS feel snappier in general.

Max Tech opened up both devices before performing the test to show the internal layout, which was identical. They share the same cooling systems with a single fan and a single heatpipe, along with two NAND modules (256 GB each) to ensure optimal performance. The base variant of the M2 Pro MacBook Pro from 2023 was stained with controversy because of this, when Apple decided to use a single 512 GB NAND chip, which crippled storage speeds drastically, so it's nice to see such a massive turnaround a couple of years later.

After teasing a new product launch on X earlier today, Apple has just announced the 2025 refresh to its 14-inch MacBook Pro lineup, now equipped with the shiny new M5 chip. The press release, accompanied by a separate M5 announcement, was just published on the company's website, unpacking the new laptop in great detail. It's largely an iterative update, with the new chip nicely slotting in for yesteryear's M4 in an otherwise largely unchanged package.

There are no design tweaks or exciting features to speak of. The chassis, including the 14-inch Mini LED display, is identical to previous models — just like all the other core features such as ports, speakers, keyboard, trackpad, and even the 12 MP webcam. The battery is once again quoted to last 24 hours in video playback, and you still only get Wi-Fi 6E. However, the SSD is 2x faster compared to last gen, and you can now spec it up to 4 TB, twice as much as previous gen.

It's clear that Apple is entirely focused on what's inside, the latest generation of its homegrown M-series silicon — M5. This swap is what likely enables the memory bandwidth to be upgraded from 120 GB/s on the M4 to now "over 150 GB/s" on the M5.

The SoC package includes a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with "a Neural Accelerator in each core," and a 16-core NPU for on-device AI. The M5 chip is built on TSMC's N3P node and has a faster GPU that can deliver 1.6x more FPS in games, 20% faster multi-core CPU performance, and 1.7x quicker render times in Blender — all versus the M4. Apple even says it's 86x more powerful than Intel-based Macs in AI applications.

The price for the new 14-inch MacBook Pro remains the same as last year, with the base model starting at $1,599, offering you a 512 GB SSD and 16 GB of RAM. Keep in mind that, just like M4, the base M5 isn't available on the 16-inch models as they start out with a Pro chip (so, presumably M5 Pro). The device is available to pre-order right away, with general availability beginning next week on October 22. Alongside the MacBook Pro, Apple also refreshed the Vision Pro and the iPad Pro with the new M5 chip.

The tablet gets Apple's in-house C1X modem and N1 networking chip that brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, offering faster connectivity across the board with 30% less power usage compared to the M4 iPad Pro. On the other hand, the mixed reality headset now has a new Dual Knit headband, also available for purchase separately for $99. Therefore, M5's improvements in performance, battery life, and AI-powered workflows are present on the Vision Pro and iPad Pro as well.

Accompanying that is the fresh software for each of these devices, including the MacBook Pro, with the latest OS versions adding newer features and, of course, the Liquid Glass visual overhaul. Prices remain the same as last gen for both the iPad and Vision Pro as well.

Apple’s manufacturing partners in Taiwan are reportedly preparing a MacBook deluge propelled by a new level of affordability, according to loose-lipped supply chain sources talking to Digitimes. The industry rumors, which are of course not confirmed by Apple, suggest that components for a new MacBook with a $599 to $699 price point will enter mass production in Q3 this year.

Tipped to use an iPhone chip

The source report offers a surprising amount of detail about potential hardware changes that will allegedly enable the creation of the ‘$599 MacBook.’ At first glance of the rumor, we thought perhaps Apple would use new-old-stock of M1 or M2 chips. However, Digitimes sources suggest the new entry-level MacBook will use the same processor as the contemporary iPhone 16 Pro, the A18 Pro.

Though not as powerful as the Apple Silicon M-series SoCs, the A18 Pro was made to strike back against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 parts. With macOS already well optimized for Arm over several generations, the phone chip should still provide perky enough performance, but we'll reserve judgment for any upcoming hands-on or review.

From a hardware standpoint, the A18 Pro offers 2x Everest cores at 4.05 GHz and 4x Sawtooth efficiency cores at 2.42 GHz. An integrated hexa-core GPU with 768 shaders and running up to nearly 1.5 GHz is also present. The A18 Pro is fabbed on the TSMC N3E process.

Display gets smaller, and there will be other spec cuts

Another noted change in the affordable new Apple MacBooks concerns the display. This cheaper MacBook will apparently use a 12.9-inch diagonal screen, harkening back to the popular but short-lived 12-inch MacBook of 2015-2017. That would make it smaller than the mainstream MacBook Air, with its 13.6-inch display. We wouldn't be surprised if the cheaper laptop had some other screen-related spec cuts to achieve its price. In other words, don’t just expect the physical size of the display panel to be reduced; look for spec changes in max brightness, gamut, and so on.

We expect Apple to remain stingy with RAM and storage and limit the cheapest MacBooks with lowball system resources. Such a move will help upsell customers to existing models like the MacBook Air or its notoriously pricey spec-upgraded configurations.

Elsewhere in the Digitimes report, we get a hint that some of this information comes from a source close to Quanta. Regular readers will be aware that Quanta is a major Taiwanese ODM that makes products for Apple, Dell, HP, and others.

Apple laptop shipments could be boosted “by 30% to 40%”

A new app called TrackWeight has been unveiled by Canadian maker and blogger Krish Shah. Put simply, the macOS application commandeers your Apple MacBook's Force Touch trackpad pressure sensors for weighing scale duties. The app code is now available on GitHub, released under the very flexible open-source MIT License.

This might sound like one of those ideas where you wonder why it hasn’t been done before. However, Shah notes on his GitHub that there are several important contributions that helped make his idea become a real app. It didn’t rely upon inspiration alone.

As well as wielding resources like SwiftUI for the user interface, and Combine for reactive data flow, Shah notes the prior work by Takuto Nakamura (@Kyome22) and the Open Multi-Touch Support library. The programming library provides “access to global multitouch events on macOS trackpads [and] detailed touch data including position, pressure, angle, and density,” Shah explained on his GitHub.

A touch too much

Apple is reportedly working on a new, cheaper MacBook using a chip originally designed for the iPhone. Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X that the company is planning a new 13-inch laptop using an A18 Pro chip.

The laptop, which Kuo says would launch at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, would be Apple's first Mac running on an A-series chip. The A18 Pro, which powers the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, averages in the 3,400s on the Geekbench 6 single-core benchmark and 8,500 to 8,600 in multi-core.

Those single-core scores are only slightly lower than what you see in the M4, which range between 3,400 and 3,700 points on the same test, depending on which Mac they're in. The multi-core score is a lot closer to the original M1 generation, which also falls around 8,500.

This device will also reportedly come in various colors, including silver, blue, pink, and yellow. Some fans have called for Apple to bring the colors from the iMac line to the MacBook, but it hasn't done so yet. Apple's latest experiment with color on Mac laptops has been with the tastefully muted sky blue on the M4 MacBook Air.

Kuo states that Apple is looking to sell 5–7 million units of this product in 2026. It's unclear how much they might cost, but presumably, these would be entry-level laptops that undercut the $999 MacBook Air. They would have to be pretty cheap to compete. The M3 MacBook Air has dropped to $799 new on sale before. Apple's current affordable play is at Walmart, which sells the M1 MacBook Air with the old design, 256GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM for $649.

A lower price might put Apple in a position to compete with cheaper Chromebooks and mid-level Windows laptops in a play for the education market and for those who might only use their laptops for email, web browsing, and other simple tasks.

The reference design is reportedly being supplied by Everwin Precision in Shenzhen, China. Beyond the laptop, Kuo claims that Everwin is building frames for smart glasses due to ship in 2027. Those would feature audio playback, a camera, and video recording like Meta's AI glasses, as well as "AI environmental sensing." Kuo says the glasses will lack display functionality. We'll have to see if any or all of these predictions come to pass.

The MacBook Air is one of the most popular laptops — and best ultrabooks — around. Starting at $999 with a speedy M4 processor, strong build quality, and long battery life, it's incredibly well-liked, especially among people already in Apple's ecosystem.

But the MacBook Pro, with its gorgeous display, more ports, and more performant chips is right there. You might see those upgrades and think that it's worth the extra cash.

And it's true — on a pure spec sheet basis, the MacBook Pro is better in almost every way. Some people may be willing to splurge for the nicer screen, better speakers, and the promise of more performance. But should you?

For many people, the MacBook Air is more than enough, especially for the price. But if you're not sure which you need, read on for a head-to-head comparison.

Design of MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

It's unsurprising that the MacBook Air and Pro have a family resemblance. Whichever you choose, you'll get Apple's latest design, with blocky sides, curved corners, sturdy aluminum build quality, and a mirror-shiny aluminum Apple logo.

You'll also get a notch for the webcam no matter which model you choose, as well as a haptic touchpad and a backlit keyboard with full-size function keys.

One of the bigger changes you'll notice is in size and weight. The Macbook Air comes in 13-inch and 15-inch screen sizes, while the Pro goes for modern, larger 14-inch and 16-inch sizes.

Because the MacBook Air models don't use a fan, they can be extremely thin. The 13-inch Air is 0.44 inches thick, while the 15-inch MacBook Air is just a scratch larger. The smaller Air is the lightest of the bunch at just 2.7 pounds, light enough you barely notice it in a backpack, while the 15-incher is 3.3 pounds.

The 14-inch Pro is 0.61 inches thick, which is significantly bigger. This allows for more ports and for a fan to run over the M4, M4 Pro, or M4 Max. The difference in cooler on the chip is the difference in weight, which starts at 3.4 pounds with M4 and tops out at 3.6 pounds on the M4 Max. The 16-inch MacBook Pro is 0.66 inches thick and is 4.7 pounds whether you chose the M4 Pro or M4 Max.

The svelte MacBook Air only has three ports: a pair of Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The system can also charge over MagSafe 3, which attaches to the side of the system magnetically and detaches if you trip and fall over the cord.

The Pro, however, has far more ports. No matter which you get, you'll get three USB Type-C ports (Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Pro and M4 Max or Thunderbolt 4 on M4), an HDMI output, and a full-size SD card slot, and MagSafe 3.

If you don't use a ton of peripherals on the go, the MacBook Air's selection is sparse but usable. The MacBook Pro's ports allow for lots of extra peripherals. Either can be expanded with a USB Type-C hub or dock.

The last decision you'll have to make is what color laptop you want. The MacBook Pro keeps it simple with two options: silver and space black. But the Air has four choices: silver, starlight, midnight, and sky blue.

Performance of MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

If you get a MacBook Air, you have one chip option: M4. The entry-level version has a cut down GPU, which you likely won't notice unless you're playing games.

But despite the name, the MacBook Air's claim to fame is that it's thin because there's no fan. The system uses passive cooling, which means the system will throttle under very intense workloads.

With the MacBook Pro, you have three choices: M4, M4 Pro, or M4 Max. In the Pro line, Apple uses active cooling, which means you'll have fans and heat pipes on the processor. Under light use, the fans have been silent in my experience. You really have to push these Arm-based processors to get the fans to kick in loud enough that you'll really notice them.

M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max all have similar single-core performance. But the cores scale significantly between the chips, so if you're a professional working with artificial intelligence, video editing, simulations or other multi-core workloads, the more powerful chips make a lot of sense.

For people who are primarily browsing the web, checking and sending emails, creating documents and slide decks, M4 should be plenty powerful.

Display of the MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

For some, the display might be the top reason to upgrade from a MacBook Air to a MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Air's screen is good enough for most people. You either get a 13.6-inch, 2560 x 1664 screen or a 15.3-inch, 2280 x 1864 panel. Both are LED-backlit IPS displays, and in our testing, they get very bright.

Arguably the Air's biggest weakness when it comes to the screen is that it's stuck at a 60 Hz refresh rate, while the Pro goes up to 120 Hz and makes everything from macOS to web browsing to gaming smoother.

The MacBook Pro nets you either a 14.2-inch, 3024 x 1964 display or a 16.2-inch, 3456 x 2234 screen. These 'Liquid Retina XDR' displays use mini-LED displays that are brighter, offer more contrast, and support HDR content. And yes, these go up to 120 Hz with Apple's ProMotion and an adaptive refresh rate.

On the MacBook Pro, Apple also offers its nano-texture display as a paid upgrade. It's an extra $150, but the matte screen looks beautiful and works wonders outside.

Audio on the MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

For a thin laptop, Macbook Air is pretty good. The 13-inch model has four speakers, and they're fine for casually listening to music and even for making calls without a headset on. The 15-inch bumps up to 6 speakers with force-cancelling woofers, marking a substantial improvement, especially in the low-end. The speakers are one of the few meaningful differences other than screen size on the two MacBook Air laptops.

Of course, the thicker MacBook Pro does mean better speakers. Like the 15-inch Air, both 14-inch and 16-inch Pro models have six-speaker systems with force-cancelling woofers, but you get higher quality sound. The 16-inch MacBook Pro have the best speakers I've ever heard on a laptop, though I wouldn't pay just for that.

In fact, if you're that much of an actual pro user, you probably need some of the best PC speakers, or at least a great pair of headphones.

Battery Life of the MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

Ever since Apple switched to its own Arm-based chips with M1, battery life has been improving. With any of these systems, you should be able to close the lid, leave it unplugged on your desk, and find it still going a day or two later.

Chip efficiency does a lot, but bigger laptops mean bigger batteries.

In our battery test, which browses the web, streams video, and runs light OpenGL tests, the 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 ran for 15 hours and 14 minutes. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the same chip lasted 18:36. A 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Pro lasted 21 hours and 1 minute.

All of which is to say, any of these laptops should get you through the day without a problem.

And while the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros will last longer, keep in mind that part of that is because they are heavier than the Air, so there's some give and take. I can handle less battery life if I'm getting more than 12 hours on a charge and the Air is easier to carry around.

Pricing of the MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro

There's a reason that the MacBook Air is Apple's most popular laptop, and that's because of the price. The 13-inch Air starts at $999 with a 10-core M4 CPU, 8-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD.

The 15-inch Air starts at $1,199 with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD.

In recent years, the $999 price point was reserved for a previous generation chip. For instance, when M3 was in vogue, the M2 option was $999. But with M4, Apple has eliminated that practice, making for an even better value for an excellent laptop.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,599 with the same M4 chips with 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU as the 15-inch Air, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. Bumping up to an M4 Pro starts at $1,999 (with a 12-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 24GB of RAM, and the same 512GB SSD), while an M4 Max starts at $3,199.

And the 16-inch MacBook Pro gets even pricier, starting at $2,499 with an M4 Pro with 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 24GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The M4 Max version starts at $3,499 and boosts to a 32-core GPU, 36GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

Of course, those are all the lowest possible prices, and Apple's upgrades to RAM and storage are often absurd, with hundreds of dollars for storage and RAM upgrades. Be sure to get what you want at purchase, though, because you won't be able to upgrade down the line.

Verdict

If you're just comparing specs on paper, the MacBook Pro is the better machine in most aspects. It has a nicer screen, more ports, stronger performance, and longer battery life.

In practice, though, the MacBook Air is a better machine for most people. It's lighter and easier to carry around, it has plenty of performance for the average person for either personal or professional use, and it lasts plenty long on a charge. While I think the 14-inch MacBook Pro is the sweet spot for screen size (and personally own one), I've used a 13-inch MacBook Air for work for awhile and adore it.

The truth is that most people don't need a MacBook Pro, even if some of the features — particularly the mini-LED display — are very nice to have. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 serves as a sort of middle of the road pick if you're looking to upgrade for the display and more ports but don't need M4 Pro or M4 Max. . If you need the Pro features or would benefit from M4 Pro or M4 Max, you probably already know it.

For most people, spending less still gets an extremely capable Mac. The MacBook Air is best for most people, but the MacBook Pro has some niceties if you can afford it, or if you're doing very intensive work.

The MacBook Air is one of those laptops that has become something of a default recommendation. Looking to spend around $1,000, and want something fast, quiet, and efficient, with great build quality? It's an easy call. That's why it tops the list of our best ultrabooks.

With the M4 model, Apple is in full-on refining mode. Sure, M4 is faster, but now we're getting features like an improved webcam, faster ports, and even a subtle new blue color. It's not a huge change, but they're all welcome.

That's especially the case when Apple dropped the price by $100, jettisoning previous-generation models holding the $999 starting price. With all of that in mind, the MacBook Air feels like a better deal than it has in years.

Design of the MacBook Air (M4)

Does the MacBook Air look largely the same as it has the last three years? Is the sky blue?

Apple hasn't changed the MacBook Air’s looks, with one exception: there's a new color, "sky blue." It's a very subtle sheen that I quite like. It's similar to what we saw on the Microsoft Surface Pro, but far less dramatic, bordering on standard silver in some lights. I think it'll make a good alternative for those bored by silver but who don't want something as dark as the "midnight" color. Starlight and silver are also still on offer, but space gray is no longer available.

Otherwise, you get a very familiar laptop, with the same design we've seen since the 13-inch Air launched with M2 in 2022. It's a flat design with rounded corners and Apple's go-to spartan design sensibilities. Apple's logo shines in a tone-on-tone color on the lid, which lifts up to reveal the 15-inch display on our review unit, including a notch into the screen to fit the 12MP Center Stage webcam.

Years later, I haven't learned to accept the notch on a laptop the way I have on a phone, but at least it's not removing screen space. I know plenty of people who couldn't care less about the notch. I'd at least like to see it incorporate Face ID, as plenty of Windows laptops have facial recognition with IR cameras.

With either the 13-inch or 15-inch laptop, you get identical ports: MagSafe 3 for charging and two Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 Type-C ports. On the right side, there's a lone 3.5 mm headphone jack. I would love to see Apple move one of the two Thunderbolt ports to the other side of the laptop for maximum flexibility with peripherals, monitors, chargers, and storage drives.

Our 15-inch review unit measures 13.4 x 9.35 x 0.45 inches and weighs 3.3 pounds. It's just heavy enough for me to notice it in my bag, but only barely. It's the same size and weight as last year's model. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 is 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches and 3.4 pounds, making it thicker but not much heavier. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition is 13.54 x 9.27 x 0.55 inches, making it slightly thicker, and 3.37 pounds. The Dell XPS 13, which is smaller than our 15-inch review unit, is 2.27 pounds and 11.62 x 0.60 x 0.58 inches.

MacBook Air (M4) Specifications

Productivity and Graphics Performance on the MacBook Air (M4)

The MacBook Air comes with M4, Apple's latest SoC that has already made its way to the Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro. In our 15-inch review system, that gets you a 10-core CPU with four performance cores and six efficiency cores, a 10-core GPU, and a 16-core neural engine. (The entry-level $999 13-inch MacBook Air gets you an 8-core GPU. See the configurations section for more).

We saw the M4 in the MacBook Pro late last year, but in the MacBook Air, we're seeing what it can do without a fan. We're also comparing it to the Intel-powered Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition (Intel Core Ultra 7 256V) and the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite in the Dell XPS 13 (9345).

On Geekbench 6, the Macbook Air with M4 notched a single-core score of 3,780 and a multi-core score of 14,924, falling slightly behind the MacBook Pro with the same chip. The difference here is likely that the Pro laptop has a fan to keep the chip cool and eke out stronger performance. As you'll see when we hit Cinebench, this matters far more for extended workloads.

The Yoga Slim 7i with the Core Ultra 7 256V did the worst here, especially on multi-core, partially because it has just 8 cores. The XPS 13 has a Snapdragon X Elite in it, and that has 12 cores and came up behind M4, so the number of cores isn't everything.

The MacBook Air copied approximately 25GB of files at a rate of 1,220.35 MBps, coming in slightly faster than what we saw in the Pro (1,167.29 MBps), though that could be run-to-run variance. The Yoga was the fastest here at 1,613.44 Mbps, while the XPS also beat the Macs.

We use Handbrake to have laptops transcode a 4K video to 1080p. The MacBook Air took 4 minutes and 52 seconds to complete the task, falling ever so slightly behind the Snapdragon-powered XPS 13 (4:47). Here, the Lunar Lake laptop fell far behind.

To stress test laptops, we put them through 10 runs of Cinebench 2024 nT. Unsurprisingly, the fanless MacBook Air throttled. Its first score of 844 was its highest, and from there it started to plummet to the mid-600's, with occasional bursts back up to the 700's. Using TG Pro, which lets you log your Mac's temperatures from various internal sensors, the computer average was 49.33 degrees Celsius (120.79 degrees Fahrenheit). You can read more about skin temperature in the heat section, below.

Rendering on a fanless device may not be a typical task, but M4 is capable of it. Without air cooling, the MacBook Air is much better for quick, bursty workloads, but for sustained tasks, you'll want something with a fan, like the MacBook Pro.

On Macs, we also run the Xcode benchmark, which simulates compiling a project with a large codebase using Apple's integrated development environment. Here, the M4 didn't see gains over M3, with the 15-inch MacBook Airs from each generation completing the task in 150 seconds.

To test gaming, I booted up No Man's Sky on Steam and connected an Xbox controller (though you could use a keyboard and mouse if you wanted.) At 2048 x 1280 with the high graphics preset, the game typically ran between 44 and 50 frames per second as I mined for resources and explored planets, though there were occasional periods that dropped down as far as 40 fps.

Display on the MacBook Air (M4)

The 15.3-inch "Liquid Retina" IPS screen on the MacBook Air hasn't changed, including its 2880 x 1864 resolution and 60 Hz refresh rate. (The 13-inch Air's specs haven't changed either, but we got a 15-inch laptop in for review).

True Tone, which uses ambient light sensors to adjust the screen to appear more natural is enabled by default. I typically leave it on unless I'm editing photos. If you're doing work where colors need to be exact, you may want to switch it off.

The trailer for The Fantastic Four: First Steps used the Air's display to show off beautiful blue skies as a rocket took off and as Johnny Storm floated in the atmosphere.

On the early stage planet of Sumpanob in No Man's Sky, I was presented with a dusty, orange desert with blazing red fires and dotted with green plants. It wasn't exactly a fascinating planet to look at, at least until a green radiation storm rolled through and changed the tint of the screen to a surprising emerald followed by a sickly brown.

The 15-inch Air's screen covered 117.9% of the sRGB color gamut and 83.5% of the more challenging DCI-P3 color space. That was actually slightly ahead of our MacBook Pro review unit (though not enough to notice in person), and far ahead of the 1080p panel in the Dell XPS 13. Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7i, however, was extremely vivid at 153.2% sRGB / 108.5% DCI-P3 on its marvelous screen.

On our light meter, the MacBook Air measured 475.6 nits, which is plenty bright. But it fell behind the mini-LED screen on the MacBook Pro at a whopping 556.6 nits of brightness. The Yoga was only slightly brighter than the Air at 486.6 nits.

Beyond the built-in display on the MacBook Air, the M4 brings about an important addition: the ability to use two external displays at up to 6K resolution at 60Hz with the lid open. The MacBook Air M3 could power two external displays, but the lid had to be closed. This should be a pretty big upgrade for enterprise customers, as well as for enthusiasts who don't want or need to shell out for the MacBook Pro.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Air (M4)

If there's one part of the MacBook Air I'm glad Apple hasn't changed, it's the keyboard. It's snappy and responsive, with an excellent layout including inverted T arrow keys and full height function keys. Touch ID is built into the power button, which is extremely useful, but it's about time Apple meets the Windows world and puts facial recognition on its laptops.

The 13-inch and 15-inch laptops still have the same keyboards. Apple hasn't added extra keys to the larger laptop, but that leaves more room for speakers.

On our 15-inch review unit, I reached 121 words per minute on the monkeytype typing test with a 98% accuracy rate, which is about as good as I can do. These aren't the deepest keys on the market, but I sure can blaze through an email on them.

Apple has made a few changes to the legends on its keys. For instance, the mute toggle on the F10 key now has a line through it, where there was none on previous laptops (it looks a bit more like the icon you see on-screen when you hit the button now). Apple has moved the command, control, and option icons to the opposite corners of the buttons. On the function key, the "fn" is next to the globe icon, as opposed to diagonal from it. None of these will change your use of the computer — the keys are all in the same place!

No one has surpassed Apple's haptic touchpads. These haven't changed, but that's fine in my eyes. They're smooth and responsive, with great feedback. Apple's macOS gestures, from pinch-to-zoom to three-finger swipes to changing virtual desktops, all work the first time. My only complaint is the default to "Natural" scrolling in settings, which is meant to make your scrolling match the motion of your finger. I turn that off on new Macs, preferring for my scrolling to match the direction of my finger. (Though oddly I have no problem with how this works on phones.)

Audio on the MacBook Air (M4)

The 15-inch MacBook Air features a six-speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers. That's one of its biggest upgrades over the 13-inch Air, which has four speakers. Either way, you get Dolby Atmos and support for Apple's Spatial Audio.

For a laptop this thin, the 15-inch MacBook Air's sound system is incredible. Lights' "Damage" came through loud and clear, filling my apartment with sound, including melodic guitars, pounding drums, and even a reverberating bass. The thicker MacBook Pro delivers a more impressive sound profile, but considering how svelte this is, the speakers are damn impressive.

The speakers also worked their wonders when I played No Man's Sky, easily balancing the mysterious choral music with the cacophony of my mining laser as I explored the cosmos.

Upgradeability of the MacBook Air (M4)

There are four pentalobe screws on the bottom of the MacBook Air, but unless you're a skilled technician, this won't do you much good.

Apple's M4 is a system-on-a-chip, which includes the RAM, and the SSDs are soldered to the motherboard. That means neither RAM nor storage can be replaced, so make sure the way you configure your MacBook Air will meet your needs for a few years.

I suspect that if MacBook Air owners have an Apple Store within a reasonable distance, those who need repairs will make an appointment at the Genius Bar. Enterprising enthusiasts who want to do their own repairs should be able to rent tools from Apple through the Self Service Repair program at some point soon.

Battery Life on the MacBook Air (M4)

The MacBook Air offers strong battery life with its 66.5 WHr battery. It ran for 15 hours and 14 minutes on our battery test, which browses the web, streams video, and runs simple OpenGL tests while connected to Wi-Fi, all while set to 150 nits of brightness. That's over an hour longer than the Lunar Lake-powered Yoga Slim 7i.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro has a larger, 72.4 WHr battery, and it lasted longer than the Air at 18:36.

The Dell XPS 13, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chip, was the longest-lasting out of this batch of laptops at 19:31. This laptop has a smaller, 1920 x 1200 display, though running at a higher refresh rate.

I'm not one to complain about 15 hours. But this year's laptop lasted only 11 minutes longer than last year's 15-inch Air. When we reviewed the MacBook Air last year, competing Windows laptops were running for just 11 or 12 hours. Now they're catching up both on Arm and some x86-based platforms, so Apple can't stop focusing on the efficiency front.

Heat on the MacBook Air (M4)

The MacBook Air is fanless, which means it's completely silent no matter how much you throw at it. (In the MacBook Pro, you can get the M4 under a fan, which leads to better sustained performance, but you also get fan noise.)

To see how hot the machine gets, we used our standard Cinebench 2024 gauntlet to see how it feels to the touch. It does get a bit toasty, particularly on the keyboard.

Between the G and H keys, the Macbook Air measured 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit, though the haptic touchpad stayed cooler to the touch at 91.2 F. The hottest point on the bottom of the laptop reached 107.9 F.

Webcam on the MacBook Air (M4)

The MacBook Air got a camera upgrade, jumping from 1080p to 12MP. This is the same change Apple made to its Pro models last year, ditching the "FaceTime" moniker for its new camera name: Center Stage.

Video calls looked natural. When I sat at my desk, with natural light coming through my window, everything from the bags under my eyes to the art on my wall to the books on my shelf was caught with solid details. Colors, like my blue eyes, were very accurate as well. But the new camera still gets blown out by overexposure, a problem most webcams share. Still shots, however, were still a bit fuzzy, with my beard looking way less detailed than it did in motion.

The namesake feature, Center Stage, lets the camera focus on you even as you get up and move around. The other new utility is Desk View, which lets you show your desk to people you're on calls with. The tutorial on how to use Desk View built into the camera app is helpful to get the right positioning with the laptop's hinge, but because it only covers a small surface area, some objects can get a bit distorted. When I tried to use it to show off my keyboard, my fingers were elongated to comedic proportions.

Software on the MacBook Air (M4)

The new MacBook Airs are shipping with Apple's latest Mac operating system, macOS Sequoia (version 15.3 as of this writing). Sequoia launched late last year, and we already saw it in the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini.

It includes iPhone Mirroring, which lets you use the phone from your desktop, and the ability to type to Siri. Window tiling is largely improved (but still not as good as Snap layouts in Windows 11). And of course, the OS update brought several of the first Apple Intelligence features, including ChatGPT integration, Clean Up in the Photos app, and Genmojis, though none of those are reasons to upgrade on their own. A modernized version of Siri has been delayed to sometime in "the coming year."

Preinstalled software includes the Safari browser, Mail, Messages, Calculator, Notes, Weather, Stocks, Maps, and FaceTime, along with a suite for Apple's subscription services including Apple Music, Apple TV, and Apple News. Pages, Keynotes, Numbers, and Garageband are still available for free as a basic productivity bundle.

MacBook Air (M4) Configurations and Warranty

Apple is starting both the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Air at new low prices. Yes, you read that right. In this economy, the price of something expensive went down.

Previously, Apple kept a prior generation around to sit at the $999 price point. But that's no longer the case. The 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $999 with M4 with a 10-core CPU and a cut-down 8-core GPU, along with 16GB of memory and 256GB storage.

The 15-inch starting price also took a $100 price cut to $1,199. The entry-level configuration there has a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD.

We tested a 15-inch MacBook Air with an M4 (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU), 16GB of unified memory, and 512GB SSD. The storage is the only bump from the base model, bringing it to $1,399. Ours came with the 35W dual USB-C power adapter, but if you order online, you can also choose a standard 70W adapter.

This time around, RAM options start at 16GB and go up to a new maximum of 32GB. Each step up in memory is a whopping $200, which continues to be an absurdly high price to pay. That 32GB total could add $400 to your laptop.. Bumps up in storage between 256GB and 1TB are also $200 each, while the bump from 1TB to 2TB is an outrageous $400.

Apple sells its MacBook Airs with a one-year limited warranty and 90 days of free tech support. AppleCare Plus for the 13-inch Air is $6.99 per month, $69.99 annually or $199 for three years, while the coverage for the 15-inch Air is $7.99 per month, $79.99 per year or $229 for three years. This includes extended coverage as well as accidental damage protection ($99 for screen damage or $299 for other damage).

Bottom Line

The MacBook Air is something you don't see a lot of in tech these days — a really solid value. Starting at $999 for the 13-inch laptop or $1,199 for the 15-inch version with a powerful processor, 16GB of RAM, a vivid display, and excellent build quality is nothing to scoff at (though our review model, with a 512GB SSD, cost $1,399.99) . Apple is offering a lot of computer for the money.

If you're married to Windows, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition represents the pluses and minuses of competing with the MacBook Air. It has a great design and a screen better than what Apple offers here, but Intel's performance doesn't match M4 and some refinements need to be made to the keyboard and chassis.

With this design, Apple is in refinement mode. Adding a better webcam, faster ports, and a speedier chip while dropping the price is enough to make me overlook the lack of Wi-Fi 7. Looking to spend less than $1,500 (or possibly even $1,000)? Look at the MacBook Air first.

MORE: How to Buy a Gaming Laptop

MORE: Best Gaming PCs

MORE: Best Ultrabooks and Premium Laptops

If you've been holding out for an Apple MacBook Pro laptop, now is an excellent time to pick up the 2024 14-inch model. It usually goes for around $1,799 but right now it's marked down to just $1,589 at Amazon—its lowest price to date. As of writing, we're not sure for how long it will be offered at this price. This is one of the latest models, released last year, that comes with the newest generation Apple Silicon M4 chip.

We reviewed a 16-inch version of this laptop last year and absolutely loved our experience. The specs are a little bit different between the one we reviewed and this one that's on sale but there's enough overlap to get an idea of what you can expect. We ended up rating the 2024 Apple MacBook Pro 4.5 out of 5 stars, praising it for its exceptional battery life and M4 processor performance.

The main processor powering this edition of the Apple MacBook Pro is, as we mentioned earlier, an M4 chip which has 10 cores — four of which are dedicated as performance cores and six are efficiency cores. The display is fairly notable, as well. It uses a 14.2-inch liquid retina XDR screen which can reach a maximum refresh rate of 120 Hz and has an impressively high maximum possible brightness of 1,600 Nits.

This laptop's memory, both RAM and SSD, can't be upgraded but you get 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD for storage with this offer, just make sure that is ample for your predicted needs. It has an HDMI port and is capable of supporting a secondary display. A 3.5mm jack is provided for connecting external audio peripherals. It has WiFi 6E wireless support and also comes with Bluetooth 5.3.

Visit the Apple MacBook Pro Laptop (2024) product page at Amazon for purchase options. It's also worth being aware that shipping can take one to two months for this particular edition.

Right now at Amazon, you can find the 2022 edition of the Apple MacBook Air with an M2 chip for its lowest price to date. Like most Apple products, this device comes with premium pricing. This edition of the MacBook Air was initially released with a price tag of $999. Today, however, it's been marked down to the lowest price we've ever seen for it—just $749, saving over $200 off the asking price.

This might not be the newest Apple MacBook Air on the market but it's got plenty of specs to get excited about. This edition comes with an M2 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage. We reviewed the Apple MacBook Air M2 2022 laptop as well, although it had a little more storage than this model, and were very pleased with it, rating it at 4 out of 5 stars. We appreciated its performance and long-lasting battery, which is notably efficient. Our biggest complaint was the high MSRP but today's discount negates that con entirely.

This edition of the Apple MacBook Air debuted in 2022 and features an M2 chip that has eight CPU cores, four of which are dedicated as performance cores while the other four are efficiency cores. It has a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,664 pixels for a decent PPI. This model comes with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB internal SSD for storage.

You can expect a few ports to take advantage of, including two Thunderbolt USB 4 ports and a MagSafe 3 charging port. A 1080p webcam is included for video conferencing, as well. This model of the Apple MacBook Air isn't the lightest by any means, weighing in at 2.7lbs but it's one of the thinnest laptops you'll find at just .44 inches tall.

As of writing, it's not clear for how long this offer will be available. If you'd like to get a closer look at the deal, you can check it out in greater detail over at Amazon through the Apple 2022 MacBook Air M2 laptop product page.

You rarely hear Apple gamers playing AAA games on their MacBooks, much less Apple users desiring to run AAA games on Linux with Apple hardware. However, the developers behind Asahi Linux have announced alpha driver compatibility with x86-based Windows games in Linux on Apple M1 and M2 Arm-based silicon, making Asahi Linux the world's first Linux distro to accomplish such a feat.

Asahi Linux's playing toolkit now supports x86 emulation and Windows compatibility with its Vulkan 1.3 drivers. Asahi Linux is the only distro that ships conformant OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan drivers for Apple ARM-based hardware, making x86 AAA gaming possible through Linux.

Asahi's translation stack comprises a whopping four translation layers to get x86 Windows games to work. FEX emulates x86 instructions to work on ARM hardware, Wine translates Windows code to Linux, and DVK and Proton focus on translating DirectX API calls to Vulkan.

Adding additional complexity is a workaround for page sizes; Apple systems use 16K page sizes, while Windows x86 games expect 4K pages. As a result, the Asahi devs virtualize a secondary ARM Linux kernel with a different page size to get around this restriction. The process involves running an x86 game inside a tiny virtual machine using muvm (a micro virtual machine service), then passing through devices required to play the game, such as the GPU and peripheral inputs.

Asahi's x86 Windows compatibility is currently in the alpha stage, and the developers are working towards a 1.0 release. Some blockers include incompatibility with sparse texturing on Ashai's Vulkan 1.3-based Honeykrisp driver, which is required to unlock more DX12 game support. Honeycrisp is the first conformant driver for M1 silicon (for any operating system) and the only rendering driver that can run games in Linux.

However, multiple games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Hollow Knight, Portal 2, Fallout 4, and Control, were shown to be running on Asahi's compatibility layer for x86 Windows games.

A YouTube channel has published an unboxing and brief hands-on featuring a purported MacBook Pro M4. If genuine, this ‘world premiere’ video from Wylsacom is an incredible scoop, as Apple is renowned for keeping its products tightly under wraps until they are officially launched.

According to an email bulletin circulated by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman this weekend, MacBook Pro laptops with M4 chips aren’t expected to be announced until “around the end of October.” Availability is scheduled to begin on Friday, November 1.

Above, you can see the unboxing video. It isn’t anything extraordinary—bar the fact that an Apple device has actually leaked ahead of its announcement and NDAs, etc. The video begins with the presenter thoughtfully using a Sharpie to obscure any telltale serial numbers/codes on the packaging lest the information reveal his source. It is noted that this sample is packing 16GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage—a new entry-level quota. Then he opens and picks through the meager contents of the box.

It isn’t until approaching halfway through the video (~5 mins 50 secs) that the MacBook Pro is on the desk, and its clamshell form factor is opened. Eventually, after a guided initial system setup, the host installs and runs Geekbench. He had previous-gen Apple Silicon MacBooks, so he shared some comparisons.

The new M4 chip in the freshly unboxed MacBook, featuring 10 CPU and 10 GPU cores, scores 3,864 and 15,228 in Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests. These results are a smidgeon faster than the current top-spec iPad Pro with Apple M4, which achieves 3,715 and 14,690 points in Geekbench. The Russian YouTuber also compares the new MacBook with machines packing various Apple M2 and M3 chips.

Overall, the new design is a minor update, but the presenter welcomed the improved performance levels, the new minimum RAM quota, and the entry-level model now sporting a Thunderbolt port on both sides of the chassis.

In line with Gurman’s news bulletin, the Russian YouTuber says that Apple will unveil these new MacBooks and other M4 devices on October 21-22, and they will be available starting November 1.

An Apple insider has noted that a quartet of new base-level Mac computers, all with at least 16GB of RAM, are being tested. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the Macs are currently known by the cryptic model identifiers of “16,1,” “16,2,” “16,3,” and “16,10,” and such devices are usually spotted shortly ahead of their launch. Despite growing criticism, Apple has steadfastly sold entry-level Macs with a minimum of 8GB of RAM since 2012.

According to Gurman’s report and based on developer test logs he has had eyes on, all the new Macs are M4 Apple Silicon models. That’s no surprise, but even the lowest-end base model seen comes with 16GB of RAM on board. Three of the Macs use an M4 chip with 10 CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, and there is a lower-end processor with eight CPU cores and eight GPU cores. According to Gurman, even the lowest-end model is partnered with at least 16GB of RAM. Some also come with 32GB of RAM on board.

Bloomberg’s report provides further details, indicating that the 10-core M4 processor mentioned above seems to have the same specs as the one used in the iPad Pro. That means four of the 10 CPU cores are high-performance, and the remaining six are tuned for efficiency. Meanwhile, the octa-core M4 has an even 4/4 split of performance/efficiency cores.

After sharing the M4 chip and RAM quota information, Gurman’s report notes that Apple is preparing a smaller Mac Mini, plus new MacBook Pro and iMacs built around M4 chips, for release later this year. We take that as a hint at what model identifiers “16,1,” “16,2,” “16,3,” and “16,10” may refer to.

Estimating the desired RAM quota when purchasing a new Mac is a particularly crucial ordeal, as since Apple Silicon arrived, the system memory chips have been housed on the chip package. This is great for latency and bandwidth and for making a compact computer. Still, it could artificially shorten the service life of an otherwise capable machine, as RAM upgrades have become practically impossible.

Apple has been stingy with its Macs, asking a considerable premium for more RAM (and storage). Moreover, its assertions that “8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems” were primarily ridiculed by PC enthusiasts last year.

PC users may face the same purchase-time RAM quandary with upcoming laptops that don’t embrace SO-DIMM or CAMM technologies. We see recently reviewed AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops coming with soldered RAM. Moreover, Qualcomm Snapdragon Windows laptops don’t have on-package memory but seem to commonly use soldered memory, making later RAM upgrades out of the question for most users. 

The upcoming Intel Lunar Lake laptops use on-package RAM, meaning you will be stuck with the working memory quota you decided on at purchase time – just like with Apple. At least the latest Microsoft AI PC guidance appears to push 16GB as a minimum for Windows machines being marketed right now, except at the cheapest end.

Eligible MacBook owners have started to receive payments relating to Apple's butterfly keyboard mechanism class action lawsuit in the U.S. 9to5Mac editor Michael Burkhardt said he received two $395 checks in the mail on Saturday. Burkhardt and others who have been affected by butterfly keyboard issues have endured very long waits for their payouts, as the suit was filed back in 2018.

Apple introduced its underlying butterfly keyboard mechanism starting 2015, touting it as an improvement on traditional scissor switches on laptops. Key benefits (apologies for the pun) were supposed to include greater key stability, precision, quietness, and user comfort. Sadly, as the tech rolled out to more laptops in subsequent years, issues with its reliability and durability became ever clearer with the buying public.

Rather than the mechanism being inherently at fault, its issue was that small amounts of dust or debris could seriously disrupt the keyswitch operation - and who lives in an environment without dust? Thus Apple refined and tweaked the butterfly design multiple times, but it couldn't protect the mechanism from ingress thoroughly enough. It threw in the towel and went back to scissor switches on new laptops starting in late 2019.

User trials and tribulations with the butterfly mechanism became quite a hot topic in the later 2010s. Apple finally admitted there was a design problem in 2018. Around the same time, several class-action lawsuits related to the butterfly mechanism were filed. Only now are affected users starting to see payouts from this legal action.

These first reported payments have arrived as part of a no-fault $50 million settlement in 2022, from a class action filed in 2018. The payouts you could claim for your keyboard troubles were as follows:

• Up to $395 for 2 or more top case replacements
• Up to $125 for 1 top case replacement
• Up to $50 for keycap replacements

Please note that you would not just get these payments automatically. Only those who filed a claim form for their 2015 to 2019 MacBook woes would qualify (applications were open from May 2023, but deadlines have all now passed). Moreover, the class action only covered residents in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. 9to5Mac editor Michael Burkhardt obviously claimed for two affected laptops he had the misfortune of purchasing, with each requiring a full top case replacement during their service life.

Just a few years ago, the idea of gaming on a Mac was a joke among the enthusiast PC community. But I'll give Apple this — it's clearly putting in the work. And while it definitely can't compete with Windows PCs or consoles on its library just yet, Apple does have one trick up its sleeve that I think, in time, may be able to draw a certain type of person to gaming on its platforms: the ecosystem.

At a small showcase, Apple showed me what a few years ago would have been unthinkable: a series of Macs running recent releases and previews of upcoming games, natively on Apple Silicon. It's a huge step that games like Assassin's Creed: Shadows and Frostpunk 2 are set to come day and date with PC, Xbox, and PlayStation releases. (Frostpunk 2 was on display. Assassin's Creed: Shadows was not.) And that's not all — the iPad and iPhone were also playing intensive games, thanks to Apple's shared chip architectures.

The company is catching up on some recent releases, like Palworld, which is set to release later this year. But toss in new developer tools and the idea that your games could carry over to other Apple devices, and that's where things get interesting.

Game Porting Toolkit 2

Announced at WWDC, this year's update to the Game Porting Toolkit should further help to streamline Apple Silicon Mac development for games already designed for the PC, and also, crucially, bring Mac games to the iPhone and iPad. 

The new version of the Toolkit includes AVX2 support, ray tracing, and improved performance. There are also new human interface guidelines, and new debugging tools for shaders in Xcode to help convert them to Metal (and unified shaders that should work once across the Mac, iPhone and iPad).

Apple showed off Control: Ultimate Edition running through the Game Porting Toolkit. The game is coming natively to Mac later this year, five years after the game's initial launch. A bit late, but it's a great game! 

Using the Windows version of Steam and the DirectX 12 version of the game, a MacBook Pro with an M3 Max played the title at 46 - 50 frames per second on high-quality settings and high ray tracing with a resolution of 1728 x 1117. I picked up the DualSense controller Apple had in front of the Mac and took on some Hiss guards as Jesse Faden, and it felt largely ready to go. If this is what convinced Remedy to port the game over, I can kind of see why it happened. With the M3 series and M4 chips supporting ray tracing tech, the game looks great.

The Unified Gaming Platform

Where Apple may have an advantage is where it typically excels: in its ecosystem. If games are released for the Mac, but then you can play them on your iPad or iPhone, it could open up gaming to tons of people who wouldn't have done so previously — and make it easier for enthusiast Mac gamers to play anywhere.

Playing anywhere has been a bit of a white whale for gaming companies lately. Think of cloud services like Game Pass from Microsoft or GeForce Now from Nvidia. The idea was you'd stream games to play them anywhere.

Apple's vision strikes me as a slightly more traditional version of the idea. Never mind streaming, but how about running the game locally on each device? Apple showed Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, which launched on Apple's products in July, running across the latest iPhone 15 Pro, iPad Pro with M4, and Macs . This particular game supports Apple's Universal Purchase functionality, so if you buy once, you get it across your Apple ecosystem. And the game uses iCloud to sync save data, so you can pick up where you left off on other devices.

Assassin's Creed Mirage has similar tricks, but only across the iPhone and iPad (and it looks excellent on the M4 iPad Pro's tandem OLED display, by the way). Rather than using iCloud, it uses Ubisoft Connect for syncing.

Apple needs to beef up its gaming library

As much as I liked seeing more games run well, particularly on the Mac, it still needs a lot more games to make it the main place for anyone to play. Ubisoft and Capcom are great partners — big studios with games people want to play. But the gaming PC is popular because it supports just about every major game outside of some console exclusives, and has a backlog going back decades. 

Apple needs to start somewhere. In my view, that's primarily with future games. I don't know how many people didn't play Death Stranding or Control a few years ago that will only play them because they're on the Mac. I think recent games like Palworld and upcoming games like Frostpunk 2 are better bets — get people when the games are new.

That also means it will take a significant amount of time for Apple to get its gaming efforts anywhere near mainstream. I hope the company is ready to continue this investment in chips, developer relations, and technologies. To get gamers and studios entirely on board will take a lot work. It will take years to see if this can be a true success. (Apple also needs to ensure it doesn't alienate game developers and publishers, like Epic Games, which means one of the biggest games in the world doesn't run natively on its flagship platform).

But sitting in that room, playing some Resident Evil on a MacBook Pro, Assassin's Creed on an iPad, Palworld on a Mac, and Control through x86 emulation tech makes me believe Apple is taking gaming seriously this time. It may never release a gaming laptop — instead, the idea is any Mac (with Apple Silicon, of course) can be a gaming machine. So can any iPad, any iPhone. It's a bold claim that will take continued successes to convince the often-skeptical PC gaming community. 

Quality of life improvements, as long as you're in the ecosystem

Apple's other gaming-focused projects are less shiny. Game Mode, which launched on the Mac last year, is coming to the iPhone and iPad this year with iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, minimizing background activity and reducing latency for audio and controllers. MacOS Sequoia will have a new version that reduces background processes even further. 

The Mac App Store will  require far less storage space to begin an installation update when macOS Sequoia launches later this year. Future updates will also let Mac owners install games to separate disks from the Mac App Store, which is helpful given the ballooning size of games.

And spatial audio is making its way to games in the new Mac and mobile operating systems, reducing latency and ensuring better audio while you're in game chat. Of course, that requires the second-generation AirPods Pro.

Stereotypically, the PC gaming community doesn't like lock-in. But the Apple community is known for loving when things work in an integrated fashion. 

The work has started, and it's impressive. Apple still has a long way to go. But hopefully, one day, there's a future where PC gamers, Mac gamers, and console gamers are all cross-playing with each other. Wouldn't it be beautiful?

Those in the market for a new MacBook should look at this offer from B&H Photo on this 13-inch Apple MacBook Air. It retails for $1,299, but it's currently discounted to just $1,149. In general, this is a modest discount, but given that this laptop was released just this year, it's definitely worth a look. No promo codes are required, and it's unclear how long the offer will be available at this rate.

We reviewed a different but similar model to this 13-inch Apple MacBook Air and were very pleased with our experience. The machine is thin and light, making it easy to take. It also has excellent battery life, which is a point of its portability. In our review, we gave that edition of the MacBook Air 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Under the hood of this edition of the Apple MacBook Air is an M3 processor. It has eight cores, four of which are dedicated as performance cores and the other four as efficiency cores. It has an integrated 10-core GPU that outputs to a 13.6-inch IPS panel. This screen has a resolution of 2560 x 1664, can reach 60 Hz, and has a maximum brightness output of 500 nits.

As far as storage goes, it comes with a 256GB internal SSD; for memory, you get 16GB of RAM. There are two USB-C ports, a power cord slot, and a headphone jack. Again, this deal is not very big, but the timing excites us the most. It is an excellent opportunity to get the latest MacBook Air without paying the total price.

Visit the Apple 13-inch MacBook Air product page at B&H Photo for more details and purchase options.

In the mid-90s, the seminal Apple Macintosh PowerBook 500 series arrived, changing the laptop market forever— albeit with fairly cheap plastic and internals that were quickly aged out of modernity by progress. Fortunately for fans of the PowerBook 500 series, and specifically the PowerBook 520C, YouTuber BillyTheKidCENTURION has successfully taken a classic PowerBook 520C shell and completely overhauled the internals with a new iPad display and components from a 2015 MacBook Pro.

As Billy The Kid warns at the beginning of his video detailing the process (embedded below), this was a potentially dangerous project to undertake and could have resulted in death or injury for a less-savvy tech enthusiast. Remember, before taking on any project like this, regardless of threat level, to do your due diligence to protect yourself and your hardware!

Apple PowerBook 520C Original Specs vs Apple Macbook Pro 2015 Specs

As you can see from our comparison table up above (520C specs courtesy of EveryMac), this is an exponential upgrade for the ancient Apple PowerBook 502C. In its time, though, these laptops were truly cutting-edge, debuting the modern trackpad to the PC market and boasting features like optional dual battery support for extra longevity. And in terms of pure usability and ergonomics...that shell and keyboard still look pretty nice, even if they did use cheap plastic.

We recommend watching the full video from Billy The Kid if you want a deeper look at how this project was done. There isn't very much in the way of establishing historical context, but you do get to see it come together and power on— inside and outside of the shell.

Global News reports that a former UPS sorting supervisor was arrested for stealing and reselling $1.3 million in Apple products from a UPS warehouse in Winnipeg, Canada. The UPS employee was fired and is now facing charges for his theft whNt sich took place between July 2023 and January 2024.

Court documents reveal that the perpetrator, Martinez Beltrano, purportedly stole roughly 866 Apple products from a UPS warehouse he had worked at since 2013. He then resold all of the stolen merchandise on Kijiji, taking payments in cash or e-transfers. The article doesn't say how police discovered the stolen goods or the perpetrator. However, in late January, Beltrano was arrested by Winnipeg police and charged with an assortment of crimes appropriate to the amount of merchandise he stole, including changes for theft of over $5,000 and under $5,000.

A few days after his arrest, police executed a search warrant on his home and vehicle, where they found over $1,800 worth of cash, electronic devices, and jewelry. In a police interview, Beltrano admitted to stealing the products and using the money from reselling the merchandise to buy a home worth $630,000 and pay off an Audi hatchback he already owned worth $60,000.

Court documents also revealed that Beltrano made cash deposits totaling more than $232,000 into his bank accounts from the merchandise he resold between September and January. A substantial amount of cash still has yet to be discovered in Beltrano's possession, unless he sold his stolen merchandise at a highly discounted rate.

The court is seeking a judge's approval to allow officials to seize most of Beltrano's possessions, including the aforementioned property and stuff he bought with the stolen merchandise. Beltrano will probably serve jail time for his actions and/or be charged with a serious fine to account for all of the financial damage he has caused to UPS and Apple.

It's no secret that Apple's speedy M3 Macbook Air runs hot, even hitting 114 degrees Celcius, which results in heavy performance throttling. However, YouTuber MaxTech discovered that the Macbook Air's performance problems can be easily remedied with just a couple of modifications (albeit expensive ones). By utilizing a DHCR cooling dock from SVALT in conjunction with thermal pads, MaxTech improved the M3 Macbook Air's performance by nearly 50% in select circumstances and outperformed the more premium (and much cooler) M3 Macbook Pro.

The DHCR cooling dock is a multi-purpose device explicitly designed to hold and cool a Macbook simultaneously. It features a "direct heatsink coupling" that has the laptop vertically. At the same time, the lid is closed and maintains surface contact around the bottom area of the computer where the M3 chip is located. The dock's cooling system functions by cooling the outer chassis, which keeps the M3 chip cool inside.

Max Tech found that the SVALT cooling dock can substantially increase sustained performance. In 3DMark Wildlife, the dock almost doubled the Macbook Air's performance, from 4,198 points in clamshell mode (lid closed) to 7,309 points, just 800 points shy of what the M3 MacBook Air can do in the same benchmark when not heat soaked. It is also roughly 600 points shy of the M3 MacBook Pro.

To get the M3 Macbook Air to Macbook Pro performance, Max Techsed a pair of thermal pads placed in between the M3's internal cooling solution and outer shell to boost performance. With these two modifications working together, Max Tech achieved 8,062 points of sustained performance, beating the MacBook Pro in the same test conditions by roughly 100 points.

Max Tech's discovery demonstrates how different the MacBook Air's cooling solution is from that of the MacBook Pro. Although both laptops share identical specifications, including the same M3 chip, the MacBook Air's fanless-cooling solution results in substantially lower sustained performance.

The good news is that users can modify their M3 Macbook Airs to get around this problem, as Max Tech has demonstrated. Even if you went with just the thermal pads, the M3 MacBook Air gains back most of its sustained performance loss. But SVALT's DHCR cooling dock is convenient if you use your Macbook Air as a desktop replacement — hooked up to one or two monitors. Another plus is that you don't need to modify the Macbook to use it. The only potential problem most people will have is its price, which totals $279.

Apple's entry-level MacBook Air notebooks based on M2 processors were heavily criticized for their low-performance solid state drives, as the company decided to cut costs and sacrifice parallelism. However, we have some good news for those interested in Apple's latest M3-based MacBook Air laptops, discovered by Vadim Yuryev from Max Tech - as Apple's entry-level laptops now offer decent data transfer speeds. Nevertheless, their performance is still slower than a decent off-the-shelf PCIe 3.0 x4 drive.  

Apple's entry-level MacBook Air M3 featuring 256GB of solid-state storage uses two 3D NAND flash packages (supporting an unknown number of channels and CE targets per channel), which is a big difference compared to the base model of the MacBook Air M2 that came with 256GB of storage using one 3D NAND package. In brief, the reduced number of NAND channels and consequent two times lower parallelism dramatically affected the older system's storage performance. 

An entry-level M3-based MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD can now achieve a sequential read speed of 2,280.2 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 2,108.9 MB/s in the Blackmagic SSD speed test. This is significantly higher than a sequential read speed of 1,576.4 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1,584.3 MB/s in the case of a base-spec M2-based MacBook Air with a 256GB drive. While storage subsystems of both products are slower compared to an entry MacBook Air M1 laptop with a 256GB SSD, the M3-based MBA is getting very close, and the difference will not be noticeable in the vast majority of real-world use cases. 

The storage performance enhancement of the 256GB MacBook Air M3 is particularly beneficial for multitasking and heavy productivity tasks on the base model that features only 8GB of RAM. MacOS tends to swap data that does not fit into RAM to NAND storage and then retrieve it, so fast solid-state storage is important for all Macs in general and entry-level Apple computers in particular. 

An avid reader with a DIY Windows PC would probably remember that the numbers demonstrated by an entry-level 2024 MacBook Air are akin to those of inexpensive mainstream SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface from circa 2019. This reader will indeed be right as the best PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD (Teamgroup's MP34) can hit a 3,500 MB/s sequential read speed and a 2,900 MB/s sequential write speed (3,400 MB/s and 1,100 MB/s for a 256GB drive though), at least on paper. Then again, real-world performance differences depend on actual use cases. 

Apple's MacBook Air 256GB SSDs vs TeamGroup's MP34 256GB SSD

Data by Max Tech/YouTube and TeamGroup

In general, the entry M3 MacBook Air has successfully addressed the biggest issue of the M2 model, which is storage subsystem performance. It also added general-purpose and graphics oomph, as well as dual display support with the lid closed, which makes it a contender in the productivity desktop space. While the new baseline MacBook Air is $100 more expensive than its direct predecessor, it looks like its upgrades are worth it. Then again, there are plenty of laptop PCs that offer much higher performance in the $1,100 ballpark. It is also likely the PC will have cooling fans so it does not dramatically overheat.

UPDATE 3/9/2024, 10am PT: VancouverMac.ca has provided us with additional information about its services and Apple PCs storage upgrade capabilities. While the company officially advertises storage upgrades for M1-based Macs only, it says that upgrades for other Apple Silicon-based Macs are identical, but some parts may differ.

Once upon a time, Apple's MacBook used M.2-like SSD modules that could be easily replaced or upgraded. Still, starting from the 2015 MacBook 12 systems, the company began soldering SSD components down to motherboards to make laptops thinner, thus making upgrades virtually impossible. But is it so? A repair shop from Canada offers to upgrade storage on Apple Silicon-based Macs to up to 2TB at a price lower than Apple's.

"Thankfully, due to advanced soldering techniques, it is now possible to upgrade the storage space of the newest MacBooks to their highest configuration, for prices lower than what is originally quoted by Apple at purchase," a statement by VancouverMac.ca reads.

Upgrade complexities

Indeed, a story from April 2021 about a team of engineers who managed to resolder DRAM and NAND flash chips on an M1-based Mac Mini made quite a splash. The engineers from China upgraded the cheapest Mac Mini M1 machine with 8GB of LPDDR4X memory and 256 GB of solid-state storage to a much more decent machine with 16 GB of DRAM and 1 TB of NAND storage. While resoldering may not be a problem for experienced people, Mac upgrades are not simple.

In MacBooks with the T2 chip (2018-2020) and Apple Silicon system-on-chips (M1, M2, M3), the custom firmware of the soldered-down SSD is specific to the configuration of actual NAND chips (or alternative packages). Therefore, these chips cannot be replaced, as firmware modification is required.

Fortunately, according to VancouverMac, the Apple Configurator utility can reprogram the SSD automatically through its restore function on Apple Silicon-based Macs, which makes storage upgrades of these machines a complex but doable task.

The process involves replacing NAND packages with higher-capacity packages supported by Apple (i.e., you need to know which packages Apple supports) and then running Apple Configurator on the machine through another Mac via a USB-C port to reprogram the SSD configuration. The company has even uploaded a video describing the key steps of the upgrade. By contrast, with T2-equipped machines, everything is much more complicated.

SSD upgrade opportunities

Although the official page at VancouverMac says it offers storage upgrades for M1-based MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, the company can upgrade Apple Silicon-based systems, including those based on M2 and M3-series processors, according to its founder.

The upgrade service can be performed for all of the below listed," said Sam Freeman, the owner of VancouverMac.ca. "The overall process is identical, but the parts used are different. The M1 Pro, M2, and M3 series use smaller chips with more dense connections, making it a bit harder, but it is very doable. I cannot confirm if parts are currently available for the M3 Macs since they are so new, but they will surely be released soon."

Pricing varies. For 2TB of presumably high-performance storage, the company wants $550 CAD/$407USD, which may be a little bit overwhelming considering the external storage options available, but it may be just right when you need high-performance internal storage.

Further upgrades

Given VancouverMac.ca's claimed capabilities, we asked whether the company can upgade storage devices of other Apple devices, such as M1/M2-based iPads, which share hardware with MacBooks. The company does not seem to offer such services for now though.

 "I do not have much experience with iPads/iPhones but based on my knowledge the DFU restore process should do the same thing for iPad which would mean this is possible on the iPads too," Freeman said.

The M3 MacBook Air can hit up to 114 degrees Celsius on its hottest core, according to testing from Max Tech. While modern processors, whether they're in laptops or desktops, are designed to run pretty hot, the M3 MacBook Air surprised with its peak temperature of 114 degrees Celsius. Stress testing shows that temperatures eventually fall to roughly 100 degrees Celsius but at the cost of performance.

The newest version of the MacBook Air launched this week with the latest M3 chip. Since the M1-powered MacBook Air, the lightweight Apple laptop has used no active cooling and relies on passive cooling through the heatsink and chassis to achieve silent operation. Naturally, this forces the MacBook Air's processor to operate at a higher temperature, and the M3 model is no different.

However, the degree to which the M3 MacBook Air gets hot is surprising. Max Tech took his 15-inch model out for a spin in 3DMark Wild Life Extreme and Cinebench 2024 and saw the hottest core inside the M3 hit 114 degrees Celsius multiple times. Under load, the average CPU and GPU temperature can peak at 107 and 103 degrees, respectively. This resulted in the chassis hitting 46 degrees Celsius or 115 degrees Fahrenheit at its hottest point.

The M2 MacBook Air had similar heat issues under load, though it's unclear if any were getting as hot as 114 degrees. Back then, Max Tech suggested placing thermal pads on the inside of the MacBook Air to facilitate better thermal transfer, which may also work for the M3 model.

This heat is unsustainable for a processor to maintain safely, so the M3 gradually lowered its frequency and power consumption throughout the stress tests. This allowed the chip to settle in at around 100 degrees, which is still hot but is still considered safe by the industry.

Of course, this means performance declines too; in our own M3 MacBook Air review, we saw the 15-inch model's performance in Cinebench R23 by about 10% and the 13-inch by 20% from the first run to the 20th. Graphics performance can also decline substantially per Max Tech's results from 3DMark Wild Life Extreme, which saw a 27% decline from the 15-inch MacBook Air's best to worst results.

Though the M3 MacBook Air does certainly overheat and hits an incredibly high temperature, it's not clear if that's a significant issue. The MacBook Air has never been a high-performance device, even with a fan, so it sees a performance drop throughout an intensive workload, which is unsurprising. Additionally, its lifespan should be acceptable if a processor isn't constantly running at a high temperature. To sustain performance over a long period, you'll want the MacBook Pro.

Engineers from Frore Systems have integrated the company's innovative solid-state AirJet cooling system, which provides impressive cooling capabilities despite a lack of moving parts, into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor.

The lack of a fan is probably one of the main advantages of Apple's MacBook Air over its more performant siblings, but it also puts the laptop at a disadvantage. Fanless cooling doesn't have moving parts (which is a plus), but it also cannot properly cool down Apple's M1 or M2 processor under high loads, which is why a 13-inch MacBook Air powered by M1 or M2 system-on-chip is slower than 13-inch MacBook Pro based on the same SoC. However, making a MacBook Air run as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro is now possible. 

To do so, one needs to cool down M2 using the Frore System's AirJet solid-state active cooling system. It is as efficient as typical cooling systems with fans, yet it is smaller and more reliable, according to a video posted to YouTube by PC World. The AirJet-equipped 15-inch MacBook Air matched the performance of the M2-based MacBook Pro in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, a testament to its AirJet's efficiency in maintaining optimal operating temperatures. 

However, there is a catch. AirJet is a membrane-based cooling system that uses ultrasonic waves to push air through itself to remove heat. Although it does not use a fan, it still needs airflow. As a result, Frore had to alter MacBook Air's design to use its Airjet. The company's specialists added intake vents near the laptop's hinge and repurposed the speaker holes to serve as exhaust outlets. These modifications were crucial to integrating the AirJet in the slim MacBook Air chassis, demonstrating the practicality and adaptability of this cooling technology in real-world applications.

Despite its impressive performance and potential applications, the AirJet is unavailable for consumer purchase. Frore Systems has no plans to release a consumer version of its AirJets or kits for modifying existing devices. The demonstration with the MacBook Air serves primarily as a proof of concept, highlighting AirJet's capabilities. Looking forward, integrating AirJet technology in products from companies like Apple could lead to more efficient use of internal space, paving the way for innovations such as larger batteries or more compact device designs.

An avid reader would ask why Apple does not use AirJet cooling systems itself. There are several possible explanations. Firstly, Frore is a relatively small company whose production volumes may be too low for Apple. Secondly, the AirJet cooling technology is relatively new, and companies like Apple would ensure its reliability first before using it for high-volume devices.

An Apple executive recently said in an interview that 8GB on the latest MacBook Pros is equivalent to 16GB on regular PCs. While Apple's unified memory architecture helps improve memory performance, it isn't a substitute for raw capacity. New benchmarks, courtesy of Max Tech, show that 8GB substantially limits the performance of Apple's cutting-edge M3 processor.

Anyone with a decent knowledge of hardware knows that having more memory is better for multitasking and specialized workloads, such as professional applications or content creation. Apple's claim about 8GB being "analogous" to 16GB on Windows is disputable since the company compares apples to oranges. It's beyond doubt that there will be a performance delta between the 8GB and 16GB, but the real question is just how much? Max Tech recently compared the 8GB and 16GB configurations of the 14-inch MacBook Pro to expose just how much of an impact the additional 8GB can make.

The performance hit is visible starting with Cinebench 2024, where the 16GB configuration delivered 11% higher multi-core performance than the 8GB configuration. More memory has a positive effect on browsing performance as well. As measured with Speedometer, the 16GB configuration offered 19% more performance than the 8GB configuration.

Not all benchmarks could run properly on the 8GB model, either. Max Tech reported crashing in Blender and Final Cut Pro during some export operations. Some options weren't available due to the lack of memory. For example, Blender's ray tracing acceleration was only accessible on the 16GB model. The unified memory architecture means that the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine drink from the same memory pool so it isn't dedicated memory that only the CPU can access. The system turns to the SSD swap file when there isn't enough memory. Max Tech recorded swap file usage of up to 5.6GB on the 8GB model in some workloads.

Apple M3 Benchmarks

*Lower is better.

Multitasking significantly hampered the M3's performance when it only had 8GB at its disposal. Outside of a multitasking environment, the 8GB model completed the Lightroom Classic benchmark in 1:47. Factoring in five browser tabs increased the completion time by 12%, and having 20 browser tabs prolonged it by almost 3X. The 16GB model, on the other hand, didn't flinch a bit. Whether it was five or 20 browser tabs, it finished in 1:06. It was an impressive showing on the M3's behalf because it was only 4% slower than the previous M2 Pro (1:03) despite the latter having more cores.

In a direct comparison between the 8GB and 16GB M3 models, the latter concluded the Lightroom Classic benchmark in 45% and 79% less time with five and 20 browser tabs, respectively.

If we don't put multitasking into the mix, the 8GB configuration held its own as long as the workloads weren't memory-heavy. In Final Cut Pro, the 8GB model only took 6% longer to convert 4K ProRes RAW to ProRES. However, in a 4K MC in 8K to ProRES workload, the 16GB was 4X faster than the 8GB model. In Photoshop, the 8GB model took 41.25% longer than the 16GB model to photo merge ten 50-megapixel images.

The base model 14-inch MacBook Pro, which has 8GB of memory and retails for $1,599, may be acceptable for consumers who aren't heavy multitaskers or don't work with professional-grade workflows. However, suppose you're a professional user, and you absolutely need a Macbook Pro for your work. In that case, it makes sense to jump up to the 16GB configuration, even if it means paying Apple another $200 or potentially losing up to 4X the performance.

Apple recently unveiled the company's latest M3 processor and the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. However, they were heavily criticized because the base model only has 8GB of memory. An Apple executive has explained in an interview that 8GB shouldn't be a concern since the MacBook Pro uses memory more efficiently than your typical PC.

Chinese ML engineer and Bilibili content creator 林亦LYi had an interesting interview with Bob Borchers, Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing, on his channel. When the subject of the memory was brought up, Borchers confidently replied:

"Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture."

"Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently. And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and if you look at the raw capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, and actually go and look beyond the capabilities, and listen to trusted people like you who have actually used the systems."

The 14-inch MacBook Pro (2023) starts at $1,599, 23% more expensive than the M2‌ 13-inch MacBook Pro it's replacing. The price hike is somewhat justifiable because consumers get the faster M3 chip and a bigger and prettier screen, among other improvements. One aspect in which the MacBook Pro didn't improve is the memory. Having 8GB of memory on a device that sells for $1,599 is a criminal offense in most people's books, especially since the MacBook Pros target professionals and prosumers. Many would agree that they would rather have 16GB for professional workloads, such as image or video edition. Apple's defense is that the MacBook Pro's unified memory architecture is more efficient.

The unified memory architecture has its benefits, such as faster memory access times and higher bandwidth when compared to a regular socketed system with memory slots. So, while 8GB on the MacBook Pro could be more efficient than on the PC, it's still 8GB. Furthermore, the unified memory architecture is essentially a shared memory design since the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine have access to the same memory pool. In a sense, Apple is comparing 8GB of shared memory against 16GB of dedicated memory for the CPU on the PC.

Apple would have saved itself from the condemnation if it had just made 16GB the standard on the baseline MacBook Pro models. Alternatively, the company could have just suppressed the "Pro" moniker because if you market a machine toward professionals, it should have the firepower to handle what you throw at it. Then again, professional may be a loosely used term since you can argue that not every "professional" uses their MacBook Pro for high-resolution content creation or ML work. 8GB may still be very usable today for even prosumers, but don't try to run a bunch of programs at once or go wild with the browser tabs.

You can get more memory on the new MacBook Pros, but like most things Apple, it'll cost an arm and a leg. If you have the funds, you can grab the 16GB or 24GB unified memory version of the 14-inch MacBook Pro (2023) at checkout, but that'll add another $200 and $400, respectively, to your bill. To be fair, many Windows-based laptops still start at 8GB on their base models. If you look hard enough, some fo these 16GB memory upgrades are slightly cheaper or on equal terms with what Apple is charging.

Apple’s MacBook Pro laptops received a hardware upgrade earlier this year, which brought powerful M2 Pro and M2 Max chips with noticeable gains over their M1 Pro and M1 Max predecessors. We weren’t expecting a significant chip upgrade so soon, but Apple again surprised us with third-generation Apple Silicon in the form of the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max for the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

Since Apple last did a major design overhaul of the MacBook Pro family in 2021, there isn’t any big news this time, save for one new color option: Space Black. Space Black replaces Space Gray on 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with the M3 Pro and M3 Max processors (14-inch MacBook Pros with the base M3 chip soldier on with Space Gray).

Besides the powerful new chips based on a 3nm process node, the late 2023 MacBook Pros are available with up to 128GB of RAM (up from 96GB) and an 8TB SSD.

The new hardware upgrades make these new MacBook Pros the fastest yet, and they remain among the best ultrabooks available if you can get past RAM and SSD pricing that can quickly escalate.

MacBook Pro (Late 2023) Design

We received a 16-inch MacBook Pro review unit, and it looks identical to the M2 Max version that we tested earlier this year. The only exterior difference is the new Space Black color, which looks gorgeous. The matte black finish shimmers under light, and Apple says that the aluminum unibody uses an “anodization seal” process to reduce the appearance of fingerprints. You’ll still see fingerprints if you’re manhandling the laptop, but the smudges aren’t nearly as prevalent as seen on the MacBook Air in Midnight Blue.

As a nice touch, Apple includes a braided MagSafe 3 to USB-C cable in the box that is also finished in Space Black. However, the 140W power brick remains finished in the familiar shiny white plastic.

As before, the largest MacBook Pro has a beautiful 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. There remains a notch in the top-center of the display, which houses the 1080p webcam. The notch has been divisive with many in the Mac community, but I mostly have just grown to ignore it. Much like the notch on the iPhone 13 Pro or the “Dynamic Island” on the iPhone 15 Pro, the MacBook Pro’s notch mostly fades into obscurity the more you use it.

However, given how much space it takes up, it seems like a wasted opportunity to add Face ID hardware. Face ID has proliferated through Apple’s iPhone and iPad Pro product families, and it would be nice to see that feature added to the flagship MacBook Pro family. We’d imagine that Apple simply hasn’t been able to shrink the hardware down enough to fit Face ID into the MacBook Pro’s thin display lid, which is why Touch ID is still integrated into the power button.

The full-size keyboard remains as comfortable as ever with its scissor switches, and the massive trackpad, which supports haptic feedback, sits below it. There are no changes to the port layout on the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro. That means you get one HDMI 2.1 port, one Thunderbolt 4 port and an SDXC memory slot on the laptop’s right side. The left side of the laptop features a MagSafe 3 port, two more Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It should be noted that 16-inch MacBook Pros with an M3 Pro processor support up to two external displays, while M3 Max-equipped machines (like our review sample), support up to four external displays.

Our MacBook Pro weighs 4.8 pounds and measures 14.01 x 9.77 x 0.66 inches; models with the M3 Pro weigh slightly less at 4.7 pounds. We brought along a Dell XPS 15 (9530) to represent Windows laptops, which measures 13.56 x 9.06 x 0.73 inches and weighs 4.31 pounds.

MacBook Pro (Late 2023) Specifications

Productivity Performance of the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

Our 16-inch MacBook Pro came with a full-fat M3 Max chip with 400 GBps of bandwidth. As a result, it has a 16-core CPU (12 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores), a 40-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. Apple is reticent to disclose clock speeds for its products in its specs sheet, but Geekbench 6 says that the CPU has a clock speed of 4.05 GHz, compared to 3.66 GHz for the M2 Max.

The laptop blazed through the Geekbench 5 benchmark, achieving a score of 2,332 in single-core and 23,163 in multi-core mode. The single-core improvement over the M2 Max was 17 percent, but the multi-core score improved by a staggering 53 percent. We must note that the M3 Max has an additional four performance cores compared to the M2 Max and a higher clock speed, which helps contribute to that big uplift in performance. The Dell XPS 15 (9530) with its Core i7-13700H processor performed on par with the M1 Max in the 16-inch MacBook Pro from 2021.

The M3 Max flexed its muscles again in the Handbrake test, which involves transcoding a 4K video to 1080p. It finished the task in 2 minutes and 34 seconds, nearly a minute and half faster than the M2 Max (3:59) and well over two minutes ahead of the M1 Max (4:48). It was also roughly twice as fast as the XPS 15 (5:01).

Our file transfer test involves copying 25GB of files (reading and writing on the same SSD), and the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Max achieved 2,461.25 MBps. This was a huge boost over its M1 Max and M2 Max counterparts, which hit 1,917.69 MBps and 1,789.85 MBps, respectively. It even easily outdistanced the XPS (9530) at 2,060.98 MBps.

We introduced the Xcode Benchmark when testing the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Max earlier this year. That laptop took 85 seconds to complete the test, while our M3 Max review unit accomplished the same feat in just 70 seconds.

We stress-tested the system with Cinebench R24, performing 20 runs with the multi-core test. Cinebench R24 estimated the single-core clock at 4GHz and the multi-core clock at 3.4GHz. The scores for Cinebench R24 aren’t directly comparable to prior versions, but the 16-inch MacBook Pro hovered between 1,600 and 1,700 on the multi-core test. The fan kicked in relatively early during the testing, and while they were noticeable, the sound wasn’t objectionable.

We normally use TG Pro to verify CPU temperatures for Macs. However, the current version of the utility isn’t fully compatible with Apple’s new M3 family and couldn’t provide a readout of temperatures for performance and efficiency cores. However, the app did report package temperatures that ranged from 99 to 104 degrees Celsius during the Cinebench R24 stress test.

Gaming and Graphics on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

The M3 Max in our 16-inch MacBook Pro review unit comes with a 40-core GPU (two more than the M2 Max we tested earlier this year). Creative professionals will primarily use a machine of this caliber, especially in this flagship configuration. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do some gaming on the side.

I tested the system with Resident Evil Village, a game with native Apple Silicon support using the Metal 3 API. With the resolution set at 3456 x 2160, the graphics preset dialed to “Max,” and MetalFX upscaling set to “Quality,” the game showed that it would use 12.53 GB out of the 94 GB that the game can reserve. The game locked in at 60 fps (measured using the FPS Hud in macOS, which is accessible from Terminal) in just about every scene with these settings enabled.

We also tried to push the GPU with much older games, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We were able to achieve 118 fps at 1920 x 1200 and 47 fps at native resolution (3456 x 2234). Borderlands 3 hit 59 fps at 1920 x 1200 (we couldn’t get it to run at native resolution).

Display on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

The 16-inch MacBook Pro uses what Apple brands as a “Liquid Retina XDR” display. More to the point, it’s a Mini-LED panel with a 3456 x 2234 resolution with up to a 120Hz refresh rate.

Since I’m a big Marvel fan, I watched Season 2, Episode 5 of Loki on the MacBook Pro on Disney Plus. The overall aesthetic of the show (especially inside the TVA) gives me a late 70s/early 80s vibe, and that was on clear display on the Mini-LED panel with the muted earthy color tones and vintage gadgets. It was also especially unsettling and creepy to see the colorful strands of reality unraveling as the episode progressed.

Testing with our colorimeter showed that the panel covered 117 percent of the sRGB gamut and 82.7 percent of DCI-P3. Both figures closely matched what we found on its M2 Max counterpart that we tested in February.

In SDR content, brightness maxed out at 563 nits, which confirms Apple’s assertion of a 20 percent boost compared to the previous generation. Switching to HDR content, we hit a maximum of 1539 nits with 40 percent coverage, compared to 1,470 nits for the older model.

As always, Apple enables True Tone by default on its MacBooks. True Tone does its best to adjust the colors on the display to match your current working environment better, whether in a darkened room or in a brightly lit area. However, for professionals who will likely be using the MacBook Pro for color-critical work, it’s probably best to leave this True Tone disabled in the Display settings menu.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

The keyboard and touchpad on the MacBook Pro are unchanged, and that’s a good thing. The backlit keys still feature a scissor-switch mechanism. There’s nothing remarkable about the keyboard other than the Touch ID biometric sensor embedded in the power button.

I used keyhero.com for my typing tests, averaging 90 words per minute with 95.67 percent accuracy.

The touchpad measures a massive 6.3 x 3.9 inches, giving you plenty of room to swipe, scroll, and use multi-touch gestures to your heart’s content.

Audio on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

Given that the chassis of the MacBook Pro hasn’t changed, the excellent audio system remains. In this case, Apple outfitted the laptop with six speakers with force-cancelling woofers. The speakers also support Dolby Atmos audio and support for Apple’s Spatial Audio. Spatial Audio is also supported when connecting to AirPods Pro or AirPods Max over Bluetooth.

The speakers sound great, as you would expect from a system with a $2,499 base price, and are among the best in the laptop world (PC or Mac). To test them, I watched the bank robbery scene from the movie “Heat” and was floored by the sounds from the Colt Model 733 short-barreled carbines used by the film’s antagonists. Director Michael Mann is known for his realistic depiction of gunfire in his movies, and the MacBook Pro did it justice.

Upgradeability on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

As with all recent MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops, there’s no avenue for future hardware upgrades. You must make all your decisions based on what you expect to use the machine for at the time of purchase. The RAM is integrated into the M3 Max package, while the NAND for the SSD is soldered onto the motherboard. This isn’t anything new to the Apple faithful, but it is certainly an eyebrow-raiser for the PC crowd, where you can at least expect to upgrade your SSDs without issue.

Still, you can take off the bottom panel of the MacBook Pro via eight pentalobe screws, where you’ll have access to any serviceable components. However, we highly suggest you visit Apple’s website and check out the repair manual before you start tinkering.

Battery Life on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

Battery life has always been a strong point with Apple Silicon Macs, and that remains the same with this latest iteration of the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Our review unit lasted 17 hours and 11 minutes on our battery test, where we browse the web, run OpenGL tests and stream video connected to Wi-Fi with the screen set to 150 nits. That said, we didn’t quite hit the high watermark set by its M2 Max predecessor, which lasted for 18 hours and 56 minutes under the same parameters – both laptops feature a 100-WHr battery, the largest allowed by law.

For comparison, the older M1 Max version ran for 15 hours and 31 minutes, while the XPS 15 conked out after 9 hours and 12 minutes.

Heat on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

We measured the heat on the MacBook Pro while running the Cinebench R24 stress test. At the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, we measured 36.3 degrees Celsius (97.34 degrees Fahrenheit), while the touchpad registered 26.1 C (78.98 F).

The hottest point of the laptop was on its underside, which hit 37.1 C (98.78 F).

Webcam on the MacBook Pro (Late 2023)

The 16-inch MacBook Pro soldiers on with a 1080p webcam, which is comparable to some of the best cameras we’ve seen on PC-based laptops. Color reproduction was accurate and fine detail was well captured. My brown skin tones were captured well, which is often challenging for laptops with lesser hardware.

The camera is nestled in a notch at the top of the display, which robs some screen real estate. It doesn’t bother me as much as some folks, but it would have been nice if Apple could have found a way to avoid this design choice. If Face ID hardware had been included in the mix, the complaints about the notch wouldn’t have been nearly as vocal from the Mac community.

If the 1080p webcam’s performance isn’t good enough for your needs, you can pair an iPhone with Continuity Camera (a feature introduced in macOS Ventura). This feature lets you leverage the iPhone’s primary camera sensor for video recording duties.

macOS Sonoma, Software and Warranty

The latest MacBook Pro ships preinstalled with macOS Sonoma (Version 14.1). Sonoma doesn’t feel like a dramatic departure from Ventura, but there are some notable features. Game Mode gives resource priority to the CPU and GPU to boost gaming performance and reduce latency for wireless accessories (AirPods, wireless mice, etc.). You can now place useful widgets on your desktop, including those from your iPhone, when using Continuity. Private Browsing now has better security, and you can use search filters in the Messages app. There are also many other smaller features sprinkled in, which you read about here.

Macs don’t come bundled with crapware; everything installed is made by Apple. That means you won’t find the typical Windows 11 bloat, like app shortcuts for Disney Plus, Netflix or TikTok. Instead, you’ll find all the essentials like Mail, Messages, Photos, Safari and Maps. These apps, of course, all sync across your iOS/iPadOS devices and other Macs that are signed in to your iCloud account. Apple’s free productivity suite (Numbers, Pages, Keynote) is included and will serve you well if you have basic needs.

The 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with a standard one-year warranty, and you can add the AppleCare Plus three-year extended warranty for a flat fee of $399. If you still want the extended warranty but would rather pay as you go, AppleCare Plus is also offered for $149/year.

MacBook Pro (Late 2023) Configurations

Our 16-inch MacBook Pro came finished in Space Black and features an M3 Max chip (16 CPU cores, 40 GPU cores), 128GB of unified memory and a spacious 8TB SSD. The price for this top-of-the-line system is a staggering $7,199. Quite frankly, it’s hard to justify that price unless you need that added memory and storage.

The MacBook Pro’s starting price of $2,499 is more palatable and still gets you the great build quality, screen, audio system, and plethora of ports for connectivity. The base pre-configured 16-inch MacBook Pro has an M3 Pro chip (12 CPU cores, 18 GPU cores), 18GB of unified memory and a 512GB SSD. An additional $400 bumps you to 36GB of unified memory. The cheapest M1 Max configuration (14 CPU cores, 30 GPU cores) comes with 36GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD.

As always, the price premium to upgrade the memory and storage is enormous. Upgrading from 18GB of unified memory to 36GB on the M3 Pro configuration costs $400. Going from a 512GB SSD to 1TB, 2TB or 4TB costs $200, $600 or $1,200, respectively.

Bottom Line

The 16-inch MacBook Pro remains a formidable entry in the high-end laptop space due to several factors. The build quality remains best in class, the Mini-LED display is bright and colorful, the speakers and webcam are class-leading, and battery life is unmatched by anything in the Windows sphere.

The raw power of the M3 Max chip is undeniable, offering impressive performance gains over the M2 Max released less than a year ago. We noticed some regression in battery endurance compared to its M2 Max counterpart, but it still lasts nearly twice as long as the Dell XPS 15 (9530) with a 13th-generation Intel Raptor Lake processor.

At its starting price of $2,499, the 16-inch MacBook Pro is a great all-around machine if you can get by with 18GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. Where things start to fall apart is with Apple’s memory and storage upgrades, which quickly inflate the price. Adding a few options will see pricing soar well past the $3,000 mark. And in the case of our fully loaded M3 Max review unit, the price was an eye-popping $7,199.

If you already have a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M2-class processor, we think you’ll be fine skipping this generation. However, if you’re running a M1 Pro/Max MacBook Pro or anything Intel-based, now is a good time to upgrade – as long as you go easy on the hardware options.

Apple launched its first M3 Macs on Monday. A week has yet to pass, but we see that many of these machines are already on sale at Adorama. Are these truly Black Friday bargains for Adorama VIPs*, as they are billed, or is this a sign of a tepid reaction to Apple’s high MSRPs?

On Monday, Apple held its Scary Fast event, during which it took the wraps of its latest M3 processors and a handful of laptops and desktops featuring these slices of 3nm silicon. Despite this being a Halloween event for Apple, the most frightening thing was the pricing, particularly for those who don’t want to settle for base specs (8 GB RAM in 2023, anyone?).

The following offers are live today for people who have signed up for Adorama’s free VIP loyalty membership:

• 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro M3 512 GB was $1599, VIPs get it for $1399
• 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro M3 Pro 512 GB was $1999, VIPs get it for $1799
• 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro M3 Max 1 TB was $3199, VIPs get it for $2999
• 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro M3 Pro 512 GB was $2499, VIPs get it for $2299
• 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro M3 Max 512 GB was $3499, VIPs get it for $3299
• 24-inch Apple iMac M3 (8 core GPU) 256 GB was $1299, VIPs get it for $1199
• 24-inch Apple iMac M3 (10 core GPU) 512 GB was $1699, VIPs get it for $1599

*Adorama’s special prices, delivering up to $200 off the new M3 Macs, are only unlocked and viewable by VIP-tier customers. Becoming a VIP doesn’t cost anything, though; it is just a simple registration for discount prices like these, plus a way to earn and spend points – a very ordinary loyalty scheme. Sign in to get the VIP prices listed above.

It will be interesting to see if any other large US retailers follow in Adorama’s footsteps by discounting their factory-fresh new M3 Macs. Earlier today, we reported that Mac sales had been hit hard. Sales of Apple’s Mac computers were down a hefty 34% YoY, according to the FY23 earnings call.

One good way to shift more numbers is through keener pricing. However, Apple also has to step back from trotting out entry-level models with low RAM and storage configurations and prohibitive higher-spec prices. Even the most myopic Apple-focused fans will grow aware that similarly priced Windows laptops and desktops now come with at least double the RAM and SSD storage as the shiny new M3 Macs.

Apple just held its "Scary Fast" October event, which was meant to invoke Halloween and introduce new products. The timing of the event, however, is uncharacteristic for Apple, with an 8pm start time instead of the usual 1pm for its keynotes. So, without further ado, let's see what spooky hardware Apple has in store as we come approach the closing months of 2023.

14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3-based SoCs

The big news is the 3-nanometer M3 family of chips for the MacBook Pro: M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. They feature an all-new GPU architecture with hardware-accelerated mesh shading, hardware-accelerated ray tracing (as seen on the A17 Pro), and Dynamic Caching. Dynamic Memory, as its name implies, allows local memory to be dynamically allocated by hardware in real time depending on what an application needs. Apple claims up to a 2.5x uplift in performance compared to the GPU in the M2 family.

The performance cores are up to 30 percent faster, while the efficiency cores are up to 50 percent faster than the M2 Pro and M2 Pro Max. The neural engine is up to 60 percent faster than the one found in the M1 family. Here's the new CPU lineup for the MacBook Pros:

• M3 8-core CPU (4 performance, 3 efficiency), 10-core GPU, up to 24GB unified memory
• M3 Pro 12-core CPU (6 performance, 6 efficiency), 18-core GPU, up to 36 GB unified memory
• M3 Max 16-core CPU (12 performance, 4 efficiency), 40-core GPU, up to 128GB unified memory

Base 14-inch MacBook Pros come with the M3 processor, whereas previous entry-level 14-inch models started with the M1 Pro or M2 Pro. It will also be available with the M3 Pro and M3 Max. The 16-inch MacBook Pro will only be available in M3 Pro and M3 Max configurations.

Apple claims up to 22 hours of battery life with the new MacBook Pros. There’s also an upgraded Liquid Retina XDR Display with a maximum HDR brightness of 1600 nits. 

In addition, Apple introduced a new color for the M3 Pro and M3 Max: Space Black. The dark aluminum finish is a nice break from the usual Silver and Space Grey that have been the standard two options for years on MacBook Pros. Apple claims it features a “breakthrough” anodization method that resists fingerprints.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro now starts at $1,599 with the M3 processor (it previously started at $1,999 with the M2 Pro), while the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,499. All the systems are available to order today, but MacBook Pros with the M3 Max won't ship until November.

On a side note, the new lower price of the M3-based MacBook Pro will seemingly replace the "old" 13-inch MacBook Pro.

New 24-inch iMac with M3

It's been over two years since Apple last updated the iMac. At the time, the all-in-one computer launched with the M1 processor. When Apple debuted the M2 processor for the Mac mini and MacBook Air, the iMac was left out of the loop. 

Now, finally, a new iMac is boasting increased performance with the M3 processor. The new 24-inch iMac Pro is now up to 2x faster than its predecessor with an M1 processor (Apple also says that the machine is 2.5x faster when compared to 27-inch Intel-based all-in-one machines). It will be available in seven colors and will still start at $1,299.

Apple says that the new 24-inch iMac is available to order today and will ship next week.

Apple is poised to refresh its Mac lineup in an upcoming online-only event called 'Scary Fast,' with a focus on introducing new MacBook Pros and iMacs equipped with the latest M3-series processors, reports Bloomberg. The 'Scary Fast' description of the event might indicate that we will be dealing with high-performance M3 Pro and M3 Max processors produced on one of TSMC's N3 process technologies.

In the spotlight are the anticipated MacBook Pros, which are set to undergo significant internal enhancements. These new models are projected to house the advanced M3 Pro and M3 Max processors, marking a rather substantial leap from the previous M2-series. The processors have undergone a rigorous upgrade and gained both general-purpose cores and graphics clusters, as shown in the table.

The iMac is also reportedly slated for an update, marking its first in over 900 days. While the external design is expected to retain its current aesthetics, the internals will see a revamp. The new models are predicted to feature Apple's M3 chip, coupled with improved GPU configurations and a transition to USB-C connectors, signifying a modernization of the iMac’s architecture.

Notably, according to the Bloomberg report, the event holds additional significance as it aligns with the recovery of the personal computing market from the post-pandemic-induced slump. 

Apple's unveiling is also timed to capitalize on the holiday season, a critical period for boosting sales. The company aims to leverage its new offerings to boost sales after declining sales in previous quarters. The refreshed Mac lineup could play a crucial role in driving a resurgence in Apple's Mac revenue streams, supporting its generally high financial performance driven by iPhones.

In addition to the seemingly imminent unveilings, Apple is reported to have a pipeline of future releases, including new MacBook Airs and updated iPads. However, these products are earmarked for launch in subsequent events, extending into 2024 and beyond, indicating a sustained strategy of innovation and product enhancement in Apple's roadmap, according to Bloomberg.

Apple is hosting an online event on the evening of October 30, at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET. The company has sent out email invites to media and analysts on the heels of widely varying rumors about the Mac.

Many of the most recent rumors regarding Apple's computers are in two product lines: the iMac and the MacBook Pro. In his latest newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman pointed out that both are seeing stock shortages, suggesting something new could be coming.

A new iMac would be a long time coming. The colorful 24-inch all-in-ones launched with M1 in 2021 and never saw a refresh. The MacBook Pro would be a bit more surprising, as those have all been updated with the latest M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max processors this year. Apple was rumored to eventually make a larger iMac Pro, but that hasn't yet come to pass.

It's possible that Apple will use the event to launch M3 and a new lineup of Macs. While the 15-inch MacBook Air launched this year with M2, that chip launched in the summer of 2022.

Recent Mac rumors have seen two high-profile Apple-whisperers debate. Gurman predicted updates to the Mac, while analyst Ming-Chi Kuo was more cautious, suggesting that, at the very least, no MacBooks would come out by the end of the year.

While Apple updated its iPhones and AirPods with USB-C, there have also been no iPad updates this year. There have been fewer rumors recently in that area, though, so all eyes will be on the Mac.

The pre-Halloween event comes just before Apple's next earnings call, which is on November 2. One thing we can say for some certainty is that the Cupertino company could use a boost to its Mac sales, after recent reports (also from Ming-Chi Kuo) suggest that sales of Apple's laptops and desktops are down 30%.

According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's Mac shipments hit a speed bump during 2023, despite the launch of a larger MacBook Air earlier this year. The 15-inch MacBook Air was seen as a much-needed entry into the popular 15-inch class of notebooks. However, shipments reportedly sputtered after a sales burst during the back-to-school period (shipment estimates have been revised downward by 20 percent for the year).

According to Kuo in a post on Medium, total MacBook sales for 2023 are expected to drop by 30 percent compared to 2022 to 17 million units. Even though we are fast approaching the holiday shopping season, Kuo doesn't expect a significant uptick in shipments for the remainder of 2023 since Apple won't deliver any MacBook hardware refreshes until early 2024, in a best-case scenario.

So, what's causing the shipment decline for MacBooks? Kuo says several factors are coming into play, including a steady decline in work-from-home (WFH) demand. PC demand was artificially inflated due to WFH during the COVID-19 crisis, and now shipments are settling back into a more normalized pattern. It's also surmised that Mini-LED, as seen in the MacBook Pro family, is no longer a big draw for customers. In addition, the luster of Apple Silicon has worn off for customers who've already upgraded from Intel-based MacBooks, as we've seen minor speed bumps going from the initial M1 to M2 generation of CPUs.

Apple could see upward momentum in 2024 when its next MacBook refresh is expected. Apple will launch new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs with next-generation M3 CPUs built on TSMC's 3nm N3 process. New 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops with M3 Pro and M3 Max CPUs are also on deck.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that the new MacBook Pros will launch "early next year" but hasn't described what new features Apple plans to add other than faster RAM. We could also imagine brighter Mini-LED displays and perhaps we could see faster SSDs, though Gen5 models aren't like to appear in laptops any time soon given their current power requirements.

In 2020, as Apple introduced the M1 system on a chip, the company said it would switch away from Intel over two years. Here in 2023, it took a bit longer than Apple forecasted, but with the new Mac Pro with M2 Ultra, Apple has every single one of its computers on its own SoCs. I'm not sure I've ever seen the company this confident about the Mac.

The Mac Pro is an odd duck. Of Apple's computers, it's far from the most popular among consumers, but it's extremely important to creatives who need lots of power and are willing to spend the money for it. As the most powerful, flexible system in Apple's stack, it sets a tone for the rest of the line. Without Intel, it feels as if Apple can now act without restraint.

At WWDC in Cupertino, Apple has the Mac Pro out in its hands-on area with no cooler. That's right — Apple had a chip shot ready for anyone with a camera. M2 Ultra, its most powerful chip ever, was getting a bit of a flex. (Let us not forget, the more attainable Mac Studio also has M2 Ultra. There are two shapes in which to get Apple's most powerful processor).

The lineup is now as follows:

M1 Macs

• 13-inch MacBook Air (entry level)
• iMac (24-inch)

M2 Macs

• Mac Mini (M2, M2 Pro)
• 13-inch MacBook Air
• 15-inch MacBook Air
• 13-inch MacBook Pro
• 14-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, M2 Max)
• 16-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Max)
• Mac Pro (M2 Max, M2 Ultra)

Intel Macs

• Nothing to see here!

When will Apple upgrade the M1 models? Whenever it damn well pleases. That's kind of the point. Apple now controls not just the system, but the chip. Apple may sell systems, but it builds chips to power them. The two are intertwined, whether it's a laptop or a desktop.

And that's before considering the other places the M-series chips have popped up, including the iPad Air with M1 and iPad Pro with M2. Apple's Vision Pro will be powered by an M2 chip in combination with its new R1.

But we're on the Mac. Apple could update any of these systems whenever it wants. It can also hold one on an older process node as long as it needs, whether because that's what it thinks its customers want, or because that's what the supply chain allows. It makes that decision for itself.

Everyone I spoke to at Apple seemed thrilled to be over the hump. But now, it has to truly beat Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and others at the game. And if those companies outdo Apple, it has no one else to point the finger at.

Apple is trying its best here. The company can claim that you can game on its machines. I've tried it. Resident Evil Village runs great. Stray and No Man's Sky are here. Hideo Kojima showed up in the WWDC livestream to announce that Death Stranding: Director's Cut is coming to Mac. Apple is doing some heavy lifting to get games on its platform.

And Apple is also interweaving the Mac with the iPhone and iPad more than ever before with macOS Sonoma. Sure, I had widgets when I had a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard, but sharing between these devices is an acknowledgment that the Mac is an integral part of workflows that also include iPhones. And that's a level of interoperability other ecosystems can't match, though I appreciate Intel and Microsoft trying to get iPhone support in, they can't match Apple on making your phone and PC workspaces that are tied together.

Heck, using the Mac is a showcase feature of the Vision Pro. Want the most power? Use your Mac on an AR/VR headset. Who said the traditional computer is going away?

And with the Mac Pro, we see Apple can still be flexible, allowing for PCIe Gen 4 cards for I/O, storage, audio and more, even if graphics are no longer supported.

WWDC, as a developer conference, pushed hard on the Macs for Pros, like the Studio and the Pro, the company's two most expensive and most powerful machines. But the 15-inch MacBook Air is a version of Apple's best-selling notebooks. In fact, it's an addition to the MacBook line, which has way more sizes and models than Apple has offered in recent memory.

Some Apple fans may be upset to see that the 24-inch iMac is still on M1, or that a 27-inch model never came back. I feel that. But that's also the type of decision that Apple has more power to make now, more than ever. Short of fabbing its own chips, Apple has all of the power of what goes into a system, and when. And that means it can design a system around any chip in its arsenal.

For many years, I wondered if the Mac was a second thought, sitting in line behind the iPhone and the iPad. From WWDC, it's extensively clear that's not the case. With Apple using its own silicon across platforms, with interoperability on the hardware and software level, the Mac feels like a key player at Apple again.

The MacBook Air is getting bigger. At its 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced a 15-inch model, which is the largest screen ever on one of the most popular laptop lines. It will start at $1,299 for consumers, or $1,199 for education customers. It will be available next week.

Apple is powering the new model with its M2 chip (8-core CPU, 10-core GPU), the same one found in the 13-inch MacBook Air released last year.

But the new model's 15.3-inch screen, besides being larger than the 13.6-inch screen on the existing laptop, still uses LCD technology (it's rated at 500 nits). It has a lower resolution than the 14-inch MacBook Pro, at 2880 x 1864. Much of the design is similar to the 13-inch Air, including its two Thunderbolt 4 ports over USB Type-C, MagSafe 3 magnetic charging, and flat edges. If you want more ports, you'll have to consider the MacBook Pro.

The 15-inch Air also gets the same 1080p webcam in a notch at the top of the display. It's 3.3 pounds, 11.5 mm thick and will come in midnight, starlight, silver and space gray, just like the 13-incher. It also has six speakers, and Apple is promising 18 hours of battery life from the 11.5mm-thick laptop.

In my brief hands-on time with the new MacBook Air, it felt very similar to the 13-inch one. It was too loud to test the speakers, but indeed, the screen is bigger. The port placement is the same, the keyboard is the same, but the chassis is bigger. If you like a big screen but want something thinner. The screen appeared of similar quality to the 13-inch model, but we'll have to see in longer-term testing how that plays out.

Apple claims the new Air twice as fast as Windows 15-inchers, though that's not a very specific comparison.

The new 15-inch MacBook Air will ship with macOS Ventura, but it will be compatible with macOS Sonoma, coming this fall.

At one point, Apple had a smaller MacBook Air, with an 11.6-inch version that was introduced in 2010 and sold through 2016. With the 15-inch Air, Apple now has MacBooks in 13, 14, 15, and 16-inch sizes (13 and 15-inch Airs, and 13, 14 and 16-inch Pros).

The 13-inch MacBook Air is taking a price cut to $1,099, while the M1 option is staying at $999.

Updated: June 5, 4:13 PT with hands-on thoughts.