In his video "The M5 MacBook Air Changed More Than It Looks", Alex Ziskind provides a detailed performance analysis and review of the M5 MacBook Air, comparing it across the generations from the M1 to the M5.
Key Performance Findings
Storage Speed: The M5 brings a massive improvement in SSD performance. Sequential and random write/read speeds have more than doubled compared to p
revious generations, and the base storage is now 512GB rather than 256GB [05:22], [05:36].
CPU Performance: While single-core gains are modest (5% over the M4) [06:26], the M5 excels in multi-core workloads. In a heavy C++ compilation task, the M5 was about 8% faster than the M4 [08:21], and in a Python-based test, it continued to lead the pack [15:01].
Local AI Capabilities: Th
is is the most significant leap. Thanks to new neural accelerators inside the GPU cores, prompt processing speed jumped to 1,061 tokens per second—roughly 3.7 times faster than the M4 and nearly 8 times faster than the M1 [18:25].
Memory Bandwidth: The M5 features a 26% increase in memory bandwidth over the M4, marking the largest generational leap since the M1 [15:40].
Thermals
: Under sustained, heavy multi-core loads, the M5 experiences some thermal throttling, similar to its predecessors. While it is the fastest, it also showed the largest variance in performance (6%) from the first to the fifth iteration of a stress test [14:02].
Hardware and Connectivity
Chassis and Ports: The physical design, including the keyboard, screen, and MagSafe port, rema
ins unchanged [02:39]. It still features two Thunderbolt 4 ports, though the M5 allows both external displays to run through a single port [04:33].
Wi-Fi 7: Although the M5 includes Wi-Fi 7, Ziskind notes that Apple limits the feature to 160 MHz channels instead of the full 320 MHz, resulting in speeds that don't fully leverage the new standard's potential [03:48].
Summary Recom
mendation
Ziskind concludes that while the M5 is an excellent machine that finally resolves many of the long-standing "cracks" in the MacBook Air lineup (like slow base storage and monitor limitations), the price increase to $1,299 makes it a more expensive proposition [19:42].
If you have an M4: The upgrade is likely not necessary unless you specifically require the massive boo
st in local AI processing speed [20:23].
If you have an M1, M2, or M3: The upgrade is worth considering if you are struggling with limited memory, storage, or external display support [20:35].
For more details on his testing methodology, the full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8_4G2Zs_z8
The M5 MacBook Air Changed More Than It Looks
Alex Ziskind · 205K
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