Lets try and spot the difference - MacBook Air M5

0:00 I'm really excited.

0:01 I finally get to take a look at the MacBook Neo,

0:03 which I have heard is not this time.

0:06 What?

0:06 Why?

0:07 Oh, Riley already look I guess I get to take a look at the MacBook Air instead,

0:11 which is still pretty exciting because it

0:12 is also featuring Apple's new M5 silicon.

0:15 And we're going to open it up and see

0:17 if it's worth the price increase over the Neo.

0:21 It's going to be tough to beat, but I'm still excited to take a look at this.

0:23 Right off the bat, classic Apple,

0:25 you get the device right away wrapped in some nice paper here.

0:29 Let's take it out.

0:31 Woo!

0:32 These look slick.

0:33 Look at how thin that bad boy is.

0:35 This is the starlight color, my favorite character on The Boys,

0:39 but maybe not my favorite color on the MacBook Air.

0:41 That's fine.

0:42 As for the rest of the box, we've got our USB-C to the MagSafe charger.

0:47 Oh, it's like what?

0:49 20 ft probably?

0:51 It's huge.

0:52 Oh, 2 m.

0:52 Okay.

0:53 I was I was hoping to convince everyone out there I'm 20 ft tall.

0:56 As for the rest, oh, there you go.

0:58 At least we're still getting a power plug here.

1:01 This is one of their new like dynamic chargers that goes between 60 W and 40 W,

1:05 so it'll go up to the 60 W to charge your device,

1:08 but if it ever detects it's kind of overheating,

1:09 it'll drop down a little bit to 40.

1:12 That way, ideally, it'll protect the charger

1:14 long-term by not overheating a bunch.

1:16 And other than that, that is all you get in the box.

1:19 Well, except for us cuz we got a special message from dbrand apparently.

1:24 They're going to make me put a sticker on this damn thing.

1:27 Oh, that's fun.

1:28 They actually sent over their brand new 1984 MacBook skins.

1:33 This one is the classic colorway,

1:35 which kind of has that old beige plasticky vibe

1:38 and is also a good match for the starlight MacBook.

1:42 I think it'll match on all sides.

1:43 Yeah, it'll look pretty good.

1:44 They apparently have over eight different colorways,

1:46 one for pretty much every type of modern MacBook color except sky blue.

1:50 If you own sky blue MacBook, dbrand hates you and you personally.

1:55 This is going to be easy.

1:56 First step, wipe down your device.

1:58 Look at that baby.

2:00 These 1984 skins are kind of the answer to the question,

2:03 what if Apple of 1984 made a MacBook of 2026?

2:08 They're available for 27 different MacBook models, new and old,

2:12 so odds are dbrand has one for your MacBook.

2:15 We're going to go for [music] it.

2:16 dbrand We're We're We're trying here, buddy.

2:21 Perfection.

2:22 This actually looks kind of sick.

2:23 I actually kind of like the look of it.

2:24 I mean, I have to.

2:25 [music] They sponsored the video.

2:28 [laughter] So, if you want your MacBook to remind you of the good old days,

2:31 you can head on over to shortlinus.com.

2:33 Might as well go around the exterior of the device.

2:36 On our right side, boom, headphone jack.

2:39 That's all you get on this side here.

2:41 On the front, nothing cuz it's a laptop.

2:44 [laughter] And on this side, you get two Thunderbolt 4

2:45 ports and of course your MagSafe charging clip there.

2:48 And on the back, there's no rear IO or anything, but that's it.

2:52 Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, baby.

2:54 Like I mentioned at the very beginning, this has Apple's M5 chip in it.

2:58 Now, it's a slightly cut down version from the MacBook

3:01 Pros that you would see, which makes sense.

3:03 In this case, it's a 10-core CPU with four

3:06 of them being their new super cores and six being efficiency.

3:10 It has eight cores on the GPU and 16 cores for the NPU.

3:13 Then that's where you're going to see like

3:14 the biggest difference between the base model Pro MacBook.

3:17 The GPU has more cores on the Pro.

3:18 And as for the RAM on this device,

3:20 you can get it in a couple of different configurations,

3:22 but a big one is the memory bandwidth has

3:25 been increased from 120 GB a second to 153.

3:29 What else has been increased is the base storage.

3:31 There's no 256 GB base storage for this anymore.

3:35 You have to go to 512.

3:37 Which does make the device a little bit

3:39 more expensive than last year's as the starting model,

3:43 but it is the same price as what the 512 was last time.

3:47 So, is it a price increase?

3:48 Uh it's kind of hard to say if it is or isn't.

3:51 Other than that, the rest of the exterior stuff is basically the same.

3:54 It weighs almost the exact same.

3:56 It's basically the same size.

3:57 We just need to open it up and take a look at guess what?

4:00 The exact same screen.

4:02 It feels so light.

4:06 [laughter] Like I said, exact same screen.

4:08 It's the same size, 2560 by 1664, at least on the 13-in.

4:12 On the 15-in, it's a little bit bigger.

4:14 Still a 60 Hz screen, you have to go to the Pro line if you want 120 Hz.

4:18 And still 500 nits brightness across the board.

4:20 And still that big freaking notch right at the top center there.

4:26 [laughter] But that houses the 1080p webcam in there,

4:27 which we'll take a look at in a second here.

4:29 One of the other internal specs that is different is

4:31 they upgraded from Wi-Fi 6E to Wi-Fi 7 in this device.

4:35 So, if your house has Wi-Fi 7, that's great.

4:37 You're going to be making the most of it.

4:38 On the spec sheet, there's a lot of things that are just very minorly different,

4:42 but other than that, it's a MacBook Air.

4:44 I do want to watch some content.

4:45 I want to listen to the speakers.

4:46 And we are actually going to game on this device, too.

4:48 What should You know what?

4:49 I pointed out the camera.

4:50 Let's start with the camera on this.

4:52 We'll take a photo first.

4:53 What does it count?

4:54 Oh, it's counting down.

4:55 ALL RIGHT.

4:56 [laughter] I THOUGHT IT TOOK THE PHOTO.

4:57 I DIDN'T REALIZE IT WAS counting down right away.

4:59 Oh god, that [laughter]

5:01 Yeah, you can tell I was not ready for that photo,

5:03 but for a 1080p webcam though on a laptop,

5:06 it is a lot better than a lot of other 1080p webcams I've looked at.

5:09 I mean, even that like Lenovo laptop that I

5:11 unboxed recently that was like What was it?

5:13 $3,000 or something?

5:15 I would say that that webcam was worse than this.

5:17 But I also took a video with that one.

5:19 So, let's take a video here.

5:20 Let's see if it's worse.

5:22 Hello.

5:22 This is what the the webcam looks like.

5:24 And this is also what the audio sounds like from this webcam.

5:26 How do How do I sound?

5:29 Do I sound great?

5:30 I hope so.

5:31 I don't know yet.

5:32 That sounds really good.

5:34 Yeah, the microphone on that sounds awesome, actually.

5:37 It's one of those things that sometimes when I go to review

5:39 the short circuits of like the other laptops, I'm like, "Oh,

5:42 I wonder how this mic sounds." And then I hit play and I'm like, "Ooh,

5:44 that sounds like garbage." This I feel

5:46 like you could comfortably take a call on.

5:48 You know, you had a business meeting with this, you're fine.

5:50 But I do also want to test the speakers properly.

5:54 And by properly, I mean our standard test of Crab Rave.

5:56 So, let's boot up Crab Rave here.

5:58 Oh man, I Sorry.

6:00 I hate MacBook keyboards.

6:02 Maybe it Maybe it's just again the fact that I'm not used to typing

6:05 on this, but I am the best person in the world to be typing on a MacBook Air.

6:13 I know a lot of people who will scream

6:15 from the mountaintops that they're the best laptop keyboards ever.

6:18 I don't prefer these types of scissor-style keyboards,

6:21 but that's always a personal choice.

6:25 What isn't a personal choice is audio.

6:27 Now, we're going to actually listen to audio.

6:33 [music] Ever since they bought Beats,

6:34 I swear to god every single MacBook device has so much bass in it.

6:39 Their AirPods, like their phones, it's They stole the Beats sound profile.

6:45 There's so much bass in it.

6:46 It's To be very clear,

6:47 I am impressed at how good the speakers sound in a device this thin.

6:52 It truly is amazing.

6:54 It's just the sound profile isn't to my liking.

6:57 And maybe you could go in and spend some

6:59 time configuring it and getting it exactly how you'd want.

7:01 That's fine.

7:02 But out of the box, it's not my type.

7:05 But we'll also do a 50% volume comparison.

7:08 I think that's always a fair choice as well.

7:09 So, we'll go 50% and we'll listen to the drop one more time.

7:15 Oh, that's a pleasant 50%.

7:18 I like that.

7:22 Oh, but it's so much The bass is so much more noticeable at 50%.

7:27 It's still very good speakers though.

7:28 They're very They're They're very good speakers.

7:30 But as you guys know, audio is half of the experience of video.

7:34 The other half is the the video.

7:37 So, [laughter] let's look at our RE test footage here.

7:42 It doesn't feel as bright as some other devices I've looked at.

7:46 I mean, 500 nits isn't the brightest thing

7:48 that we've looked at that they've claimed any devices,

7:50 whether it's been Lenovo or any other company, whatever.

7:52 But it doesn't I'm not getting that brightness

7:55 when I'm watching this YouTube video right now.

7:57 I will say the color range looks pretty good on this though.

8:01 That's what I think this device is targeting, right?

8:03 It's going to be targeting people who are

8:04 going to do like Photoshop and some Premiere editing.

8:08 Oh man, I just had I almost reached up and went to tap the X.

8:13 Apple, please, for the love of god, put a touchscreen on your MacBooks.

8:18 Maybe I'm in the minority here.

8:20 Make it an option to buy a touchscreen MacBook.

8:22 I love touchscreen laptops.

8:25 And so, immediately for me, I look at these and I'm like,

8:28 that's almost a deal breaker for me.

8:31 But I know that's a very personal choice as well.

8:33 Before I fire up a game here and do

8:35 some gaming like I mentioned I was going to do,

8:36 I'm going to go over some of our other labs' results

8:38 when it came down to benchmarking the M5 that's in here.

8:42 We compared it to the last year's M4,

8:44 and we compared it to the also MacBook Pro M5.

8:47 That way, we kind of had a good idea of where this lines up.

8:50 And when you compare it

8:51 to the Pro in single-threaded or single-core performance, it's almost identical,

8:56 which is what you would expect from basically the same chip.

8:59 It's the multi-threaded experience is where the Pro really outshines.

9:02 Another thing that might be contributing

9:04 to the performance delta between the MacBook Pro

9:06 M5 versus this M5 is the MacBook Pro M5 has a dedicated fan to it,

9:12 whereas this does not.

9:14 So, I'm in Cyberpunk right now.

9:15 There's actually a dedicated setting in Cyberpunk

9:17 for MacBooks that is just called for this Mac.

9:20 So, we're going to do that cuz I think

9:21 that'll probably give it the best chance at looking good.

9:25 But obviously, you could play around with it as you want.

9:28 So, let's continue our game here.

9:30 Ho ho baby.

9:32 I don't have my FPS counter on, and I

9:34 can tell that there's a lot of motion blur on.

9:36 And I can tell we're not quite hitting 60 FPS.

9:38 We're probably dropping just a little bit below that.

9:42 And our 1% lows are probably even lower.

9:44 But saying that, it's going to be a hot take.

9:47 I think if you were a console gamer, this is like perfectly acceptable.

9:51 I think if you're expecting like PC level performance out of this, I

9:54 think you could probably be a little bit upset at it.

9:56 But console gamers are used to motion blur.

9:58 Console gamers are kind of used to the 60 FPS target limit.

10:02 And I think if that's what you had to settle

10:03 for, this feels like a pretty decent gaming experience.

10:06 Even just walking around really quick,

10:08 I'm I know I'm obviously not doing anything like crazy.

10:11 Man, this trackpad as is a lot better than the other haptic trackpad I tried.

10:15 What was it?

10:15 I think it was the Lenovo Robo.

10:17 This trackpad is garbage.

10:20 This is a much better feeling trackpad.

10:22 Actually, since it has that for this max setting,

10:24 I'm going to quickly run a benchmark really quick and we'll see what we get.

10:28 And I think one thing that's important to point out is this is probably going

10:30 to be like the hardest you would push this type of device when gaming, right?

10:33 I think a more realistic gaming approach is going to be Balatro,

10:37 idle games, you know, maybe some other light titles.

10:41 I don't really expect the average gamer who's going to be

10:43 buying this is going to be wanting to play Cyberpunk.

10:47 Saying that, I just unlocked Vsync and it's basically still locked at 30 FPS.

10:51 So I think Vsync is like, "Hey man,

10:53 you're not going to get much higher than this anyway,

10:55 you might as well stay here." 35?

10:57 37?

10:58 38?

10:59 All righty, there we go.

11:00 Our final results.

11:01 Now, obviously our resolution here is a little bit lower than resolution

11:04 of the display because when you set it for that max setting,

11:07 it does add some dynamic resolution scaling.

11:10 But our average FPS was 33.

11:15 One of the final benchmarks that our labs team ran was doing Premiere Pro

11:18 and Photoshop again on the same devices and this fell right where you'd expect.

11:22 Better than last year's M4, but slightly worse than the MacBook Pro M5.

11:27 So again, it's it's right in its target range here.

11:29 As for our total battery life on this device,

11:31 we saw an improvement over the M4, which again, you would expect,

11:35 but I think what's impressive is the fact

11:36 that it was using the same battery size, that 53.8 watt-hour battery.

11:40 It goes to show some of maybe the efficiency

11:43 improvements that they've made or [music] maybe battery chemistry,

11:47 just batteries have gotten better over time.

11:49 Obviously, it falls behind the MacBook Pro M5,

11:51 but that's also got a bigger battery.

11:53 So I think again for being a year-over-year revision from the M3,

11:56 M4, M5, the fact that we're seeing slight improvements over time is great.

12:00 Cuz then I think if you're someone who did buy an M3 or an M4,

12:03 you don't feel like you're being too far left behind if that makes sense.

12:07 Like, "Oh man, last next year's is so much better than the one I bought.

12:10 I feel like I think one of Apple's almost biggest things that they've done

12:16 to shoot themselves in the foot was they made M1 and M2 like too good.

12:20 So I think that anybody who has still has one of those laptops, they're like,

12:24 "I still don't need to upgrade yet." The last thing before I shut it down,

12:27 you've obviously got your fingerprint scanner if you want,

12:28 but this is the part where I would normally open it up.

12:32 It does have screws.

12:35 Should we try?

12:36 Yes.

12:37 Let's try.

12:45 Ah, there we go.

12:47 That makes so much more sense.

12:48 Okay, so the clips that I was struggling with were actually not really clips.

12:53 You can see here that these four screws up at the top,

12:58 1 2 3 4, were kind of slotted into here.

13:02 So in order to remove it properly, I had to slide it down to get it removed.

13:07 But other than that, it was actually a pretty easy removal.

13:11 I just didn't necessarily know the right direction to pull it.

13:13 So do your research, kids.

13:16 I don't really know what I was expecting.

13:17 This is a LOT MORE BORING [laughter] THAN I THOUGHT it was going to be.

13:20 Can I like remove anything?

13:22 No.

13:22 Well, thanks for watching.

13:23 I hope you guys enjoyed it.

13:24 You know how sometimes I've opened laptops and I've gone, "Wow,

13:27 this looks freaking awesome." But it's

13:28 always because it's looked so like complex.

13:32 Dude!

13:33 I look at this and I'm like, "Wow,

13:35 this is sleek." [music] But it's because you can't see anything.

13:37 They've done a really good job at just making it look good.

13:40 You know what I mean?

13:40 Like look at look clean.

13:41 It's got an Apple aesthetic even on the inside.

13:44 I don't really have anything else to say

13:45 other than that cuz it doesn't look like

13:47 I can get much further without actually like

13:49 really starting to peel a bunch of stuff.

13:50 This is like the Epstein file laptop.

13:52 It's got all the redacted.

13:54 Just sorry, I I don't know if you should include that joke or not,

13:56 but But you know what though?

13:58 I think the iFixit kit had something kind of nailed, right?

14:01 A step in the right direction for repairability.

14:03 Maybe it's been a while since I've opened a MacBook,

14:05 but that was four screws and a sliding one direction.

14:09 [music] It was pretty easy to open up.

14:11 Obviously, going a little bit deeper is

14:13 going to require a little bit more knowledge,

14:15 a little bit more getting your hands dirty,

14:16 I should say, but it's so much better than what

14:19 they used to have in terms of opening a MacBook.

14:22 Now, I kind of glossed over the price at the beginning when I

14:24 said it was similar to the last year's also 512 GB of storage.

14:28 So the starting price for this configuration that we have here is $1,100.

14:32 It does go all the way up to $2,700 if you want

14:35 to add more storage and a little bit more CPU performance and stuff.

14:39 But $1,100 is a lot of money, you know?

14:44 But is it worth that extra money over what you can get with the Neo?

14:47 I think it really does depend.

14:49 I think if you're just a student who needs access to the internet,

14:52 you should get a Neo.

14:53 I don't think you should get this device.

14:54 I think if you're someone who needs a little

14:57 bit more performance than what the Neo offers,

15:00 I think the price increase could be worth it for you.

15:02 But if you guys enjoyed this video,

15:03 maybe go check out the MacBook Neo or maybe any other Windows laptop.

15:08 I'm sure the editor will put one on screen right now that you can go look at.

15:11 It's right there.

15:12 Or is it over there?

15:13 I don't actually know where it ends up.

15:15 So go take a look.