As of Tuesday, Apple has refreshed its complete MacBook lineup with M5 silicon. And whereas the brand new machines deliver significant upgrades throughout the board, consumers ought to brace for greater costs than final yr.
Whether or not you’re eyeing the brand new MacBook Air or the pro-grade MacBook Professional, right here’s a breakdown of what to anticipate at each value level.
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What new M5 MacBooks will price you
Apple’s web site cites $1,600 because the entry level for an M5 MacBook Professional, however that’s not in reference to the fashions that simply got here out Tuesday. That’s the base M5 MacBook Professional that got here out in October 2025. The new fashions with unbelievably scorching M5 Professional and M5 Max chips deliver greater specs and better costs. And new M5 MacBook Air isn’t any slouch, both, but it surely’s clearly extra inexpensive.
MacBook Professional: from $1,600 to $7,349
Base mannequin
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The MacBook Professional with M5 begins at $1,699 for the bottom mannequin, a 14-inch machine with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. That’s already a $100 improve over final yr’s entry value. However when you begin configuring as much as the M5 Professional or M5 Max chips, prices climb shortly.
The M5 Professional and M5 Max variations now begin at $2,200 for the 14-inch and $2,700 for the 16-inch — each up $200 from their M4 Professional predecessors. On the very prime of the lineup, the totally loaded 16-inch MacBook Professional with M5 Max tops out at $7,349 (or $612.41/month). That configuration will get you a nano-texture anti-reflective show coating, the 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU M5 Max chip, an enormous 128GB of unified reminiscence and 8TB of SSD storage.
For context on the chip choices: the M5 Professional comes with a 15 or 18-core CPU and 16 or 20 GPU cores, whereas the M5 Max steps as much as an 18-core CPU alongside a selection of 32 or 40 GPU cores. Base RAM on the M5 Professional begins at 24GB or 48GB, and storage begins at 1TB throughout Professional and Max configurations — a rise from the 512GB that began the M4 Professional lineup.
MacBook Air: from $1,099
Picture: Apple
The M5 MacBook Air is the machine most consumers will think about, and its beginning value has nudged up $100 to $1,099 for the 13-inch mannequin and $1,299 for the 15-inch — matching a value level final seen on earlier Air generations.
That $100 bump does include a significant trade-off in your favor: base storage has doubled from 256GB to 512GB, and Apple says the brand new SSD delivers twice the learn/write efficiency of the earlier era. All configurations embody 16GB of RAM to start out, with choices to step as much as 24GB or 32GB. On the storage aspect, the M5 Air turns into the primary within the lineup to supply as much as 4TB — double the 2TB ceiling of the M4 mannequin.
The bottom 13-inch Air ships with a 10-core CPU and 8-core GPU. Upgrading any spec — extra RAM, extra storage — strikes you to the extra highly effective 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU configuration, which can also be customary throughout all 15-inch fashions. Each sizes help as much as two exterior shows by way of a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports.
New this yr is Apple’s N1 wi-fi chip, which brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to the Air for the primary time. Battery life stays rated at as much as 18 hours, and the design is unchanged from the slim aluminum chassis Apple has used since 2022. Colour choices — sky blue, midnight, starlight, and silver — are additionally carried over from final yr.
When can you purchase the 2026 fashions?
Pre-orders for each the M5 MacBook Air and M5 Professional/Max MacBook Professional open Wednesday (March 4), with in-store and on-line availability starting March 11.
David Snow, an professional on Apple {hardware} and software program, writes on quite a lot of technological and cultural matters for Cult of Mac. They embody Apple information, expertise shopping for guides, and options about laptop setups and Apple TV reveals and flicks.
With 30 years of expertise overlaying expertise and different topics, he has written and edited for quite a few print and on-line publications, together with CMP Media, TechTV.com, CNET, Wired Information, Purple Herring journal, Regulation.com, The Nationwide Regulation Journal and Regulation Expertise Information journal. Amongst different roles, he served as govt editor of the Regulation.com community of internet sites and editorial director, expertise, for ALM Media.
Snow graduated with a B.A. from Syracuse College with majors in journal journalism and psychology. Whereas there, he labored as a reporter for The Every day Orange newspaper and affiliate editor of Equal Time journal.
Founding father of the weblog On the Waterline, he may be reached on X (previously Twitter) by way of @atthewaterline and on Mastodon by way of @dsnow.
