MacBook Air M5 vs MacBook Air M4 — both are on sale right now, but which is the better buy?

The Amazon Spring Sale has yielded some great discounts on Apple MacBooks this week, including the first-ever discount on the brand-new M5 iteration — a model that’s barely a few weeks old as of writing.

Right now, you can get the baseline 16GB configuration for $1,049 (was $1,099) at the retailer thanks to a small but welcome $50 discount. That’s not much, but it’s quite impressive considering these machines have just left the factory.

MacBook Air on sale at Amazon

Which is the better buy right now?

• The latest chipset brings incremental gains
• More RAM is very handy for demanding applications

In terms of design, there are functionally no differences between the two models. Both feature the super-thin, lightweight, and premium aluminum chassis that Apple has utilized for a few generations now. Both are even available in the same colors, which shows you how iterative this year’s upgrade actually is.

The two MacBooks also feature the same display: a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina panel with 2,560 x 1,664 resolution and 500 nits of brightness. It’s not an OLED display, but it’s still fantastic for everyday use and creative work.

Where the two models differ significantly is essentially the chipset, with the newer model featuring the latest M5 processor. According to Apple, the MacBook Air M5’s unified memory is 28 per cent faster than the M4’s, and the AI performance is 4x faster. In real-world use, you should see a bump in performance with tasks like video rendering and increased write speeds with the newer model.

With that said, today’s price cut on the older M4 model at Amazon is for a configuration with 24GB of RAM — a significant upgrade versus the baseline 16GB variant. That’s going to give you smoother everyday performance if you use your machine for massive spreadsheets, professional coding, or running a large number of browser tabs.

If you don’t need that extra RAM, however, then the M5 model is an obvious pick today. You’ll get super-snappy performance for everyday tasks that don’t require massive heaps of RAM, as well as a healthy $100 saving overall.

For a full deep dive into these models, check out our Apple MacBook Air 13 (M4) review and Apple MacBook Air 13 (M5) review pages.

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Alex is TechRadar’s retail editor, specializing in buying advice and general tips on how to save our readers as much cash as possible. He’s covered major retail events in some capacity for over seven years now; both in editorial and other ecommerce adjacent roles on TechRadar, T3, GamesRadar, and other Future PLC sites. Alex’s expertise touches on most areas, but he has a particular love for phones, laptops, and cameras, being an avid photographer.