M5 MacBook Air vs M4: Benchmarks Reveal 14% Multi-Core Performance Boost

Apple’s latest M5 MacBook Air is showing notable performance gains over its predecessor, according to newly surfaced Geekbench scores.

The base M5 model, equipped with 16GB of RAM, achieved a single-core score of 4190 and a multi-core score of 17073. In comparison, the M4 MacBook Air with the same RAM configuration scored 3832 in single-core and 15034 in multi-core testing.

While both chips feature the same core count, the M5 sees a slight bump in clock speed, running at 4.46GHz compared to the M4’s 4.41GHz. A more significant technical change is the increase in L2 cache, which has jumped to 6MB on the M5 from 4MB on the M4.

These hardware tweaks translate into better real-world efficiency. Tech reporter Lance Ulanoff shared data showing that the M5 handles file compression at 502.6 MB/sec, while the M4 trails at 476 MB/sec (based on what we can see from the blurry photo).

The M5 is a slight upgrade as we can see a 9.3% jump in single-core scores and 13.6 in multi-core. The biggest upgrade is now double the base storage which starts at 512GB, but of course there was a price hike by $100 for this.

Beyond the internal specs, users will notice a design shift on the keyboard. Apple has moved away from text labels for several functional keys; the Delete, Return, Shift, Caps Lock, and Tab keys are now represented solely by symbols.

Apple’s new M5 MacBook Air launches next week on March 11, along with other new products including the ‘low cost’ MacBook Neo, iPhone 17e, M5 MacBook Pro, M4 iPad Air and new Studio Display XDR.