I recently purchased an M5 MacBook Air. I was previously using a 2015 MacBook Pro that was running Linux Mint, which I called my Mintbook. The battery on the 11 year old laptop was pretty horrible but performance in Mint was pretty good for all the things I used it for, such as web browsing, Discord, and home lab stuff. That being said, I knew it was getting time to upgrade and Apple just announced the new M5 MacBook Airs so I decided to give them a serious look.
When the M1 iPad Pro came out, I thought I would be an iPad only person. I stopped doing web development as a hobby and no longer did much with media, so I didn’t think I needed laptop anymore. I was wrong. Not because the iPad wasn’t capable. No, for me it was more psychological. I’m of the generation that feels important tasks must be done on a “real” machine. If I needed to make a big purchase or do a lot of research on something, I went to my Mintbook, not my iPad. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get into the iPad as a computer lifestyle.
Now for the M5 Air. I have to say this is the best laptop I’ve ever owned. That’s not saying much considering I was coming from an 11 year old Intel machine, but I was honestly blown away at how fast this machine is. Waking from sleep is like magic. The login screen is up before I can fully lift the lid. I love the keyboard and touchpad. The display, while not as good as a modern MacBook Pro, is so much nicer than the display on the 11 year old MacBook Pro I came from. The battery is also incredible. I haven’t done any tests on it, but I can tell you in the couple of weeks I’ve had it, I’ve only had to charge it a few times.
I did upgrade the base RAM from 16 to 24 GB, not because I thought I’d need it now, but for future proofing the machine. As you can tell by me previously using an 11 year old machine, I don’t tend to upgrade my hardware that often as long as it continues to suit my needs. I’d rather have the extra RAM and not need it than regret not having it since it can’t be upgraded after the fact.