Apple M5 13‑inch MacBook Air shows slightly worse real‑world battery than M4, Notebookcheck/IT之家 report

Test results and immediate takeaway

IT Home (IT之家) reports that Notebookcheck’s review of Apple’s new 13‑inch MacBook Air with the M5 chip praised the machine’s performance and efficiency — the unit scored a 92% “excellent” rating — but found a small regression in battery life compared with last year’s M4 model. Why the step back? The short answer: Apple left the battery capacity unchanged at 53.8Wh while substantially boosting single‑ and multi‑core performance, so peak power draw increases even as efficiency per clock improves.

What the numbers mean in everyday use

Notebookcheck’s measurements show that at maximum screen brightness the M5 Air’s endurance is roughly on par with Apple’s two‑year‑old M3 13‑inch model and a touch behind the immediate predecessor. That difference is modest in normal office tasks, however — it has been reported that a single charge still comfortably covers more than one workday for typical users. Some Windows laptops do offer longer runtimes on paper, but few match the M5 Air’s overall balance of performance, design and software integration.

Context and implications

Apple’s decision to keep battery capacity stable isn’t surprising: the Air line is optimized for thinness and thermal limits rather than packing ever‑larger cells. For Western readers unfamiliar with China’s tech press, IT之家 is one of the country’s leading consumer tech sites, and its coverage highlights how incremental hardware trade‑offs are scrutinized globally. In a broader sense, small battery regressions matter more as manufacturers push for higher CPU/GPU performance — a trend shaped by global chip competition and tight supply chains — because consumers increasingly expect both speed and all‑day endurance.