Apple MacBook Air 15 (M5)
Apple M5 · AI Productivity PC
The Apple MacBook Air 15 (M5) is Apple's laptop built on the Apple M5, and it gives a local model about 12GB of usable AI memory at 153 GB/s. The 16GB / 512GB configuration is $1,299 at Amazon, verified 5h ago. It scores 14.6 overall on the AIPC Score.
Price and memory shown are for the 16GB / 512GB configuration.
AIPC Score: 14.6
- AI memory9.7
- AI compute3.3
- Memory bandwidth8.5
- Model compatibility24.1
- GPU capability3.3
- NPU capability38
- Software support80
- Power efficiency0
- Expandability15
- Price/value11.5
Specifications
- AI Memory
- 12GB
- CPU
- Apple M5
- GPU
- Apple M5 10-core GPU
- NPU
- Neural Engine (38 TOPS)
- Memory bandwidth
- 153 GB/s
- Storage
- 512GB
- Configuration
- 16GB / 512GB
- Type
- Laptop
How we calculate AI memory: About 75% of unified memory, the macOS default wired limit. Raisable with iogpu.wired_limit_mb. Source →
Configurations
| Configuration | AI Memory | Memory bandwidth | Price | Retailer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16GB / 512GB | 12GB | 153 GB/s | $1,299 | Amazon |
| 24GB / 1TB | 18GB | 153 GB/s | $1,799 | Amazon |
| 32GB / 512GB | 24GB | 153 GB/s | $1,899 | Amazon (third-party seller) |
What can this PC run?
| Model | Quantization | Fits | Mode | State | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-7B | Q8 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B | Q4 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Gemma 3 4B IT | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Gemma 3 4B IT | Q8 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Gemma 3 12B IT | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Llama 3.2 3B Instruct | Q8 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | Q8 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Phi-4 | Q4 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Qwen3-4B | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Qwen3-4B | Q8 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Qwen3-8B | Q4 | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Qwen3-8B | Q8 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Qwen3-14B | Q4 | Limited | Offload required | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Whisper large-v3 | Published | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
| Stable Diffusion XL Base 1.0 | Published | Yes | Full memory | Calculated | Performance not yet benchmarked |
Does not fit (48)
- DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-14B Q8: needs 20.3GB
- DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B Q4: needs 25GB
- DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B Q8: needs 42.3GB
- DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B Q4: needs 51.5GB
- DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B Q8: needs 88.8GB
- DeepSeek-R1 Q4: needs 469.8GB
- DeepSeek-R1 Q8: needs 821.9GB
- DeepSeek-V3 Q4: needs 469.8GB
- DeepSeek-V3 Q8: needs 821.9GB
- GLM-5.2 Q4: needs 527GB
- GLM-5.2 Q8: needs 922.1GB
- Gemma 3 12B IT Q8: needs 16.7GB
- Gemma 3 27B IT Q4: needs 20.8GB
- Gemma 3 27B IT Q8: needs 35GB
- Kimi-K2-Instruct Q4: needs 699.2GB
- Kimi-K2-Instruct Q8: needs 1223.9GB
- Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Q4: needs 50.8GB
- Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Q8: needs 87.5GB
- Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Q4: needs 50.8GB
- Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Q8: needs 87.5GB
- Llama 4 Scout 17B-16E Instruct Q4: needs 78GB
- Llama 4 Scout 17B-16E Instruct Q8: needs 135.2GB
- Llama 4 Maverick 17B-128E Instruct Q4: needs 280.9GB
- Llama 4 Maverick 17B-128E Instruct Q8: needs 490.7GB
- Mistral Small 3 (Mistral-Small-24B-Instruct-2501) Q4: needs 18.7GB
- Mistral Small 3 (Mistral-Small-24B-Instruct-2501) Q8: needs 31.3GB
- Devstral Small 1.1 (Devstral-Small-2507) Q4: needs 18.7GB
- Devstral Small 1.1 (Devstral-Small-2507) Q8: needs 31.3GB
- Mistral Medium 3.5 128B Q4: needs 91.2GB
- Mistral Medium 3.5 128B Q8: needs 158.4GB
- Phi-4 Q8: needs 19.1GB
- Qwen3-14B Q8: needs 20.1GB
- Qwen3-30B-A3B Q4: needs 23.3GB
- Qwen3-30B-A3B Q8: needs 39.3GB
- Qwen3-32B Q4: needs 24.9GB
- Qwen3-32B Q8: needs 42.1GB
- Qwen3-235B-A22B Q4: needs 165.8GB
- Qwen3-235B-A22B Q8: needs 289.1GB
- gpt-oss-20b Q4: needs 16.6GB
- gpt-oss-20b Q8: needs 27.7GB
- gpt-oss-120b Q4: needs 83.6GB
- gpt-oss-120b Q8: needs 145GB
- FLUX.1 schnell Published: needs 27.4GB
- FLUX.1 dev Published: needs 27.4GB
- Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large Published: needs 19GB
- HunyuanVideo Published: needs 60GB
- Wan2.1 T2V 14B Published: needs 65.7GB
- Wan2.2 T2V A14B Published: needs 80GB
Alternatives
- ASUS NUC 15 Pro
16GB · AI Score 15.9
$1,599
- Microsoft Surface Pro 11
16GB · AI Score 16.3
No verified price
- HP OmniBook X 14
16GB · AI Score 16.3
No verified price