M5 MacBook Air vs MacBook Pro M5 - The THERMAL Gap Is INSANE!

So then guys, the new MacBook Air M5, is it the right choice to pick as your new MacBook for 2026? Or maybe you should consider a MacBook Pro M5. Well, today we are going to compare the differences between both of these machines and we're also going to compare benchmarks too. And also I'll try my best not to have any double audio happening in this video this time round as well. But first of all, let's talk about then the differences between both of these machines that we have right here in its design looks. Now, the MacBook Pro M5, we've had this design of the MacBook Pro for a good number of years now. This is now the fifth year we've had this design and it's been a great design. The main standout features for it is that we've got the mini LED display, what is also a prootion display, what is really nice and gorgeous. Whereas the likes of the MacBook Air, well, this just has the standard liquid retina display. It's a display that we've had, you know, since about 2012. It hasn't changed that much the technology. It's still 60 Hz. It's still great, but obviously a miniLEDD display is far better on the MacBook Pro. We have also got some other differences, too. The MacBook Pro, for example, also gives you more ports. You get an extra Thunderbolt port. We get three of them in total, as the MacBook Air only gives you two. We've also got things like HDMI and SD card slot too. And also at the same time, the MacBook Air also has fan built inside of it to keep everything cool and the thermals are a little bit better here. And you will see this later on with benchmarking. Plus, also the MacBook Pro is also slightly thicker, so it actually accommodates a bigger battery up to the likes of 24 hours. Whereas the MacBook Air though, it is a thinner design for it. We also don't have a built-in fan. It's completely fanless. That's great for, you know, if you don't want any noise or anything like that, but at the same time as well though, it does have some good cooling abilities inside of it. The chip, the chip is very efficient as long as you don't push it out for too long. The other thing though with this is also it's only got up to an 18hour battery life. What's still for most people out there is more than enough for most tasks too. Generally speaking though, most other things are very similar. We've also got like very similar kind of keyboard, Touch ID, and also the trackpad. But I would also say the MacBook Pro though does have a better kind of speakers built into it compared to the MacBook Air. And have a listen to a sample right here. And I'm not sure if you could catch that, but The MacBook Pro definitely did sound more richer in its sound. And also, like I said, the display is definitely better on the MacBook Pro. If you just even have a look at this demo right here of it running the same video, it is looking far greater in its kind of quality in what you're getting on the actual display. But generally speaking though, the MacBook Air is still really good, especially it comes in far less money to actually buy it. But one other unusual thing to take note of here between both of these MacBooks is that the MacBook Air also does actually have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, whereas the MacBook Pro M5 still actually has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, the older technology. So yeah, one up there on the MacBook Air uh being the newer generation to actually get that whereas the MacBook Pro doesn't have that. So yeah, just be aware of that too. But moving on from this then we are going to do a comparison then of different bits and pieces. And one thing I want to point out right away is that obviously the MacBook Air that I have here is a 15in model whereas the MacBook Pro here is the 14in model. Now, why I wanted to actually point this out at this stage is because Apple haven't sent me a MacBook Air 13 in, only the 15 inch. But it does make this test a little bit fairer because both these models actually have 1 TBTE of storage built into them. They've also got 16 GB of RAM and they also share the exact same M5 chip. I'm talking about the 10 core CPU and also the 10 core GPU. This is not the bin down 8 core GPU that we're testing today in this 15-inch model. In fact, you can't even get that 8 core GPU in the 15-inch model. You can only get on the baseline version of the 13in model. So, just be aware of that too. But I think without further ado then guys, that's kind of an overview of what they actually look like. But let's have a look then at see what happens then when we do some actual testing. And first of all, let's check out storage speed then to see what differences we were getting here because you can see here on this testing I'm doing right here actually speeds were very close to each other. And let's take a closer look at this though. Well, first of all, let's start with the right speed. And you can see that we were getting around about 6,366 on right speeds on the MacBook Air. But the MacBook Pro was slightly out in front and that was giving us more like scores of 6,616 what is still very very good. But then for the read speeds the MacBook Air was giving us 6,187 whereas for the MacBook Pros we were actually getting read speeds of 6,342. So to be honest the MacBook Pro is slightly out in front here. So it's a little bit quicker in read and write kind of speeds here. Not by a lot though. So it is still very very close. Remember this is the one terabyte options that we got on both of these machines. So yeah the same configuration. So yeah that was quite interesting to see that we got that. Now the reason why you might be thinking why have I got a one terabyte here in the MacBook Air? Well the MacBook Pro now remember comes with 1 TB as standard and to keep this test as equal as possible. That's why I picked the same amount of storage there. But moving on from this, let's now look at the CPU. So, what I've done here is some benchmarking. I've done Geekbench and I've also done Cinei Bench. As you can see right here, I've run these on both these machines. And let's have a look then at single core and multi-core performance. And we can see straight away across the board here that literally the scores are identical. You know, I can go over them if you want. Then you can see we're getting like 4,200. We're getting 17,000s in the uh single core multi-core for both of the Air and the Pro. And then Cinebench, you can see we're getting, you know, 700 sort of score and then obviously about 4,300 in multi-core score here for Cinebench. Now, one thing I do want to point out, that is just one round of multicore. I didn't leave us on for a 10-minute test on Cinebench, so just be aware of that because we will be doing that later for throttling. But at this moment just doing one burst of power you can see that is what we are getting for the scores here. So literally neck and neck. But then after this I decided to do exactly the same for GPU. We ran a whole load of different GPU tests. So I did say the likes of Geekbench Metal. I've also done still Nomad Light as you can see right here. And then also I ran Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p at medium settings. And let's have a look at the results. And again, you can see that again, it's really neck and neck. Um, you know, the score here, Geekbench Metal, the MacBook Pro is slightly out in front. Not much in it. Still Nomad Light, funny enough. The MacBook Air was point of a frame second, two point frames second faster. And even Cyberpunk on its about 1 and a half minute benchmarking kind of test it does, you can see the MacBook Pro is ever so slightly out in front. We're talking nothing really here on GP benchmarks. But like I keep saying, this is kind of like a burst of power as it were. This is not playing gaming for like about an hour and seeing what the results are there. This is just the initial kind of benchmarks at this point. And like I said, we'll get on to throttling a little bit later on. But next of all, I want to do some AI tests because obviously we're living in a world now with more AI and more and more developers and people want to run AI bits and pieces on device. they don't want to always run it in the cloud. So, what is the M5 chip capable here in the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro? Well, again, I've done some tests. I've done Geekbench and I've also done the likes of running diffusion B to actually make me a picture of a beautiful English country size on a sunrise. And also, I've decided to use Llama 3.2 freeb and get the tokens per second on a 1,000word script. And let's look at the results. Well, we can see straight away again for the Geekbench AI CPU, GPU, and AI neuro engine running it on all three, we're literally neck and neck here. It's going to be no difference whatsoever. And even diffusion B as well, but obviously it's neck and neck. Obviously, the lower the score, the better in this case. Do remember that. So, obviously diffusion B, it made the picture point of a second faster. Not much in it. And even doing that llama 3.2 3B tokens per second. You can see on this one we actually want to get the highest score uh this time but the tokens are 57 or 57 and a half tokens per second. They are neck and neck in making a thousandword uh question oral query. But after this what about creator workflows? What happens if we did things like uh pictures? What we also did things like uh blender and also what if we did like final cut pro like you're seeing right here. What I decided to do is I might decide to do an eight minute export in ProRes and also in Hevac. And we've also done Blender Party Tug and also Pixel Mater exporting 10 raw photos. And let's have a look at the scores. So starting out with Blender and Party Tug. You can see that there is a no difference. I say I say there's a tiny difference. We got the Air to do it in 57 seconds. The Pro did it in 56.5. The same with Pixel Ma. This is more of a CPUbound kind of job doing that export. Yeah, it's about half a second difference really again doing those 10 pictures and then obviously the likes of ProRess export on an 8 minute video and then also with Heavk you can see we're talking neck and neck again almost there's hardly anything in it whatsoever. But next of all is where things are going to probably change quite a bit. Now, what we've generally been doing in these kind of tests so far have been doing burst tests. So, it's just basically a burst of power for a minute or two to see what happens. But the thing is though, if you decided to do a job that requires so much power for say 5 minutes plus or more, what starts to happen then with the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air? Do we get throttling happening with the MacBook Air? Well, I've decided to do a test for you. I'm going to check out the thermals first of all and then we're going to check to see if there's any throttling happening with the MacBook Air and also the MacBook Pro. So, what I've decided to do this time is run Cinebench multicore again for a 10minute test this time around. And what I've done is is I've taken the data from the sensors and also I taken the data from the likes of say a thermal camera 2. So, first of all, let's have a look at the sensor data. So here we have the temperatures then and this is running obviously like I said this is Cinebench this is the CPU multiple threads here and we can see the actual sort of temperatures that we are getting. So obviously yeah you can see around about on average the maximum we're getting is about 82 or so it says around here. So yeah, that is quite toasty. But obviously, you know, if I move over to the MacBook Air, let's have a look at what the temperatures are saying right here. Let's get that to realign. Can you see that we're getting things like 94 around about that on some of those sensors? So yeah, this does get a little bit more toastier in that kind of region. So yeah, this is quite interesting to actually see that obviously according to the sensors that we are getting around about a difference there that obviously yeah we're getting about 82 the fan is helping out there quite a bit whereas on here you know the kind of comparisons is in the 90 94 but obviously like I said I will you know change this into Fahrenheit on the actual graph that I'll be making. So yes we do have a difference there. So it is definitely getting more toasty here. The sensors are saying that for the MacBook Air than the MacBook Pro, but the MacBook Pro's found is woring quite fast. But what about thermal camera? What were the results here? What was it showing? So, now we're on the thermal camera and you can see the differences here. I think there's two things you got to be aware of. One is where you're going to be typing quite a lot of the time. That's where the white crosshair is. Notice that's about 40° C. But where the red crosshair is, that is where the heat is coming out. That's about 48° C. That's the bit obviously you won't be touching as much. The keyboard is, you know, the important thing is that is the exhaust blowing out the hot air. So that's coming up about 48° there. Whereas the white crosshair, you know, like I said, it's about 39 or so. 40 every so often. Yeah. So it's about 40. Let's go with 40 with that one. And then obviously about, you know, 47, about 48 for where the vent is. But then if I go over to the MacBook Air, there is no vent. It's just everything centralized in the keyboard. Look at that. We're talking about 48° again where that red crosshair where the white crosshair and everything. I'm trying to line it up. That's the hottest part. That's where you'll be typing. So, you would feel that in the keyboard. You would feel that difference. Obviously, we're talking like about 8° C more. You would feel that as you're typing along compared to the MacBook Air where the keyboard is. Obviously, it's much more cooler around here. So, yeah, that does make a difference. It does really really you will feel it that obviously we're talking about 7° difference between both of them right here. So yeah, the MacBook Air definitely is getting quite toasty around the keyboard area and obviously you know it is getting hot on the MacBook Pro but it's exhausting out and you know the keyboard area is not so hot and let's have a look at the results though in a chart. Well like I said you can see the difference right here. So the MacBook Air obviously that was much more hotter. We want to be the you know lower ones here. we want to be cooler. It was running at 94° or 94.7° or 202° F whereas the MacBook Pro was 82° or about 180° Fahrenheit height here. And that's on the sensor information. Whereas if we move over to the thermal camera, well, yeah, you can see the difference again. We can see that the MacBook Air was about 48° 118° F here. And then obviously the MacBook Pro around that keyboard area was 38° about, you know, 100° Fahrenheit here. So yeah, it's a little bit cooler in the middle. So we definitely know that the MacBook Pro is better at getting rid of that heat. Obviously, it's pulling it down by 10°, but obviously you might be thinking, well, that's only 10°. It's not a lot. What about the performance, though? What happened there, then? What happened after running that 10-minute result? What was the score difference? Well, there was quite a bit of difference. Have a look right here. We can see that the MacBook Air scored 3,460 whereas the MacBook Pro scored 4,312. The MacBook Pro basically scored identical to its sort of one burst speed that we had before earlier in the test. If you don't believe me, go back and have a look at that slide because obviously it was exactly the same pretty much. So, it managed to hold its own for 10 minutes with no problems there. Even though it was getting hot and toasty. But the MacBook Air, even though it was hotter, it had to throttle itself down. So, we were actually burning up hotter and yet we were not using as much power as it were because of it. So, yeah, the MacBook Air for long periods of time with heat is not doing too well. And I think that comes brings us to the conclusion here with the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. Obviously, I know a lot of you guys are going, "Well, that's it. Don't buy a MacBook Air. Buy a MacBook Pro because it it's going to throttle for me." But I don't think that's always the case. It all depends on what you're doing on this machine. If you are going to be doing Pro apps constantly, day in day out, and you're doing exports, you are pushing out that CPU and GPU to its limit all of the time, then yeah, you're going to throttle. It's going to warm up. And the point is, why did you buy a MacBook Air? Was it just because you wanted to save some money? there was no point. You might as well bought yourself say a used kind of MacBook Pro M3 or M4 because you'll probably get a kind of similar kind of performance even though you're not going to be throttling. That's what I'd be advising there. But personally, I'd be say save up. Get yourself a MacBook Pro instead for that scenario. Now, the other thing is is that you don't want to be the opposite way round, too. Let's say you bought yourself a MacBook Pro, but all you're doing is doing Word. You're doing some basic research. You've got, I don't know, 10 tabs open on Safari and a word open, emails open. You're chatting with chat GPT. No local kind of AI stuff going on. I'd be questioning why did you buy the MacBook Pro? I personally would have brought the MacBook Air if you're not really going to be using any kind of pro apps and pushing it out there. It's nice that obviously the MacBook Pro has a better battery, but you know, I think one of those other things to actually take note of there with the battery with the MacBook Pro is that obviously, you know, we do have the fan here built into this and if that fan is wearing all the time, battery life is going to go down quickly, whereas the likes of the MacBook Air doesn't have that. So, yeah, it is going to be a difference. And talk about battery life. After I ran all these tests, I wanted to check out what battery life was like. Now, one thing I'm going to say is when I started this test, both of these machines were 100% battery. And basically, both these machines are practically new right here. The MacBook Air has only got a battery counter of six on it, and the MacBook Pro has a battery counter of 10 on it. And let's have a look then at the differences of the remaining battery at the end. Well, we can see that the MacBook Air had 39% battery, whereas the MacBook Pro had 56% battery. But do remember the MacBook Air does have a smaller battery inside up to 18 hours Apple claim whereas the MacBook Pro obviously is up to 24 hours. But remember with the MacBook Pro you're going to have to pay more to have that bigger battery. And I think that's the point here. I think what Apple have done is they built a great M5 chip. It's definitely better than the M4. I've even compared this in a previous video, the M4 to the M5. But I think it depends on what type of user you are. Depends if you should buy yourself a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air. As I've explained when we were talking about say the throttling kind of issues that we were having and also the thermals. But on that note though guys, which MacBook would be right for your needs? Let me know in the comments below. And on that note as well guys, it's time to wrap up the video too. So if you have enjoyed watching it, please do press the like button. And as always, if you want to hear the latest Apple news, reviews, and comparisons, make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell, too. Until next time, guys, I will see you really soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

The MacBook Air M5 vs MacBook Pro M5 comparison reveals a huge cooling difference. In this video, I test thermal performance during benchmarks inGeekbench, Cinebench, and real-world creator tasks. The results show how cooling affects long-term performance and throttling. Watch this before buying to understand the real performance difference between the M5 Air and M5 Pro. Across Geekbench, Cinebench, AI workloads, Final Cut Pro, video editing, photo editing, and SSD read/write storage speed tests, lets see the diffrence Subscribe for more Apple leaks, MacBook comparisons, and Apple Silicon performance tests. 🎶GET NEW AIRPODS HERE (Amazon Links) --------------------------------------------------- AirPods Max USB-C: https://amzn.to/3YU5mAo AirPods Pro 2: https://amzn.to/3OmWAGf AirPods 4 ACN: https://amzn.to/3CD9Ow3 AirPods 4: https://amzn.to/490nYmZ 💻 GET THE NEW M4 Max, M4 Pro, M4 MACS HERE (Amazon Links) --------------------------------------------------- M4 14” MacBook Pro: https://amzn.to/3YYkFbn M4 Pro/Max 14" MacBook Pro: https://amzn.to/3YW64x0 M4 Pro/Max 16" MacBook Pro: https://amzn.to/3V2PSZy M3 13" MacBook Pro: https://amzn.to/40TX3qW M3 15" MacBook Air: https://amzn.to/4fW1LIS M2 13" MacBook Air https://amzn.to/410WjA9 M4/M4 Pro Mac Mini: https://amzn.to/3KviSDi M2 Max/Ultra Mac Studio: https://amzn.to/4eMU1rE M4 24" iMac; https://amzn.to/3Z9bkxA 📱GET THE NEW IPHONES HERE (Amazon Links) --------------------------------------------------- iPhone 16 Pro Max: https://amzn.to/3Z9bkxA iPhone 16 Pro: https://amzn.to/416R1Dc iPhone 16: https://amzn.to/3CACsO8 iPhone 16 Plus: https://amzn.to/4g2vj7B iPhone 15: https://amzn.to/3CHrFBQ iPhone 14: https://amzn.to/4fzqx1I 📱GET THE NEW IPADS HERE (Amazon Links) --------------------------------------------------- iPad Pro M4 13 (2024): https://amzn.to/3On12EY iPad Pro M4 11 (2024): https://amzn.to/4fzqx1I iPad Air M2 11”: https://amzn.to/4eLCdNN iPad Air M2 13”: https://amzn.to/4g3rGi5 iPad 10th Generation: https://amzn.to/4eHzrsW iPad 9th Generation: https://amzn.to/3zVbZqa iPad Mini: https://amzn.to/3V1mLG8 Design, Speakers, Screen & Features 0:00 Storage Read/Write Speeds 5:00 CPU - Geekbench, Cinebench 6:30 GPU - 3D Mark, CyberPunk 2077, Geekbench Metal 7:30 AI - DiffusionBee , Ollama LLM, Geekbench AI 8:34 Creator - Blender Party Tug, Hevc, ProRes & RAW Exports 9:52 Thermals & Cooling 10:52 Throttling Issues 15:36 Battery Life after Tests 18:24 Channel Site; http://www.youtube.com/c/MattDoesTech