How to Get the M5 MacBook Air for Less Than at the Apple Store, Even After Its Recent Price Hike

This article features deals sourced directly by Gizmodo and produced independently of the editorial team. We may earn a commission when you buy through links on the site. September is close enough that back-to-school is a reality, and so is this deal: The 2026 MacBook Air 13 with Apple’s M5 chip, 16GB of unified memory, and a 1TB SSD is down to $1,499 at Amazon, a $100 reduction from its $1,599 list price. The 1TB configuration is the one to buy if you’re heading into four years of creative coursework, app installations, and local storage of large files. The Starlight and Sky Blue finishes at this price manage to look professional without being boring. The M5 chip is the star of this show. Apple’s Neural Engine and a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerators give the Air a hardware foundation for on-device AI workloads, which is where Apple Intelligence actually runs. It isn’t a cloud feature streaming results from a server; it runs locally, so tasks like rewriting prompts, summarizing notes, and handling Siri requests happen without an internet connection and without those queries going anywhere Apple can see. That’s a big difference from AI features on devices that outsource t