The Next MacBook Air Might Have a Big Problem

There’s a reason you should be equal parts concerned and excited about next year’s MacBooks, judging by the single new 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5) of 2025. Apple’s latest M5 chip launched by itself without any more powerful Pro or Max brethren to lean on. The reason why the M5 is Apple’s lone soldier is becoming more obvious the more we dig into the new MacBook design. The M5 could be so powerful that the current Mac design isn’t built to handle it. That could prove an even bigger issue for Apple’s even thinner and lighter laptops.

We use Cinebench 2024 tests to simulate how well a system’s CPU performs in 3D tasks. This is measured in a single-core score—essentially how well the processor executes commands one at a time—versus multi-core, or how fast a CPU can perform with multiple simultaneous instructions. As tech YouTuber Vadim Yuryev relayed in a recent video, these tests show the M5 chip may be generating more heat than the fans can handle, leading to performance being throttled. You can see this in Cinebench 2024 tests, where the single-to-multi-core ratio was higher than it is on the M5. Yuryev also pointed to CPU clock speeds running at a lower frequency when under stress.

Bad news for the M5 MacBook Air..

The single fan on the new M5 MacBook Pro is NOT keeping up, leading to thermal throttling of the M5 chip in Cinebench 2024.

Single to Multi-core score ratio:
M4: 5.38x
M5: 5.07x

Apple, PLEASE give us 2 fans!

Link to full video below 👇 pic.twitter.com/lGmTSJjPRQ

— Vadim Yuryev (@VadimYuryev) October 23, 2025

For prospective 14-inch MacBook Pro buyers, the M5 chip outperformed the MacBook Pro with M4 by a more significant margin in our own GPU tests, where we saw how well the Mac performs in more-intensive graphics benchmarks. Apple is reportedly saving its M5 Pro and M5 Max chip variants for next year, and those MacBook Pros normally come with two fans instead of the singular fan on the base version. The bigger issue is whether the MacBook Air could be significantly hindered by the new chip design. MacBook Airs are famous for having no fan whatsoever.

What does this mean for the MacBook Air?

The MacBook Pro with M5 is significantly better in some GPU benchmarks than M4. © Apple

The MacBook Air relies on passive cooling techniques to spread out the hot air and then push it out through the exhaust vents. This keeps the notebook quiet and better sealed against dust and other grime. As much as Apple used to claim the MacBook Air isn’t built for sustained performance, we found the thin and light MacBook Air with M4 ran just slightly under par of the MacBook Pro with the same chip. The M4 chip didn’t have as much of a thermal throttling issue as the M5 does. Without a fan, the M5 chip could be seriously hampered without some kind of active cooling solution.

The current thin-and-light design has been around since the 2022 redesign for M2. Some of the more hardcore Mac users have gone so far as to craft thermal pad mods to better help dissipate heat. The M5 chip may be getting too big and powerful for current MacBook designs to handle the heat. We already had the chance to test the M5 chip inside an iPad Pro as well, and we found the performance difference between the version with M4 was minimal. Reports hint Apple might stick a vapor chamber in a next-gen iPad Pro slated for 2027. It’s the same thermal technology used in the iPhone 17 Pros to spread the heat evenly and away from the main processor.

Why wouldn’t Apple do the same with its MacBook Air? Likely because that would require yet another redesign of the system’s shell. Apple has been taking its sweet time between Mac generations, offering a truly novel laptop year after year. The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips may not arrive until next year, and even then, we may have to take a full trip around the sun before we get our hands on that supposed touchscreen OLED MacBook we’ve wanted for so, so long.

Apple doesn’t necessarily need to launch a new MacBook every goddamn year. We’d be perfectly fine sticking with our current MacBook Air with M4 chip and the current MacBook Pro slate until Apple has truly new designs built to handle the M5’s capabilities—or whatever is under the hood of the tech giant’s next chip.