MacBook Air M5 gets a big price cut: This Amazon Summer Sale deal makes it even easier to recommend

MacBooks are the go-to laptops for most professionals and creatives these days, and for good reason. They support Final Cut Pro, which is now available as part of Apple Creator Studio at ₹399 a month. Then there is the overall form factor, especially with the Air models, which lets you get a lot done while still being portable and easy to carry around.

Shaurya Sharma is the Technology Editor at Hindustan Times Digital Streams, where he oversees technology coverage across digital and social platforms. With over eight years of experience across editorial, video production, and digital media, his work focuses on smartphones, AI, consumer gadgets, and shaping audience-first content strategies for modern tech consumers.

He began his career in 2018 as a fashion cinematographer before turning his lifelong passion for technology into a profession. From spending his childhood immersed in tech magazines, video games, and the latest gadgets to covering the global consumer tech industry today, technology has remained a constant throughout his journey.

Over the years, Shaurya has worked with some of India’s leading media organisations, including CNN-News18, Sportskeeda, and Guiding Tech, where he led video initiatives that combined strong editorial storytelling with engaging visual and social-first execution.

A graduate in Journalism and Mass Communication from Manipal University, Shaurya has reviewed hundreds of products across categories including smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, cameras, and wearables. Beyond work, he is passionate about animal welfare, environmental causes, and automobiles, particularly turbo-petrol cars

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This year, Apple introduced the M5 MacBook Air as an upgrade over the M4 model. However, it also came with a price hike. The laptop launched at ₹1,19,900, which was a higher entry price compared to last year’s M4 model. Yes, Apple did upgrade the storage to 512GB, but it still meant spending more upfront.

Now though, as part of the Amazon Great Summer Sale, the price has dropped to ₹1,04,990. You can bring this down further with an HDFC credit card discount of ₹7,000, taking the effective price to around ₹98,000, ₹97,990 to be precise.

So, let us tell you why this is a good laptop to buy during the Amazon sale, and if you still cannot stretch your budget that far, we will also suggest some alternatives depending on your use case.

Read on.

Yes, it can get warm if you are working outside or in a non-air-conditioned environment, and performance can dip slightly. But the thermal throttling is not significant enough to become a major concern.

So, if you create content for social media or work with professional-grade apps, this is a very good option. You do not necessarily need to splurge on the MacBook Pro unless you are dealing with extremely heavy workloads or a lot of layers. Even then, the Air can still manage if you are willing to tolerate the occasional slowdown here and there, nothing too significant.

Another area where the MacBook Air shines is the display quality. You get a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display, and it is undoubtedly one of the best panels in this price bracket.

It is colour accurate, bright enough for outdoor conditions, and excellent for photo and video editing. Then there are the additional MacBook advantages, including the Centre Stage camera, high-quality microphone array, powerful speakers, MagSafe charging, Thunderbolt 4 ports, and more.

Yes, Apple Intelligence is not the strongest AI suite around right now, but the good part is that you can simply ignore it if you do not want to use it.

Overall, the M5 MacBook Air offers very good value at under ₹1 lakh.

That is roughly ₹10,000 cheaper, making it a great option for people who may not care about getting the absolute best performance but still want a MacBook Air experience. The money saved can also go towards accessories like a mouse, keyboard, or even a budget monitor.

Again, this recommendation is for people who do not necessarily need the highest possible performance. The M4, by no means, feels slow compared to the M5 based on our testing. You can still comfortably edit videos, work on photos, and run creative apps without much trouble.

If you want maximum performance, go for the M5. Otherwise, the M4 remains an excellent choice.

Also, the display experience is largely similar to the M5, so you are not missing out on that front either.

So, who should buy the MacBook Neo?

If you do not have performance-heavy tasks to deal with and mainly want a machine for research work, typing, browsing the internet, streaming content, or basic office tasks, the MacBook Neo should do the job just fine.

Yes, I have personally seen people edit videos on it as well, especially for lighter use cases. But do not expect anything too intensive, since it uses the A18 Pro chipset, which is essentially an iPhone processor.

The laptop comes with 256GB SSD storage, and the most interesting part is that it still retains the usual Apple build quality. You get the same aluminium construction, excellent battery life, and lightweight portability in a 13-inch form factor.

With credit card offers, you can get it for around ₹57,990, which makes it a genuinely solid value-for-money option.

As for the models discussed in this article, including the MacBook Air M5, MacBook Air M4, and the newer MacBook lineup, these are devices I have personally used and experienced firsthand. I’ve edited videos on these systems, tested professional workflows, spoken to users who rely on these machines regularly, and evaluated how they perform in real-world conditions before making recommendations.

In particular, I used the MacBook Air M5 extensively across apps such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Creative Suite to assess its performance, thermal management, multitasking capabilities, and overall efficiency before arriving at the conclusions mentioned in this article.