Things the MacBook Air 13 M5/2026 has going for it over this:+ Much better screen:
-> Sharper text/no matte oil coating effect (look at the subpixel array picture in this review..looks kinda nasty)
-> More lively/popping colors due to no oil coating
-> Better screen ratio
-> Brighter at 500 nits
-> higher resolution
-> Display can show more colors / covers Display P3 colorspace standard
(only the OLED on the ThinkPad is better, but it's even more expensive and it has its own disadvantages)
+ Better speakers: 4 speakers on the Air 13 and 6 speakers on the Air 15.
+ Weights less at 1.2 kg.
+ Much cheaper at $ 1099.
+ Higher memory bandwidth:
this: 108.8 GB/s = 128-bit * 6800 MT/s / 1000 / 8.
MB Air: 153.6 GB/s = 128-bit * 9600 MT/s / 1000 / 8.
(-> the Air is 41% faster)
+ Faster iGPU: 3dmark.com/search - Steel Nomad:
this: 622 Points (from notebookcheck.net/-.1193658.0.html).
MB Air: Average score: 1065.
(-> the Air is 71% faster)
+ Same quality keyboard: Lenovo reduced the key travel, so now their so called famous keyboard doesn't stand out anymore.
+ No fan that can clog up.
+ Slimmer case.
+ The Air looks arguably better.
Things the MacBook Air 15 (15.3 inch) M5/2026 has going for it over this:+ Still cheaper at $ 1299 (you can get it 150 bucks cheaper still, new).
+ Bigger screen while weighting not more than this 14 inch one.
Things the ThinkPad has going for it:+ Reparability (mostly theory, you are not going to do any repair yourself, the stats on this are known), but you can get Air with AppleCare and it's still cheaper.
+ It is less likely to break from a fall (tho there are many reddit posts where a ThinkPad broke from a fall (and where it didn't, sure)), but you can get Air with AppleCare and it's still cheaper.
+ The RAM is upgradable to 64 GB vs only up to 32 GB on the Air, which are not enough for agentic workflows based on Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-UD-Q4_K_M:
Quote from: reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1sq94qx/is_anyone_getting_real_coding_work_done_with.. I've come to the conclusion that (1) 32768 is the biggest context I can get away with in an adequately smart model, and (2) it just ain't enough.
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