Apple's UK store makes the MacBook Air vs Pro decision look simple. The 13-inch MacBook Air M5 is £1,299, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M6 is £1,999, and £700 feels like a lot of money for a few extra ports. But that comparison is stacked against the Pro, because the two base models are not the same laptop with a different badge.
The Pro starts with double the storage, and since October it also has the newer chip. Match the two properly and the gap shrinks to £400. Go the other way, buying the Air from a retailer in the Black Friday run-up, and it widens to £800. Which of those numbers applies to you is what decides which one you should buy.
MacBook Air vs Pro UK prices right now
These are the prices that matter this week. Apple's figures come from its UK store and launch announcements, and the retailer prices are from John Lewis, which I checked on 13 November 2026.
- MacBook Neo, A18 Pro, 8GB, 256GB: £699 at Apple
- MacBook Air 13-inch, M5, 16GB, 512GB: £1,299 at Apple, £1,199 at John Lewis
- MacBook Air 13-inch, M5 with 10-core GPU, 16GB, 1TB: £1,599 at Apple
- MacBook Air 15-inch, M5, 16GB, 512GB: £1,499 at Apple
- MacBook Pro 14-inch, M6, 16GB, 1TB: £1,999 at Apple and John Lewis, or £1,899 with education pricing
- MacBook Pro 14-inch, M5 (2025), 16GB, 1TB: £1,899 at John Lewis, down from £1,999
The 1TB Air price is from The Mac Index's UK price tracker, last updated on 22 October, and the Pro's UK and education prices are from Apple's M6 MacBook Pro announcement. The Neo has been £699 since Apple's June price rise, as Which? noted at the time.
Two things jump out. John Lewis is discounting the Air but not the brand-new M6 Pro, and it is clearing the outgoing M5 Pro at £100 off. Black Friday is two weeks away, so expect individual prices to move, but the shape of the gap is what I would plan around.
Why the real MacBook Air vs Pro gap is £400
The base MacBook Air comes with a 512GB SSD. The base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 comes with 1TB, which you can see in the retailer listings at the same £1,999 Apple charges. So the £700 headline gap is partly just paying for storage.
If you would have bumped your Air to 1TB anyway, and plenty of people should on a laptop they plan to keep for five years, Apple charges £1,599 for that 13-inch Air, which also gets the 10-core GPU. Against the £1,999 Pro, that leaves £400. By my arithmetic that is a 25% premium, not the 53.9% the headline prices suggest.
Memory is a wash. Both start at 16GB and both top out at 32GB, so for that £400 you are not buying more of the same thing. You are buying a newer chip, a fan, a much better screen, more ports and longer battery life.
The flip side is just as real. If 512GB is plenty and you buy the Air at John Lewis for £1,199, the Pro costs £800 more, or 66.7% on top by my maths. That is the point where most people should stop and ask whether they will actually use any of it.
What the extra money buys you on the MacBook Pro
A newer chip, and a fan to keep it running
This is the odd bit of Apple's autumn line-up. The cheapest MacBook Pro now runs the M6, with a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, while every MacBook Air is still on the M5 with a 10-core CPU and an 8-core or 10-core GPU. Apple claims the M6 has up to 30% faster graphics than the M5, and up to 1.3x faster Xcode builds and Blender renders than the M5 14-inch Pro.
The bigger difference over a long job is the fan. The Air has none, so under sustained load, like a 20-minute 4K export, it slows itself down to stay cool. The Pro just keeps going. For short bursts of work you will never notice, but for anything that runs for minutes at a time, you will.
The screen is in a different class
The Pro's 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR is a mini-LED panel with 1,000 nits sustained, 1,600 nits peak HDR and, according to Macworld's M6 MacBook Pro guide, ProMotion up to 120Hz. The Air's 13.6-inch screen is a perfectly good LCD rated at 500 nits on Apple's MacBook Air spec sheet, with no ProMotion.
Side by side, scrolling on the Pro is smoother and HDR video looks like a different screen entirely. If you edit photos, watch a lot of films on your laptop, or just stare at it for eight hours a day, this is the upgrade you feel most.
Ports you might actually use
The Air has two Thunderbolt 4 ports, MagSafe and a headphone jack. The Pro adds a third Thunderbolt port, HDMI and an SD card slot. If you shoot on a camera and offload cards, or plug into TVs and projectors at work, that removes a dongle from your bag.
If neither of those applies to you, this is the least important line on the list. Do not pay £400 for an HDMI port you will use twice a year.
Battery and speakers
Apple quotes up to 24 hours for the M6 Pro, against up to 18 hours of video streaming on the Air. Apple's test conditions are not identical, so I would read that as "the Pro lasts noticeably longer" rather than a precise six-hour lead. The Pro also has six speakers to the 13-inch Air's four, and you can hear the difference.
What the MacBook Air does better
Weight is the Air's trump card. The 13-inch Air is 1.23kg and the 14-inch Pro is 1.55kg, so the Pro is 320g heavier, about 26% by my maths. If it goes in a bag every day, you will feel that.
The Air is also silent all the time, because there is nothing to spin up. And it is cheaper, which still matters most. At £1,199 from a retailer it is a lot of laptop for the money, and for writing, browsing, email, spreadsheets and photo edits it does not feel slow.
The 15-inch MacBook Air is the one I would skip
Here is the comparison almost nobody makes. The 15-inch Air weighs 1.51kg, just 40g less than the 14-inch Pro, and costs £1,499 at Apple. That is £500 below the Pro, but you give up the newer chip, the fan, the XDR screen, the extra ports and half the storage, and you do not even get a lighter bag in return.
If you want the 15-inch Air for the bigger screen and your budget stops at £1,500, it is still a fair buy. But if the extra £500 is within reach and you do not need the extra inch, the 14-inch Pro is the better laptop at the same weight.
Where the MacBook Neo fits
Before you spend £1,199 on an Air, it is worth asking whether you need one. The MacBook Neo is £699, and I have spent proper time with it in my MacBook Neo review. If your laptop lives in a browser, a word processor and video calls, the Neo does the job for £500 less than the discounted Air.
Its limits are 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. Once you edit photos or video, keep a lot open at once, or want the machine to last five years, the Air's 16GB is worth paying for.
MacBook Air or MacBook Pro: which should you buy?
Buy the MacBook Air if 512GB is enough
Buy the Air if 512GB covers you, you carry the laptop everywhere, and your heaviest work is photo edits or the odd short video. Buy it from a retailer rather than Apple: John Lewis has the 13-inch at £1,199 today, and I went through the other retailer prices and the missing charger in my MacBook Air M5 UK buying guide.
Buy the MacBook Pro if you were going to upgrade the Air
Buy the Pro if you were going to pay for a 1TB Air anyway, you export video or build code for minutes at a time, or you spend your day looking at the screen and want the better one. At a £400 gap, the M6 Pro is the better buy, and it stays a chip generation ahead of the Air until the M6 Air arrives.
If the screen is the whole reason you are buying, the OLED MacBook Pro is £900 more again, and I have done the sums on whether the OLED MacBook Pro is worth £400 over mini-LED.
Wait if your current Mac is fine
Mark Gurman's reporting points to an M6 MacBook Air around March 2027 and an M7 MacBook Pro in spring 2027. Both are rumours rather than dates. Apple's June price rise was driven by memory costs, so I would not wait expecting either to be cheaper, only newer.
Budget for a charger either way
Neither laptop comes with a power adapter in the UK. The Air ships with a USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable and no plug, and Macworld confirms the M6 Pro's charger is an extra here too. A 30W USB-C adapter will charge the Air, while the Pro wants more to fast charge, and Apple pairs it with its 96W adapter. If you already own a decent USB-C charger, ignore this section.
MacBook Air vs Pro FAQ
Is the MacBook Pro worth it over the MacBook Air?
If you would buy a 1TB Air, yes. The gap is £400 for the newer M6 chip, a fan, a 120Hz mini-LED screen, HDMI and an SD slot. If 512GB is enough and you buy the Air at a retailer, the Pro costs £800 more and most people will not use the difference.
Does the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro come with a charger in the UK?
No. Both ship with a USB-C to MagSafe 3 cable but no power adapter in the UK. The Air needs at least a 30W USB-C charger, and the M6 Pro fast charges with Apple's 96W adapter.
Is the MacBook Pro heavier than the MacBook Air?
Yes. The 14-inch M6 Pro weighs 1.55kg against 1.23kg for the 13-inch Air, which is 320g more. The 15-inch Air is 1.51kg, only 40g lighter than the 14-inch Pro.
My take
For most people the answer is still the 13-inch MacBook Air, bought from a retailer at around £1,199 rather than £1,299 from Apple. It is light, silent and quick enough for almost everything a laptop gets asked to do.
But the moment you find yourself adding storage to the Air, stop and look at the Pro. A 1TB Air is £1,599, and £400 more gets you the M6, a fan, the far better screen and the ports. And I would not buy the 15-inch Air at all unless your budget stops at £1,499, because the 14-inch Pro weighs the same and is better at everything except price.
Source: Apple introduces the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, Apple Newsroom
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