Build Daily
Tinley Park · August 23, 2026M5 MacBook Air Against Every Generation for Dev Work
This video compares the single-core performance of M5, M4, M3, M2, and M1 MacBook Airs by running a C++ quicksort operation on 10 million integers.
The outline
Tap a timestamp to jump there in the video.
Benchmark Introduction
The video introduces the single-core C++ quicksort benchmark for sorting 10 million integers across multiple MacBook Air generations.
M2 Performance Anomaly
The M2 unexpectedly performs slightly worse than the M1 in this specific quicksort test.
M3 to M5 Results
The M3, M4, and M5 show progressively faster completion times, with the M5 achieving the best result of 2 minutes and 19 seconds.
A C++ quicksort benchmark across five generations of MacBook Air shows that newer chips do not always mean faster local builds for a solo developer. The M2 even trails the M1 in this single-core test, while M3 and M4 improve meaningfully. For someone shipping alone, choosing hardware based on real compile and run behavior matters more than assuming each generation is an automatic upgrade.