The M5 MacBook Professional gives a minor enhance over the M4

Identical to the M5 iPad Pro, there’s nothing new about Apple’s 14-inch M5 MacBook Professional from a design perspective.

It nonetheless options the identical considerably chunky design that features a full array of ports, together with a full-sized HDMI port, three Thunderbolt 4 ports (an improve to Thunderbolt 5 would have been welcome), an SDXC card slot, a MagSafe port, and, in fact, a 3.5mm headphone jack. Hate it or find it irresistible, it is an undeniably sensible design for a laptop computer, and a minimize above the sleek-looking however frustratingly port-free 13-inch MacBook Professional.

Sticking with this theme, not like the M5 iPad Professional, there aren’t that many notable modifications beneath the hood past the bounce to the M5 chip. Nonetheless, there are a couple of modifications, together with larger reminiscence bandwidth, quicker SSD efficiency, and a 4TB storage possibility (for anybody who would not thoughts paying Apple’s hefty storage tax).

Nevertheless, the primary draw is the bounce to the M5 chip, so let’s examine the way it compares to the M4 MacBook Pro.

Working System

macOS 26 Tahoe

CPU

M5 10-Core CPU

GPU

M5 10-Core GPU

RAM

16GB, 24GB, 32GB

Storage

512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB

Show (Dimension, Decision)

14-inch, 3024 x 1964 pixel decision

The M5 chip is a tiny bounce over even the M4

Should you’re utilizing an M1 or M2 MacBook Professional, it may be well worth the improve

The 14-inch M5 MacBook Professional configuration Apple despatched me to check is the 10-core CPU/10-core GPU, 16GB, 1TB SSD model with a nano-texture display (which prices an additional $150, however I believe it is value it). This M5 MacBook Professional spec setup is the middle-of-the-road $1,800 possibility. Whereas my expertise with the laptop computer over the previous few days has been extraordinarily clean, I ran a number of benchmarks, revealing how way more highly effective the M5 chip is compared to the M4. Take a look at the benchmarks beneath:

M5 MacBook Professional (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB RAM)

M4 MacBook Professional (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB RAM)

M3 Max MacBook Professional (14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 96GB RAM)

One among my key questions was how the M5 MacBook Professional’s benchmarks examine to the very beefy M3 Max MacBook Pro with 96GB RAM I’ve used for the previous few years as my day by day work laptop computer. Whereas the M5 beats the M3 Max in single-core, the latter chip nonetheless has it beat in multi-core and GPU efficiency.

In response to Apple, the M5’s CPU is “20 p.c quicker” than the M4, and that is backed up by my very own benchmarks assessments within the chart above, although my M3 Max MacBook Professional nonetheless beats out the M5 in multi-core and GPU efficiency by a large margin (that is to be anticipated given its 32 cores and ridiculous 96GB RAM). That stated, each the M4 and M5 14-inch MacBook Professional beat the M3 Max simply in single-core efficiency.

Whereas I did not do assessments myself, the bottom M3 hits 3,081 for single-core and 11,578 for multi-core on Geekbench 6 according to tests I found online, which suggests the brand new M5 is a considerable bump over Apple’s 2023 chip.

So what are the opposite upgrades?

There is not a lot

Past the chip improve, there are a couple of different new options on this refresh. First off, the M5 MacBook Professional options 153GB/s of unified reminiscence bandwidth, in comparison with final 12 months’s 120GB/s, marking a 30 p.c enchancment. This could make apps launch faster and in addition assist with on-device AI duties like massive language fashions (LLMs).

Together with extra reminiscence bandwidth, the M5 MacBook Professional additionally contains a 2x quicker SSD in comparison with the M4, and has elevated the utmost dimension of the M5 MacBook’s storage to 4TB.

So what does all this imply? Should you personal the M4 or a higher-end M3 Professional or M3 Max MacBook Professional, there is not sufficient of an influence enhance to justify an improve to the M5. The brand new 14-inch M5 MacBook Professional is aimed squarely at these nonetheless utilizing the M1, M2, and perhaps the bottom M3 14-inch MacBook Professional, or anybody nonetheless ready to maneuver over from a now-ancient Intel MacBook.