The M5 MacBook Professional presents a minor increase over the M4

Similar 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, after all, 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 adjustments below the hood past the bounce to the M5 chip. Nonetheless, there are a couple of adjustments, together with larger reminiscence bandwidth, sooner SSD efficiency, and a 4TB storage choice (for anybody who would not thoughts paying Apple’s hefty storage tax).

Nevertheless, the principle 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

For those who’re utilizing an M1 or M2 MacBook Professional, it is likely to be definitely 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 choice. Whereas my expertise with the laptop computer over the previous few days has been extraordinarily clean, I ran a number of benchmarks, revealing how rather 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 in every of my key questions was how the M5 MacBook Professional’s benchmarks evaluate to the very beefy M3 Max MacBook Pro with 96GB RAM I have been utilizing for the previous few years as my every day work laptop computer.

In accordance with Apple, the M5’s CPU is “20 p.c sooner” than the M4, and that is backed up by my very own benchmarks exams 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 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 exams myself, the bottom M3 hits 3,081 for single-core and 11,578 for multi-core on Geekbench 6, 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 yr’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 sooner 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? For those who personal the M4 or a higher-end M3 Professional or M3 Max MacBook Professional, there is not sufficient of an influence increase 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 possibly the bottom M3 14-inch MacBook Professional, or anybody nonetheless ready to maneuver over from a now historical Intel MacBook.