The M5 MacBook Pro offers a minor boost over the M4

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

It still features the same somewhat chunky design that includes a full array of ports, including a full-sized HDMI port, three Thunderbolt 4 ports (an upgrade to Thunderbolt 5 would have been welcome), an SDXC card slot, a MagSafe port, and, of course, a 3.5mm headphone jack. Hate it or love it, it’s an undeniably practical design for a laptop, and a cut above the sleek-looking but frustratingly port-free 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Sticking with this theme, unlike the M5 iPad Pro, there aren’t that many notable changes under the hood beyond the jump to the M5 chip. Still, there are a few changes, including higher memory bandwidth, faster SSD performance, and a 4TB storage option (for anyone who doesn’t mind paying Apple’s hefty storage tax).

However, the main draw is the jump to the M5 chip, so let’s see how it compares to the M4 MacBook Pro.

Operating System

macOS 26 Tahoe

CPU

M5 10-Core CPU

GPU

M5 10-Core GPU

RAM

16GB, 24GB, 32GB

Storage

512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB

Display (Size, Resolution)

14-inch, 3024 x 1964 pixel resolution

The M5 chip is a tiny jump over even the M4

If you’re using an M1 or M2 MacBook Pro, it might be worth the upgrade

The 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro configuration Apple sent me to test is the 10-core CPU/10-core GPU, 16GB, 1TB SSD version with a nano-texture display (which costs an extra $150, but I think it’s worth it). This M5 MacBook Pro spec setup is the middle-of-the-road $1,800 option. While my experience with the laptop over the last few days has been extremely smooth, I ran several benchmarks, revealing how much more powerful the M5 chip is compared to the M4. Check out the benchmarks below:

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

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

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

One of my key questions was how the M5 MacBook Pro’s benchmarks compare to the very beefy M3 Max MacBook Pro with 96GB RAM I’ve used for the last few years as my daily work laptop. While the M5 beats the M3 Max in single-core, the latter chip still has it beat in multi-core and GPU performance.

According to Apple, the M5’s CPU is “20 percent faster” than the M4, and that’s backed up by my own benchmarks tests in the chart above, though my M3 Max MacBook Pro still beats out the M5 in multi-core and GPU performance by a wide margin (this is to be expected given its 32 cores and ridiculous 96GB RAM). That said, both the M4 and M5 14-inch MacBook Pro beat the M3 Max easily in single-core performance.

While I didn’t do tests myself, the base M3 hits 3,081 for single-core and 11,578 for multi-core on Geekbench 6 according to tests I found online, which means the new M5 is a substantial bump over Apple’s 2023 chip.

So what are the other upgrades?

There isn’t much

Beyond the chip upgrade, there are a few other new features in this refresh. First off, the M5 MacBook Pro features 153GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, compared to last year’s 120GB/s, marking a 30 percent improvement. This should make apps launch quicker and also help with on-device AI tasks like large language models (LLMs).

Along with more memory bandwidth, the M5 MacBook Pro also features a 2x faster SSD compared to the M4, and has increased the maximum size of the M5 MacBook’s storage to 4TB.

So what does all this mean? If you own the M4 or a higher-end M3 Pro or M3 Max MacBook Pro, there isn’t enough of a power boost to justify an upgrade to the M5. The new 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro is aimed squarely at those still using the M1, M2, and maybe the base M3 14-inch MacBook Pro, or anyone still waiting to move over from a now-ancient Intel MacBook.