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I spent my weekend doing three things: Raking in the last bit of leaves from my neighbor's neglected tree, being disappointed by the New York Giants (again), and benchmarking the latest 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro.
Of course, that last task was the least stressful, as Apple made the reason to upgrade to the hot, new MacBook Pro this year as straightforward as ever. If your current system isn't holding up, you can buy the trustee MacBook Pro, with its polished aluminum design, smooth-as-ever ProMotion display, and an updated M5 chipset, all for the same price as last year's model -- and the year before.
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In fact, the M5 MacBook Pro looks identical to the M4 variant that I reviewed last year; as I was benchmarking the two, I had to look closely at the keyboards for any glistening left by millions of fingertaps to distinguish the M4 model. After several rounds of performance testing, here's how the M5 fared with older Macs, including my $2,500 M1 Max MacBook Pro from just three years ago.
For starters, beyond the M5 chipset, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro features the same core of internal hardware as the M4 model, from the cooling fans to the placement of memory and battery.
However, subtle capacity changes make a noticeable difference to performance, from faster unified memory bandwidth (153 GB/s from 120 GB/s) to faster SSD speeds to up to twice the storage cap (4TB from 2TB). Each of the 10 GPU cores also receives Neural Accelerators for faster AI/ML processing.
Kerry Wan/ZDNET
While the highest configuration for the M5 chip seems excessive, it may be months until Apple releases the Pro and Max variants of the processor, so it's worth considering for power users looking for an upgrade today. For most people's workflows, though, the base configuration will serve you perfectly fine. It has for me.
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