The new M5 MacBook Pro is pretty light on changes beyond the chip, but one of its only other new features—faster SSD performance—seems to be a bigger upgrade than Apple let on.
Faster SSD performance is one of the M5 MacBook Pro’s few upgrades
If you own an M4 MacBook Pro, there’s very little in the new M5 model that merits a purchase.
However, one of the under-the-radar upgrades in the M5 model is improved SSD performance.
From Apple’s press release:
With the latest storage technology, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 brings faster SSD performance than the previous generation for tasks like importing RAW image files or exporting large videos. […] Additionally, with up to 2x faster SSD performance than the prior generation, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro lets users load a local LLM faster
Apple doesn’t make a huge deal out of the improvement. And that’s fair, considering faster SSD performance is likely only going to impact people working with very large files—like the examples given of large images, videos, and local LLMs.
But I was surprised to discover, via a Max Tech video comparison, that the M5 MacBook Pro’s SSD even outperforms the claimed “up to 2x faster” number.
M5 MacBook Pro vs M4 MacBook Pro: SSD performance
YouTuber Max Tech used a Blackmagic speed test to pit the M5 MacBook Pro against last year’s M4 model. Here’s how it fared:
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