Apple offers two entry level MacBook models: the MacBook Air, and the base model MacBook Pro. There’s a couple hundred dollars in difference between the two, which begs the question – is the MacBook Pro worth the premium, or should you save money and stick to the MacBook Air?
M5 vs M4 chip
The biggest debate to be had is going to revolve around the chipset. Do you need an M5 chip for your workflow?
I’m not gonna delve into all of the details, you can read our M5 roundup here if you’d like. But, in short, this is what’s new with M5:
15% faster multithreaded CPU performance vs M4
45% faster GPU performance vs M4
30% increase in unified memory bandwidth
4x peak GPU compute performance for AI
Overall, M5 is a great leap in GPU performance, and with Apple betting so heavily on local models for AI, that could be important in the future. However, M4 is still plenty fast, and I wouldn’t make any purchasing decisions based on what Apple might do in AI in the future.
It’s also worth noting that Apple still does most of its Apple silicon comparisons to the M1 rather than newer chips like M2 or M3. I’ll let that speak for itself.
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