M5 MACBOOK PRO REVIEW: A MINOR REFRESH THAT HIDES A MASSIVE GRAPHICS BOOST

APPLE'S NEW M5 CHIP GIVES ITS MOST AFFORDABLE PRO LAPTOP FASTER GRAPHICS AND SSD.

- BY ROMAN LOYOLA

Going into this review for the M5 MacBook Pro (fave.co/46gdnVu), I wasn't expecting much. The laptop it replaced, the M4 MacBook Pro (fave.co/3Rt3mMe), is excellent. But more importantly, that M4 laptop addressed many issues with the M3 (fave.co/49hUoMO), M2 (fave.co/3POoGJc), and M1 (fave.co/2PXzhbw) MacBook Pros, including the webcam quality and starting memory. The experience with the M4 MacBook Pro was so satisfying that I was a bit blasé about the M5 MacBook Pro–the only thing that's really new in the laptop is the M5. That's it.

The M5 MacBook Pro that we reviewed has the Nanotexture display option, which is an extra $150/£150.

After spending time with the new M5 MacBook Pro, that indifference quickly evolved into being impressed. In all, the M5 MacBook Pro is an incremental update, but it does make some big performance leaps in graphics and SSD throughput that made me say, “Wow!”

OUR MODEL'S SPECIFICATIONS

This review is for the most affordable model in the MacBook Pro lineup, the M5 14-inch MacBook Pro. Our review unit has the same CPU, GPU, and RAM as the base standard configuration, but the SSD is 1TB (an additional $200/£200), and it has the Nano-texture glass ($150/£150). Here are the specifications of the laptop in this review:

CPU: M5 with 10 cores (4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores), 16-core Neural Engine

GPU: 10 cores

Memory: 16GB unified memory (153GBps memory bandwidth)

Storage: 1TB SSD