By Dan Moren
March 3, 2026 6:28 AM PT
Apple debuts MacBook Pros with M5 Pro, M5 Max chips
Day two of March’s Apple product extravaganza, uh, marches on with the announcement of MacBook Pro models bearing new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, updated wireless capabilities, and both more and faster storage.
These models join the base level M5 MacBook Pro, released last fall, but offer more power, starting with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU on the M5 Pro model, 24GB of RAM, and a 1TB of SSD storage. The M5 Max-equipped MacBook, meanwhile, starts at 18-core CPU, 32-core GPU, and 36GB of RAM, with 2TB of storage. That’s double the storage for both models over their counterparts for last year, and Apple says the SSDs are twice as fast as well.
But the M5 Pro and Max are undoubtedly the stars of the show. Like the M5 chips we’ve seen so far, they feature a next-generation GPU with a Neural Accelerator. But Apple says they also use an all new Fusion Architecture, which connects two three-nanometer dies on a single system on a chip that bundles CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and more.
In their base configurations, they both feature what Apple is now branding super cores, alongside all-new performance cores. This is perhaps a bit of nominative legerdemain—Apple says the super core is the rebranded name for the performance core that already existed on the base M5 chip. The new performance cores aren’t the same as the M5’s efficiency cores—they’re a new design that is intended to balance multithreaded performance and power efficiency. But it’s probably true that they’re really an evolution of Apple’s previous efficiency core design, with an upgraded name.
Wirelessly, the new models are powered by Apple’s N1 chip, bringing support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 across the line, like the new M4 iPad Air and iPhone 17e introduced earlier this week.
There are a handful of other improvements: the microphones add Voice Isolation and Wide Spectrum modes, and the M5 Pro MacBook Pro is now configurable with up to 64GB of memory. The 16-inch M5 Max gets slightly better battery life—up to 16 hours of wireless web browsing, compared to 14 hours on its M4 predecessor, and 22 hours of video streaming, compared to 21 hours. The 14-inch M5 Max ekes out two additional hours of video streaming, up to 20 hours.
The 14-inch M5 Pro starts at $2199, while the 16-inch starts at $2699; the 14-inch M5 Max model starts at $3599, with its 16-inch counterpart at $3899. All models will be available for pre-order on March 4, and will start shipping on March 11.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
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