M5 Pro MacBook Pro review: Fast, familiar friend

These days, Apple is approaching its Mac releases a little bit like how a car company approaches its model years: Every once in a while, it does a complete redesign, and there’s a whole new generation of devices. In the intervening years, the devices don’t change much, other than some of the internals. In Apple’s case, the regular release of new generations of Apple silicon drives the changes.

So when I say that the M5 Pro MacBook Pro, released this week, is very much the same pro laptop we’ve seen from Apple for the last few years, I’m not trying to be insulting. It’s the familiar, definitive MacBook Pro that was introduced with the M1 Pro and Max in 2021 and updated with new processors for the M2, M3, and M4 generations.

The display still rocks. It’s a 120-hertz ProMotion display with a wide color gamut, backlit by mini-LED display technology that allows it to run bright and peak even brighter, while also maintaining black levels that contribute to a remarkably extended level of dynamic range. The design, with flat sides and top and curved corners, defined what a 2020s Apple laptop looks like.

Some reports suggest that this fifth iteration of this design will be the end of the line, and that a new generation awaits later this year or in early 2027. That may be, but if you need a new Mac laptop now, or prefer to buy your Macs at the end of a design cycle after all the theoretical bugs have been shaken out, you will not find a finer Mac laptop available today than the M5 MacBook Pro with M5 Pro or Max processors.

Apple sent me the M5 Pro model, with 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores. It was like welcoming an old friend into my house, especially since I switched to an M4 Max MacBook Pro a year ago. This is a familiar, solid laptop, but the new generation of high-end M5 chips changes the game a bit.

In the end, it’s all about those chips. So here are the numbers in handy chart form:

To summarize, the M5 CPU core is about 15% faster than the M4 generation, and the Pro and Max 15- or 18-core CPU configurations are going to blow my 14-core M4 Max out of the water. My review unit is 23% faster than my M4 Max laptop.

As you might expect, GPU performance on the Pro laptops really depends on which chip class you buy. The Max versions have way more GPU cores and will generate much better performance. That said, my M4 Max’s Metal score was only about 14 percent ahead of the M5 Pro’s, despite my M4 Max having 32 GPU cores instead of the M5 Pro’s 20. It’s pretty impressive, and the M5 Max is there if you really want a ridiculous number of GPU cores to apply to your GPU-intensive workflows.

Of course, I need to mention that Apple has renamed its CPU cores as a part of the upgrade to M5 Pro and M5 Max. The top-speed cores, previously called performance cores, have been redubbed “super cores.” Meanwhile, the new lower-speed/higher-efficiency cores in the M5 Max and M5 Pro have been confusingly rebranded as “performance cores.”

The bottom line is still the same: In normal use, you’ll see the lower-tier cores grinding away on tasks efficiently, while the more power-consuming cores will leap into action when there is CPU heavy lifting to be done. On my 18-core review unit, there are 6 super cores and 12 performance cores, while those who choose the lower-end 15-core configuration will get 5 super cores and 10 performance cores.

The pace of Apple silicon progress is breathtaking, not just at the base level that powers the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but up here at the level of bespoke chips designed for Apple’s most powerful systems. The M5 Pro and M5 Max both look like major steps above the M4 equivalents, let alone against older chip generations.

In the end, the question for upgraders coming from older Apple silicon MacBook Pros will be: Is it worth it to get a more powerful chip to do whatever it is you’re doing? And, secondarily: Are you willing to wait to see what Apple might have up its sleeve with the first iteration of an entirely new design, if that’s indeed what’s coming?

These are questions I can’t answer for you. But I will say that the M5 Pro chip seems really impressive. Even if the laptops look the same on the outside as they did in 2021, the stuff inside just keeps getting better.