Apple has unveiled its latest silicon, the M5 chip – and with it a new flagship laptop that’s as much as 6x faster than devices with the older M1 chip. The Apple MacBook Pro M5 focuses on improved performance through Apple’s newest silicon, but the MacBook Pro M5 delivers more than just a new AI-focused chip, including faster SSD performance for a noticeable improvement in importing RAW files and the longest battery life yet in MacBook’s history.
The headlining feature is Apple’s new M5 chip, which uses a 10-core GPU design with a Neural Accelerator in each core. Apple says that translates to dramatically faster AI workloads with up to 3.5x faster AI tasks compared to the M4 chip and up to 6x compared to the older M1 chip.
But while the M5 and AI performance demands much of the attention surrounding the new launch, the October 15 announcement hides a few features that could be significant for photo and video editing, not text-to-image generation.
That same M5 chip behind the AI speed improvements also delivers up to 1.6x faster graphics compared to the M4. Multi-tasking in creative apps, Apple says, is also boosted with the new chip, along with performance boosts to the most demanding workflows, like working with 4K in Adobe Premiere Pro.
Apple says the new laptop’s SSD performance is up to twice as fast, which means a significant improvement in working with RAW photos and large video files.
The M5 MacBook Pro also brings the best battery life yet of any previous MacBook, with Apple giving the laptop up to 24 hours of juice. Photographers and videographers will also be eager to know that the M5 edition still has an SDXC memory card reader, along with multiple Thunderbolt ports and an HDMI port with support for up to two external displays. (Apple removed the SD card slot in the Pro in 2016, but brought it back in 2021).
The newest MacBook Pro M5 is only available in a 14-inch size, and continues the Liquid Retina XDR display found in the M4 models, which includes 1 billion colors, refresh rates up to 120Hz, and a one-million-to-one contrast ratio for a wide dynamic range.
While the M5 delivers some performance enhancements over the M4 models, the most noticeable difference will be coming from users upgrading from an M1 chip introduced in 2020 as well as older Intel-based models. Intel upgraders can expect as much as 30x faster GPU, 5.5x faster CPU, and up to 86x faster AI performance, along with as much as 14 more hours of battery life. M1 upgraders can expect up to 6.8x faster GPU performance, and up to 2x faster CPU, with an additional four hours of battery life.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 comes in at the same starting price as the previous model – which is $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,499 / CA$2,099 for 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The laptop will also be available in configurations with 24GB or 32GB of memory and up to 4TB of internal SSD storage, as well as upgrades like a nano-texture display.
Pre-orders have already opened, with shipping expected to begin on October 22.
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