- Apple has officially announced the M5 MacBook Pro 14-inch
- It’s among the first Apple products with an M5 chip with the iPad Pro M5
- We’ll have to wait longer for M5 Pro and M5 Max versions though
Apple has followed up yesterday’s not-so-subtle teaser and officially announced its new M5 MacBook Pro 14-inch – one of the first products with its latest version of Apple Silicon, alongside the new iPad Pro M5.
The main upgrade of the new MacBook Pro is that new M5 chip, which promises to bring boosts to speed, performance and efficiency. But unlike last year’s MacBook Pro M4, there is only an M5 14-inch model so far – it seems we’ll have to wait a little longer for the more powerful M5 Pro and M5 Max versions for the 16-inch model, which currently still has the M4 Pro and M4 Max.
You can pre-order the M5 MacBook Pro from today, with prices starting at $1,599 / £1,599 / $2,499 ahead of shipping on October 22. Wondering whether to buy one? Here’s what’s new plus our early, specs-based verdict.
1. It debuts Apple’s new M5 chip
Apple’s new M5 chip takes the baton from its M4 series, which arrived last year (the M4 in May 2024, and the M4 Pro and M4 Max in October 2024).
Naturally, the M5 is expected to be a decent step up from the M4, if not a massive leap. An M5 iPad Pro leak previously hinted at a 12% boost for single-core performance, and an improvement of around 15% for multi-core.
In reality, Apple is particularly touting improvements around AI tasks, stating that you get up to 3.5x faster AI performance than the M4 chip, and up to 6x faster performance than the M1.
For specific scenarios, Apple says the M5 MacBook Pro offers 7.7x faster AI video-enhancing performance in Topaz Video compared to an M1 model, or 1.8x faster than the M4 version. In other words, the step up from an M1 will be very noticeable, but will be more minor compared to the previous MacBook Pro.
2. There’s now a 4TB option
One other new spec in this relatively minor update is that SSD performance will apparently be twice as fast as the M4 model, which Apple says means you can “load a local LLM faster”.
You can also spec up a version of the M5 MacBook Pro with a 4TB SSD, but it’ll inevitably cost you – it adds an extra $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$1,500 to the price tag. Ouch.
3. The design is otherwise largely the same
As the rumors predicted, the M5 MacBook Pro is physically a largely identical beast to the M4 MacBook Pro 14-inch.
That’s no bad thing – we gave that laptop’s design full marks in our review, saying that it “looks and feels as if it was carved from a couple of pieces of 100% recycled black aluminum” and that “nothing feels like, or works like, it was left to chance”.
Like before, it weighs 3.4lbs / 1.55kg, which means it isn’t as light as the MacBook Air, but still very portable. The ports are also the same, which means you have an HDMI-out, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, a MagSafe charging port, SD card slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
It also has the same Liquid Retina XDR display with a nano-texture option (which costs an extra $150 / £150 / AU$230), offering 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and 1,000 nits for SDR content. While that display is great on its own, we called the nano-texture coating a “transformative technology” in our M4 MacBook Pro review.
4. The pricing is identical to the M4 model
We had feared a slight price bump for the M5 MacBook Pro, but fortunately all versions cost the same as before as you can see below.
The only differences are the optional extras – for example, you can now get a 4TB version for an extra $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$1,500. Naturally, that base price can quickly go up once you’ve added extra unified memory and more…
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
M5 MacBook Pro 14-in |
M4 MacBook Pro 14-in |
|
16GB unified memory / 512GB storage |
$1,599 / £1,599 / $2,499 |
$1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,499 |
|
16GB unified memory / 1TB storage |
$1,799 / £1,799 / AU$2,799 |
$1,799 / £1,799 / AU$2,799 |
|
24GB unified memory / 1TB storage |
$1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,099 |
$1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,099 |
5. You can pre-order it now
If you’ve been waiting to pounce on an M5 MacBook Pro, you can pre-order it right now at the Apple Store.
Apple says it will being arriving with customers from next Wednesday, October 22, so just a wait of a week if you get in early.
Should you buy one?
This is clearly a relatively minor update for the MacBook Pro, but it’s still a very compelling option for creatives that will almost certainly trouble the upper echelons of our guide to the best laptops.
Whether or not you should pre-order one depends on your current situation. If, like me, you’re struggling with an earlier Intel-powered MacBook Pro whose days are numbered, it’s certainly shaping up to be a very solid buy – particularly if you regularly do AI-powered tasks like video or photo editing.
However, if you already have an M-series MacBook Pro – or prefer lighter options like the MacBook Air – it could be worth waiting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, early M6 MacBook Pro rumors suggest that model could be a bigger upgrade, with an OLED display (possibly even with touchscreen powers), a thinner design and, of course, M6 chips made with the smaller 2nm process.
Also, a recently-leaked Apple Mac roadmap suggests we’re likely to get the 13-inch and 15-inch M5 MacBook Air refresh in early 2026. These are just rumors at this stage, of course, but it’s food for thought if you’re hovering over the M5 MacBook Pro pre-order button. Decisions, decisions…
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mark.wilson@futurenet.com (Mark Wilson)
