MacBook Pro M5: a familiar form with a significant under-the-hood upgrade

By Rami Tabari Updated October 16, 2025

The MacBook Pro M5 is here, but is it all we expected it to be? Well, most notably, the 14-inch model is here alone. There’s no M5-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro (yet), nor is there the M5 Pro or M5 Max.

However, Apple is claiming some major performance increases from the M5 chip on its own. That’s great, and I’m not that upset we’re missing a family reunion, but the MacBook Pro M5 isn’t exactly what I expected.

My hope for an OLED MacBook Pro or even a new design color was squashed. There’s a lot going on with the MacBook Pro M5’s performance gains, especially in the AI department, but everything else is scant.

Unless you’re dying for a performance upgrade, or you’re super interested in what’s happening with macOS Tahoe, you might be a little disappointed, as I am.

Despite that, let’s dive deeper into everything new (and not new) about the MacBook Pro M5.

So how much is that shiny new MacBook Pro M5 going to cost you? Well, despite the current political climate, the 14-inch MacBook Pro M5 will actually cost the same as its predecessor: $1,599.

Much to my surprise, there’s no update to the 16-inch MacBook Pro this time around, at least not yet anyway. But if you’re looking to go on a joyride with the new M5 chip, the 14-inch MacBook Pro is available to pre-order, and will become officially available on Wednesday, October 22.

Fans of the previous MacBook Pro will be delighted to hear that there are little-to-no design changes with the MacBook Pro M5. But I’m getting tired of black and silver. Let’s be honest, MacBooks in general could use a glow-up. The good news is it does retain its portability, at 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches and 3.4 pounds.

The display is also the same. It’s outfitted with a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR, 3024 x 1964, 120Hz panel, including the optional nano-textured glass, which reduces glare. Having the same display isn’t a bad thing, though, especially since the price didn’t increase.

Now the real update comes in performance. Apple claims that its new M5 chip delivers 15% more overall (CPU) performance and 30% more graphics performance (45% with ray tracing) than the M4.

But what does that look like in practice? Well, you may notice a slight bump in productivity speeds when using the M5 MacBook Pro 14 for more general purposes. But gamers, video-editors, and graphic designers will notice a significant increase in the MacBook Pro’s workload performance while gaming, transcoding, or rendering. That can translate into speed or overall quality.

What Apple is really highlighting, however, is that the M5 GPU chip can run 4x faster than the M4 when handling AI workloads. For folks who are avoiding AI, that won’t impact you. But if you’re handling large language models or, an example Apple provides, running diffusion models in Draw Things, then you’ll see a dramatic increase in speed.

Apple claims that the MacBook Pro will still get 24 hours of battery life. That’s impressive considering the M5 will likely consume more power, but we’ll see how that shakes out in our tests.

The MacBook Pro M5 is kind of a boring performance update, but the major difference you’ll experience on the M5 and other MacBook devices is macOS Tahoe (if you haven’t updated yet). Here are some of the changes you can expect:

Well, like I said, the MacBook Pro M5 didn’t deliver a fabulous update. However, the 16-inch MacBook Pro along with the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are notably missing. So we’ll likely see that arriving sooner than later.

It’s possible that the 16-inch will receive more updates apart from performance, or at least I hope so. But we won’t know until the time comes, so stay tuned.