Apple's latest MacBook Pros are more powerful than ever

The latest MacBook Pros are familiar on the outside, but have some interesting changes on the inside. Image: Apple

This week, Apple announced its latest generation of MacBook Pros, which also marks the debut of its high-end M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The company says the new processors are up to 30% faster in "pro workflows" than its previous CPUs, which is good, since the laptops' starting prices are a bit higher than their predecessors'.

Part of that uplift likely comes from the M5 Pro and Max simply having more CPU cores. The Pro starts with 15, upgradable to 18, while all Max models have 18. These represent an addition of three and four cores, respectively.

It's not just a matter of adding more slightly upgraded cores, though. Previous generations of M chips, and the standard M5 that's been around for a while, have had a mix of what Apple calls Power and Efficiency cores. The M5 Pro and M5 Max follow a similar paradigm, but rather than using the same types of cores as the standard M5, as previous Pro and Max chips did, they use the M5's performance cores for their less intensive processing and introduce "all-new performance cores." In other words, the M5's most powerful cores are the M5 Pro and Max's weakest ones.

The company has rebranded those as "Super" cores across its lineup; the M5 has a mix of Super cores and Efficiency cores, while the M5 Pro and Max have Performance cores and Super cores. The new branding is a little hard to keep track of*, especially since it's not necessarily clear how the previous-gen "Performance"-branded cores compare to the apparently new and improved Performance cores. However, in the current M5 generation, it boils down to: Performance > Super > Efficiency.

While GPU core counts have remained largely the same, the company says they have a "next-generation architecture," higher memory bandwidth, and higher performance in AI tasks (in fact, the press release mentions "AI" around 25 times). The company also promises that its latest GPUs have greater performance in compute and ray-tracing.

For those interested in the intricacies of chip design, Apple says the M5 Pro and Max feature a new "Fusion Architecture" that combines two 3nm-class dies. It's reminiscent of the chiplet design that's served AMD's Ryzen series so well, and it could make it possible for Apple to more easily offer a bit more freedom when it comes to configuring your mix of CPU and GPU cores in the future. Image: Apple

Beyond the new processors, the laptops are relatively similar to their predecessors, with the same displays, three Thunderbolt 5 ports, SDXC card slot, and dedicated coprocessors for encoding and decoding codecs like H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW. However, there are some other small upgrades: the 2026 MacBook Pros have Apple's N1 wireless chip, providing an upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 from the Wi-Fi 6E found in the previous generation. The chip also includes Bluetooth 6, updated from Bluetooth 5.3.

Apple has also tweaked the default storage and memory configurations. The M5 Pro laptops all now start with 1TB of storage (the 16" version used to start with 512GB), and the M5 Max ones start with 2TB. The company also promises that the computers' SSDs will run up to two times faster than those of their predecessors.

The M5 Pro laptops can also now be optioned with 64GB of memory, up from 48GB, though doing so will cost a pretty penny; you have to spend $200 to get the higher-end Pro chip, then add on $600 to upgrade from the base 24GB of memory (though, given what's happening with the rest of the industry, those prices seem less egregious than they once did).

You certainly don't need a Pro or a Max chip to edit photos... but it doesn't hurt. Image: Apple

For most photographers, the standard M5 MacBook Pro will be plenty powerful, as will the cheaper M5 MacBook Air (though it misses out on the SD card reader and HDR-capable screen). But those doing heavy edits on high-resolution files, or who want to configure their machines with ludicrous amounts of memory or storage, will appreciate these higher-end options. The extra horsepower may also be useful to anyone who edits video; the standard M5 is no slouch, but the extra CPU cores, GPU power and SSD speed will make the process that much smoother.

The M5 Pro MacBook Pros start at $2199 for the 14" model, and $2699 for the 16" one: a $200 premium over the starting prices of their corresponding M4 models. Upgrading to the Max chip will add $1400 to the price. Preorders open on March 4th, and the laptops will be available starting on the 11th.

* As is tradition. I'm sure there are even folks at Apple who have a hard time keeping the relationships between Studio, Ultra, Pro, and Max products straight.