Apple’s New MacBook Pro With M5 Pro and M5 Max Are Supercharged for Creative Pros

Apple has unveiled faster, more powerful MacBook Pro laptops with the all-new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. Apple calls its new MacBook Pro “the world’s best pro laptop.”

The latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro laptops feature the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, promising “game-changing performance and AI capabilities” for Apple’s super popular pro laptops.

The new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips feature next-generation Fusion architecture, up to an 18-core CPU, and up to a 40-core GPU. Both chips promise significant improvements in CPU, GPU, and AI performance compared to the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and feature higher unified memory bandwidths than before.

The up-to-18-core CPU features six “super cores,” as Apple calls them. These form what the company says is the world’s fastest CPU core. As for the GPU, each core, up to 40 in the M5 Max, has its own Neural Accelerator. AI tasks are up to four times faster than with M4 Pro and M4 Max, while AI image generation is up to nearly eight times faster compared to the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Both chips also offer up to 50 percent better graphics performance than the M4 Pro and Max chips.

Taken together, the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro laptops should not only be way better for AI-based tasks, which are plentiful in the latest creative applications, but also much better across all aspects of photo and video editing workflows.

While PetaPixel will do its own benchmarking as soon as possible, Apple specifically notes that the M5 Max MacBook Pro is up to 5.4 times faster when working with video effects in Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio compared to M1 Max and up to three times faster compared to M4 Max. Topaz Video is up to 3.5 times faster on the M5 Max than on the M4 Max.

There are also significant gains in SSD performance. Compared to prior models, the new MacBook Pro series offers up to two times faster SSD performance. Apple says the SSD can reach speeds of up to 14.5GB/s, which is extremely fast. The M5 Pro MacBook Pro starts with 1TB of storage, while M5 Max starts at 2TB.

The new MacBook Pro includes the N1 chip, Apple’s new wireless networking chip that supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, which means better connectivity. The laptops promise up to 24 hours of battery life, feature the same great Liquid Retina XDR display as before, including a nano-texture matte-finish option, and the same 12-megapixel Center Stage camera and studio-quality internal mics. Both machines also feature Thunderbolt 5, which Apple describes as the best implementation in the industry, thanks to the M5 Pro and M5 Max’s Thunderbolt 5 architecture.

It is also worth noting that the new MacBook Pro has an 8K-capable HDMI port and can drive up to two high-resolution external displays with the M5 Pro and up to four with the M5 Max.

“MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max redefines what’s possible on a pro laptop, now up to 4x faster than the previous generation,” says John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “With Neural Accelerators in the GPU, the new MacBook Pro enables professionals to run advanced LLMs on device and unlock capabilities that no other laptop can do — all while maintaining exceptional battery life. Combined with even faster unified memory and storage, it empowers users to take their work even further, unleashing new possibilities and pushing the boundaries of what they can do.”

Pricing and Availability

The new MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max starts at $2,199 for the 14-inch M5 Pro model and $2,699 for the 16-inch M5 Pro version. MacBook Pro with M5 Max starts at $3,599 and $3,899 for 14- and 16-inch versions, respectively. Both laptops are available in space black and silver. The new notebooks will be available to preorder starting on March 4, with shipping starting on March 11.

Apple also announced today that its 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 now comes standard with 1TB of storage, up from 512GB, while still starting at $1,699.

Image credits: Apple