The Morning After: Apple adds its new M5 chip to iPads, MacBooks and even the Vision Pro

This week, Apple announced fall hardware updates across multiple devices — pretty much every major category, besides iPhones and AirPods. Don’t get too excited: It’s not a redesign reveal, but we’re expecting a tangible performance jump for both the iPad Pro and MacBook Pro.

With the new M5 chip (no Pro or Max versions so far), Apple used the same 3-nanometer fabrication process for the M5 as it did for the M4. The new chip has 10 GPU cores and 10 CPU cores, along with a 16-core Neural Engine. Apple claims the M5 has the “world’s fastest CPU core” with up to 20 percent faster multithreaded performance compared to the M4 chip of the previous MacBook Pro. Graphics performance also gets a significant boost too. The M5 MacBook Pro ($1,599), otherwise, has identical specs to its M4 predecessor, right down to the same dimensions, weight and 70-watt power adapter.

Meanwhile, inside the iPad Pro, Apple claims it has more than four times the peak GPU compute performance of the M4. If you’re looking to use the new iPad Pro for video tasks, Apple says that video transcoding is six times faster than the old M1 iPad Pro from 2021. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the 13-inch model.

And it seems to have a lot of M5 chips to use: The Vision Pro gets one and a seemingly more comfortable Dual Knit Band. The M5 Vision Pro should last half an hour longer than the original model, as well, according to Apple.

— Mat Smith

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