Read Mashable’s full review of the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M)5).
The brand new 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro is aimed at buyers with deep pockets and power users who want to compromise as little as possible without going completely overboard. For an extra $400+ and a slightly heavier design (though not by much), it gets you great multi-tasking performance, good speakers, a bright, high-resolution display with the coveted 120Hz refresh rate, a better mix of ports, and longer battery life than the Air.
If you find the M4 MacBook Pro on sale at a deep discount, you may still consider buying it. Now that the M5 version has arrived, I expect third-party retailers like Amazon and Best Buy to regularly sell it at at least a $150 discount. (The Apple Store has discontinued it.) While the M5 MacBook Pro lasts significantly longer, there’s only a minor difference in performance between the two generations, so you can save some money without missing out on any new features. That said, if they’re priced the same when you go to upgrade, just stick with the M5 for future safety.
The 14-inch base MacBook Pro has always been the best laptop in Apple’s lineup. This remains the case with the new M5 model, even though it is almost a carbon copy of the M4 version. Rumors suggest the addition of an OLED display or touchscreen capabilities could lead to a more exciting refresh – note the M6 version – but it’s a great laptop nonetheless.
Performance and battery life are the most notable changes from generation to generation, so let’s get straight to it. The M5 chip is now optimized for running on-device AI models, and most professionals would be hard pressed to get the hang of it. With a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 17,470, it’s 15 percent faster than its predecessor. It’s not a very exciting jump, but it’s a jump nonetheless, and one that continues the MacBook Pro’s reign as one of the fastest laptops. The only models in our database that perform better than this are the 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro and some gaming laptops that cost $3,599.99 or more. The base M5 MacBook Pro starts at $1,599.
What’s even more impressive is that the M5 MacBook Pro lasted 21 hours and 17 minutes in our battery life benchmarks, nearly 30 percent longer than the M4 MacBook Pro. This is our new battery life champion, finishing nearly 26 minutes ahead of the 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro.
The M5 is slightly less portable than the MacBook Pro Air, but not by much. (It’s less than 0.2 inches thicker than both sizes and 0.1 pound heavier than the 15-inch model.) Still, it leaves enough room for extra fixings like an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, and a bonus Thunderbolt port, plus a great hi-fi sound system with a force-canceling woofer.
True to tradition, the M5 MacBook Pro looks as great as it sounds. (Apple hasn’t made any major design changes to it since 2021.) Its mini-LED “Liquid Retina XDR” display offers a resolution of 3024 x 1964 pixels, 1600 nits of peak brightness in HDR, and a 120Hz refresh rate. Compared to the M4 MacBook Air’s standard Liquid Retina screen, it’s crisper, brighter and smoother when displaying scenes in motion – again not essential for all users, but nice if you can swing it. If you factor in more RAM, storage, and its nano-texture (matte) display option it can reach $2,000 very quickly.