Tag: 14-inch

It’s hard to review a product like the new MacBook Pro with M5. On the one hand, there’s not a lot to say about a laptop that almost identical to the one it replaces, aside from having one more “M.” It looks the same, and has the same incredible display as the previous model, it’s just a little faster.

On the other hand, the fact that the M5 is kind of boring doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means that it might just be Apple’s most underrated product in years. Here’s what I mean:

Right now, the laptop I’d recommend most people buy is the M4 MacBook Air. It’s great. It’s lightweight, powerful, and meets most of the needs of most people.

This, of course, isn’t a review of the M4 MacBook Air. It’s a review of the M5 MacBook Pro. But, the more time I spent thinking about it, the more I thought about the idea that the base M5 MacBook Pro isn’t really meant to be compared to the higher-spec’d models that are certainly coming early next year. Instead, I think you should be thinking about it in comparison to the MacBook Air.

For example, once you upgrade the storage on the MacBook Air (which you absolutely should do), the new M5 MacBook Pro is $400 more. I understand that $400 is many more than zero dollars, but the real question is, what do you get for $400?

The answer is, a lot more than you might think. First you get a much brighter, Mini-LED display. You also get about 33 percent better battery life, along with an extra USB-C port, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader. This year’s model also has a 2X faster SSD, 25 percent faster memory bandwidth, and what Apple calls “Neural Accelerators.”

Oh, and you get a fan—which isn’t normally something I’d say is a benefit, except I never once heard the fan on this model. The fact that it isn’t annoying, but can maximize the power of the M5 is nice bonus.

You’ll probably hear a lot of people tell you that you should wait for the M5 Pro or M5 Max version of the MacBook Pro, but keep in mind that most of those people make YouTube videos for a living. I’m not knocking them, I’m just pointing out that video is one of the things that benefits from the increased capabilities of the more powerful chips.

I spent the last week with a review unit from Apple, and put it through all the same tasks I regularly do on my M4 MacBook Air. I also compared it closely to an Mac mini with an M4 Pro. Those are the two computers I use every day, and I wanted to get a good feel for how the M5 stacks up.

I found that in tasks like Whisper Transcription and DiVinci Resolve, the M5 was notably faster than the M4, and on par, if not better than the M4 Pro. I also culled, edited, and exported 150 photos in Lightroom and found the M5 to not only handle it with ease, but the export time—which is the real test—was about five percent faster than the M4 Pro.

Yes, those tasks will be much faster on the forthcoming versions of Apple Silicon, so if those are things you do all the time, sure, your workflow will benefit from waiting. I just know that most people aren’t doing those things. Most people just want a great computer for sorting through their photos, browsing the internet, and maybe work or school.

Even Apple’s touting of the M5 as a great laptop for AI isn’t really that useful for most people who would consider buying this Mac. If all you’re doing is using ChatGPT, all of that compute is happening on Nvidia chips somewhere out there in the cloud. There’s very little happening on device.

But none of that means that the M5 isn’t an excellent computer. It is. In fact, it’s probably a lot better than you’ve ever given it credit for. The better display and battery life are things you’ll notice every day. Faster storage and memory bandwidth will make almost everything you do feel more responsive.

Maybe you don’t care about any of that. Maybe the extra battery life and killer display aren’t worth the extra weight that comes with the MacBook Pro. That’s a perfectly valid reason to go for the notably lighter MacBook Air, but to be honest, the display alone is probably worth the increased price.

The truth is, the M5 MacBook Pro isn’t flashy, but I think that’s the point. It’s not the computer Apple wants you to obsess over—it’s the one you’ll quietly depend on every day. It doesn’t need to reinvent anything to be great; it just needs to be better where it counts. For all the hype Apple pours into its biggest upgrades, sometimes the most meaningful performance comes from its most underrated Mac laptop.