In my assessment of the latest M5 iPad Pro, I indicated that the new Apple tablet feels like a celebratory lap for Apple. As a fan of F1, I’ll employ another racing analogy to illustrate the latest MacBook Pro.
The new M5 silicon not only outshines the competition; it actually laps it. Last year’s M4 chip already raced ahead of its competitors like Max Verstappen on a sprint, and the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite chips won’t even debut in Windows laptops until 2026. Meanwhile, the sleek new M5 chip is here and poised to take its rightful place at the top of the performance podium.
Apple provided its new MacBook Pro to Mashable for evaluation prior to its official launch on Oct. 22. Since we’ve had just a few days to stress test the Apple laptop, we will enhance this review with a more detailed analysis next week, which will include a battery run-down test.
M5 MacBook Pro review: By the numbers
For my 2025 MacBook Pro review, Apple gave me a unit with 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, and the optional Nano Texture display.
– Display: Liquid Retina XDR display with HDR features
– RAM: 16GB, 24GB
– Storage: 512GB, 1TB
– Size: 14 inches
– Colors: Silver and space black
– Resolution: 3024 x 1964
– Dimensions: 12.31” x 8.71” x 0.61”
– Weight: 3.4 pounds (1.55 kg)
– Ports: Three Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C), SDXC card slot, HDMI, MagSafe 3 charger, 3.5 mm headphone jack
– Brightness: 1,000 nits (1,600 nits with HDR content)
– Refresh rate: Up to 120Hz
– Touch ID: Yes
– Face ID: No
Currently, the M5 MacBook Pro is only offered in a 14-inch model, starting at $1,599, although I anticipate that most users will prefer to pay extra for more storage and/or RAM.
M5 MacBook Pro review: Performance
It’s no overstatement to claim that Apple’s M-series silicon has been groundbreaking. Apple has proven that it can engineer processors as adeptly as it designs anything else, and the M chips have established new benchmarks for power and performance efficiency.
In our benchmark assessments, the new M5 MacBook Pro achieved a score of 17,470 on the Geekbench performance test. That marks a significant advancement over the M4 chip (though not drastically). The M5 reported a 17 percent enhancement over the M4, and while we noted a larger leap in performance from the M3 to M4, it is still a commendable increase. We evaluated 61 Windows laptops, Chromebooks, and MacBooks for our guide to the top laptops, and the M5 MacBook Pro outperforms 93 percent of them. Mostly, only highly specified (and extravagantly priced) gaming laptops can surpass it, with the 16-inch MacBook Pro featuring the M4 Pro chip being the exception.
For context, Apple’s M-series chips have appeared untouchable since their introduction in 2020. Then, Qualcomm revealed the Snapdragon X Elite processor, which outperformed the M3 chip and powered award-winning devices like the Microsoft Surface 7. Well, it was enjoyable to have some true competition while it lasted. As Mashable’s former tech editor Kimberly Gedeon mentioned last year in her M4 MacBook Pro review, “Apple dropped the M4 chip and decimated Windows laptops in one fell swoop.”
Now, we have the M5 chip. Its 17,470 Geekbench CPU score easily surpasses the M4’s score of 15,199 and the Surface Laptop 7’s score of 14,548. As I stated, Apple has fully lapped the competition.
The M5 processor can manage advanced applications effortlessly
While I’ve only had a few days to stress-test the new MacBook Pro, I don’t feel as though I’ve come close to actually pushing the limits of its M5 chip, which boasts a 10-core CPU (four performance cores, six efficiency cores) and dazzling new Neural Accelerators for executing advanced AI models locally on your device. Apple also asserts that the M5 “delivers over 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4,” and overall 45 percent enhanced graphics performance compared to the M4.
Coupled with a promised 30 percent increase in memory bandwidth, you can enjoy demanding games like Cyberpunk. In your professional tasks, you can utilize Final Cut Pro while also uploading large video files to the cloud at the same time.
I’ve been experimenting with large video files in Adobe Premiere Pro and AI plugins in Logic Pro, and so far, the new