Apple MacBook Pro (M5, 14-Inch) Review: More of the Same

On the multi-core front, you’re still getting a 10-core CPU, which matches the M4’s configuration in the 14-inch MacBook Pro. So, if you want more multi-core performance, you should wait for M5 Pro or M5 Max. But for now, the M5 is also seeing about a 17 percent improvement in multi-core performance—and again, that’s without an increase in core numbers. That’s all good stuff, but I’m not sure the average person will really notice the benefit in terms of day-to-day performance.

You may notice an increase in fan noise though, which is one of the main differences between the M4 and the latter M4 Pro/Maxwhich uses two fans instead of one. The M5 MacBook Pro remains great at not using the fan unless absolutely necessary, but when it’s on, it’s pretty loud. I’m guessing it’s the same as the M4 MacBook Pro, but I didn’t have one to compare. Its positive is internal temperature. I’ve seen CPU temperatures on MacBooks happily peak at 105 degrees Celsius under full load. But I never measured anything higher than 89 degrees Celsius on this laptop, which is a great sign.

Storage performance is also an area of ​​improvement highlighted by Apple which now doubles SSD read and write speeds using the latest PCIe Gen 5 standard. Again, you have to compare apples to apples here, as the M4 Pro and Max models already had faster read/write speeds than the base M4. With average read speeds of around 6,500 MB/s and write speeds of 6,728 MB/s, storage performance on the M5 is now slightly faster than the M4 Pro. You can now configure it to 4 terabytes, up from 2 terabytes on previous M4 and M4 Pro models.

Advancing AI

While the M5 happily hums the increase in CPU performance, its big advances are in graphics and AI. Whatever you think of Apple’s implementation of Intelligence, there are many other things you can do with native AI processing, whether it’s running LLM on devices via apps. draw things or Misty StudioBoth can leverage the AI ​​hardware inside the M5 MacBook Pro. There are two primary changes in the M5 when it comes to AI performance. One is the faster neural engine, which handles AI tasks that require speed or that run in the background, e.g. Apple Intelligence. According to my run of Geekbench AI, the M5’s neural engine was an average of 29 percent faster than the M4 and 40 percent faster than the M3.

The GPU core now also includes a neural accelerator, a feature first seen in the A19 chip. iPhone 17 (9/10, cable recommended). The idea here is to speed up heavy, one-off AI workloads, especially in apps that already rely heavily on GPU performance, such as video editing software. This is not unlike the Tensor cores found in Nvidia graphics cores. It’s hard to measure its effect on increasing workloads and make specific claims around it, but I noticed that the M5 outperformed MacBook Pro M3 5 percent when I ran Geekbench AI on the GPU despite the M3 Max being the more powerful GPU overall.