The M5 MacBook Pro launched on October 22, but Apple has gotten caught up in the Black Friday hype and discounted this brand new laptop already!
Right now, every model is at least $50 off at Amazon, which takes the prices down to as little as $1,543. If you’re on an older system or an Intel Mac, now is the best time to upgrade. I’ll explain why after testing it for a while.
Why should you buy it?
You’ve got the same familiar design we’ve come to know and love for the MacBook Pro — that utilitarian aluminum shell looks primed and ready for work. The real upgrades come under the hood, courtesy of that M5 chip.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | MacBook Pro M5 | MacBook Pro M4 | Dell 14 Premium |
Geekbench 6 (single-core) | 4,288 | 3,807 | 2,701 |
Geekbench 6 (multi-core) | 17,986 | 15,114 | 15,794 |
Handbrake | 3:31 (mins:secs) | 4:27 | 5:06 |
PugetBench (PhotoShop) | 13,755 (score) | 8.2 secs (time) | 10,542 | 11.74 | 7,583 | 18.1 |
The chipset brings an impressive uplift in CPU and GPU performance, while adding neural accelerators to each GPU core to run local AI workloads so much more efficiently.
On top of that, the SSD has also received a serious speed boost too. All while maintaining that same great stamina with a battery life of 18 hours.
Who shouldn’t buy it?
But of course, while there’s a lot of great things about this machine, there are some people who should save their money. As is the case with iterative upgrades, if you’re on M3 or M4 MacBook Pros, the performance uplifts here are not worth reinvesting — especially given that the M6 MacBook Pro looks set to give the system a design overhaul and even an OLED display.
If you are on M2 or earlier, then this is a significant uplift worth your time and money. Especially more so given this small but important saving.
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