Apple has officially announced the M5 MacBook Pro, and proving the rumor mill right, we have the standard M5 14-inch option only. Those looking for the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros will have to wait until early next year.
As predicted, this is more of a spec bump over any dramatic overhaul. That is coming with the M6 MacBook Pro sporting an OLED touchscreen display and a redesign, but that's not to say there aren't some notable improvements in this M5 model.
M5 MacBook Pro: Release date and price
If you're keen to pick an M5 MacBook Pro, pre-orders have started now with a launch date of Wednesday October 22 and a starting price of $1,599.
As for M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, it's all reports and speculation around when these will arrive. The most precise prediction we've found comes from Gurman, who says "early 2026."
If I was a betting man, I'd say this will come around March 2026 — at the same time as the M5 MacBook Air is rumored to drop.
M5 MacBook Pro: Design
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The M5 MacBook Pro sports that same flat, utilitarian design, which I love but is starting to get a little stale now.
With its utilitarian aesthetic, though, comes utilitarian functionality — that same port array that has come in clutch for many of my uses (HDMI for the TV, full-size SD card slot for my camera and thunderbolt ports out the wazoo), that same Liquid Retina XDR display that inspires confidence with its color accuracy, and the durable aluminum unibody for all terrains.
Expect the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros to go the same direction. The next big redesign is set to come with M6.
M5 MacBook Pro: Specs
The biggest change is the M5 chip under the hood. This brings some impressive gains across the board, but particularly in GPU and AI performance.
Apple is claiming that multithreaded performance of those CPU cores is up 20% compared to the M4, and the unified memory bandwidth has been boosted from 120GB/s to 153GB/s. That is sure to be feeding the 45% higher graphics performance in the new GPU.
Not only that, but each GPU core has its own AI accelerator too, which brings 3.5x faster local AI performance too. And for those who have a particularly neural-heavy workload, Apple now offers the Pro with 4TB of storage, and that SSD is 2x faster too.
But the big step change looks set to come with M5 Pro and M5 Max, as rather than creating a system on a chip like the M5, these will be systems of chips. Like Intel with Panther Lake, Apple has reportedly spotted the huge performance and power efficiency gains at play when you split up the CPU and GPU into their own individual tiles.
M5 MacBook Pro: Outlook
Keep it locked onto Tom's Guide for the full review of the M5 MacBook Pro. But to lock in my personal prediction now, this is going to be another impressive step forward for the Pro lineage — giving most folks a good entry point into becoming creative enthusiasts.
But for the power users, it may be worth waiting just a little while longer beyond M5 Pro and M5 Max for the OLED MacBook Pros to arrive.
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