MacBook Pro (M5, 2025)
Apple (Hacker News, MacRumors, Slashdot):
With M5, the 14-inch MacBook Pro gets even faster, more capable, and delivers a huge leap in AI performance.
[…]
Additionally, it offers phenomenal battery life of up to 24 hours, so users can take their pro workflows anywhere. With the latest storage technology, the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 brings faster SSD performance than the previous generation for tasks like importing RAW image files or exporting large videos.
[…]
Altogether, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 delivers an industry-leading combination of capabilities for the same starting price of $1,599 — making it an even better value and upgrade for current and new Mac users.
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Up to 2.1x faster build performance when compiling code in Xcode when compared to the 13‑inch MacBook Pro with M1, and up to 1.2x faster than the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4.
But unlike the last couple MacBook Pro refreshes, Apple isn’t ready with Pro and Max versions of the M5 for higher-end 14-inch MacBook Pros and 16-inch MacBook Pros. Those models will continue to use the M4 Pro and M4 Max for now, and we probably shouldn’t expect an update for them until sometime next year.
[…]
Aside from the M5, the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro has essentially identical specs to the outgoing M4 version. It has a notched 14-inch screen with ProMotion support and a 3024×1964 resolution, three USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, and a 12 MP Center Stage webcam. It still weighs 3.4 pounds, and Apple still estimates the battery should last for “up to 16 hours” of wireless web browsing and up to 24 hours of video streaming. The main internal difference is an option for a 4TB storage upgrade, which will run you $1,200 if you’re upgrading from the base 512GB SSD.
Although I’m impatient to see what an M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro are capable of, and I’m dying to see a Mac Studio configured with the M5 generation of chips, I’m glad Apple didn’t wait to release the M5 in the 14” MacBook Pro. If the chip is ready, why not?
MacBook Pro M5 comes without a charger in the Europe (not eu), and with a charger in the US. for the same base price 🤡
Tobi:
EU requires that buyers have the option to buy products without a charging brick. Apple just decided to remove it entirely to fulfill that requirement.
The new iPad gets the N1 but the MBP is stuck with Bluetooth 5.x?!
Previously:
Update (2025-10-16): John Gruber (Mastodon):
The base 14-inch model, with the no-adjective M-series chip, is for people who probably would be better served with a MacBook Air but who wrongly believe they “need” a laptop with “Pro” in its name.
These days, I think the base MacBook Pro seems less like an odd duck and more like a natural fit between the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro with the Pro processor. Compared with the MacBook Air, you get a larger and better display, longer battery life, more ports, an SD card slot, better sound, HDMI. If you need one or more of these things, but don’t need more RAM or CPU cores, you can save $400.
Here’s a timeline of no-adjective M-series chips and when they appeared in the 14-inch MacBook Pro[…]
Update (2025-10-17): Nick Heer:
In Ireland, the MacBook Pro used to start at €1,949; it now starts at €1,849; in France, it was €1,899, and it is now €1,799. As mentioned, the adapter is €65, making these new Macs €35 less with a comparable configuration. The same is true in each Euro-currency country I checked: Germany, Italy, and Spain all received a €100 price cut if you do not want an A.C. adapter, and a €35 price cut if you do.
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Countries with a charger in the box, on the other hand, see no such price adjustment, at least for the ones I have checked. The new M5 model starts at the same price as the M4 it replaces in Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United States.
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Maybe Apple was already planning a €100 price cut for these new models. The M4 was €100 less expensive than the M3 it replaced, for example, so it is plausible. That is something we simply cannot know. What we do know for certain is that these new MacBook Pros might not come with an A.C. adapter, but even if someone adds one at checkout, it still costs less in most places with this option.
Apple’s decision to remove the charger entirely from the EU boxes therefore goes beyond what the law requires. The company could, for example, offer customers the option to include a charger at checkout for no additional cost, as long as it also sells a version without one. The lack of charger in the UK is even more unnecessary, since it is not part of the European Union.
The move to charge separately for adapters is therefore a business choice by Apple, not a legal necessity. The company’s approach simplifies logistics and packaging, avoiding the need for separate SKUs in Europe, but it also shifts the cost to customers who do not already own a compatible charger.
Based on a single unconfirmed result uploaded to the Geekbench 6 database today, the M5 chip has pulled off an impressive feat. Specifically, the chip achieved a score of 4,263 for single-core CPU performance, which is the highest single-core score that has ever been recorded in the Geekbench 6 database for any Mac or PC processor.
Update (2025-10-20): John Gruber (Mastodon):
In my defense, I did say “probably” in my post. My understanding is that the base MacBook Pro is a huge seller for Apple. So of course some very well-informed users are buying them for good reasons. But I really do think an awful lot of base MacBook Pro buyers are spending an extra $600 and carrying 0.7 pounds of extra weight for features they don’t actually notice or care about. They just think they need a “pro” laptop, and underestimate just how incredibly capable MacBook Airs are.
It probably goes the other way, too. Once you get all the advantages of the base MacBook Pro over the Air, how many people really need the Pro or Max processor? The regular M4/M5 is really good. Before Apple Silicon, I had typically bought the fastest or second-fastest processor, but since then I’ve been getting the Pro instead of the Max and haven’t regretted it.
Update (2025-10-21): John Gruber (Mastodon):
I wondered why the U.K. — which left the EU five years ago — was affected. DF reader C.A. wrote, via email[…] Something similar (the EEA) is the reason why the power adapter isn’t in the box for Norway, either — a country that has never been part of the EU.
The fact that the new M5 MacBook Pro costs less than the M4 models, even when paying extra to include a new power adapter, leads me to suspect that Apple was planning price cuts in these countries regardless.
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The problem I see with the MacBook power adapter situation in Europe is that while power users — like the sort of people who read Daring Fireball and Pixel Envy — will have no problem buying exactly the sort of power adapter they want, or simply re-using a good one they already own, normal users have no idea what makes a “good” power adapter. I suspect there are going to be a lot of Europeans who buy a new M5 MacBook Pro and wind up charging it with inexpensive low-watt power adapters meant for things like phones, and wind up with a shitty, slow charging experience.
The biggest disappointment is probably wireless connectivity. The MacBook Pro still doesn’t support Wi-Fi 7 or Bluetooth 6 (it’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3). We all know that Apple doesn’t always rush to support new connectivity standards, but in this case, Apple is supporting those standards—on the iPhone and iPad, but not the Mac. Apple is justifiably proud of its new N1 chip, which provides that connectivity to those other products—and yet it’s apparently going to be another product cycle where Macs are lagging behind.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the fact that we’re now entering another Mac release cycle with no cellular option on Apple’s laptops. This has been a perplexing omission for years—tethering to a phone is not a cure-all, and Apple’s been offering cellular iPads since the very beginning. But it’s now officially extra baffling, because Apple is shipping its very own C1 and C1X chips in iPhones and iPads. Apple now makes its own cellular radios, but still refuses to put them in Macs. If not now, when?
Update (2025-10-22): Joe Rossignol:
The first reviews of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip have been shared by selected publications and YouTube channels, ahead of the device launching this Wednesday.
With this generation and M5, I think it’s one of the larger changes in recent history for Apple Silicon! Let’s talk about it in 3 parts: CPU, GPU, and cache!
On Geekbench 6 tests, the M5 MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 4220 and a multi-core score of 16781, while the M4 MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 3834 and a multi-core score of 15453. Apple says that M5 CPU speeds are up to 15 percent faster than M4 speeds.
As for the GPU, the M5 earned an OpenCL score of 48101 and a Metal score of 75536, while the M4 earned a score of 38023 and a Metal Score of 57822. Apple says that GPU speeds are up to 30 percent faster.
SSD speeds have also improved, and Apple says it's up to 2x faster. That proved to be correct in our Blackmagic disk speed tests.
Update (2025-10-30): Carsten Frauenheim and Elizabeth Chamberlain:
An “important information” tooltip says, “The Top Case replacement part includes a battery. In the future, a battery replacement part will be available.” But for now, this tedious and insanely expensive process is the only offering they make for changing out a dead battery.
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The good news? For the first time in a MacBook Pro, you don’t have to remove the trackpad to access the pull tabs that release the central battery cells. It’s a sign of some of the same sort of improvements we were excited to see in the iPhone 17 Air design, prioritizing access to components that will need to be replaced first.
Via Nick Heer:
I hate to be that guy, but the battery for a mid-2007 15-inch MacBook Pro used to cost around $150 (about $220 inflation-adjusted) and could be swapped with two fingers. The official DIY solution for replacing the one in my M1 MacBook Pro is over $700, though there is a $124 credit for returning the replaced part. The old battery was, of course, a little bit worse: 60 watt-hours compared to 70 watt-hours in the one I am writing this with. I do not even mind the built-in-ness of this battery. But it should not cost an extra $500 and require swapping the rest of the top case parts.
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Interesting malicious compliance about the power adapter. Wasn't it just a few years ago that France — I think only France — was requiring them to bundle a wall charger with iPhones that newly came without? (I think they had to ship with an overpack box)
@Plume I think it means that, in any given country, the M5 MacBook Pro has the same price as the M4 one it’s replacing, but the M5 doesn’t include the charger.
I agree with Michael in the 2025-10-16 update; I did choose the M4-not-Pro Macbook Pro instead of the Air because I value the better battery, sound, and especially the ports.
It's strange for *only* the base model to have a newer chip.
Doesn't it create an Osborne Effect? Unless you need a new MBP right now, why wouldn't you wait for M5 Pros?
Is the rest of the lineup getting a redesign, maybe with FaceID?
Did tariffs influence this?
I can't figure it out.
@Hammer, Apple seems to assume (apparently correctly) that very few people know or care about the latest releases and will just buy whatever is available.
I think a lot of folks- especially the apple vanguard- are still thinking of the base 14" macbook pro as if it's the 13" macbook pro that came along with the old intel macbook air design. The 13" M1/M2 mbp was not an active _bad_ computer per se, but it was really hard to see the value it offered over the air when all it added was a fan and a small amount of battery life. Zero other improvements. The M2 base Pro was especially hard to square when put next to the new M2 Air.
But the modern 14" Pros are *great* machines, especially for deploying. If the choice was still between the touchbar model and the air, I'd go Air all day. But the built-in HDMI makes the Pro an instant win in my book for anyone in an office environment because USB C output is still unpredictable and complicated. Did you remember your dongle? Did you buy the cheapest dongle you could find on Amazon and now it won't work? none of that matter when there's an HDMI port just built in and (effectively) guaranteed to work.
I currently have an M1 Pro MBP and when that finally kicks it, I don't see myself buying another M* Pro model– but there's no world where I go back to the Air at this point, the tradeoffs aren't worth it for me. I'm glad there's an intermediate option, and I don't really think it complicates the line that much... at least at present.
I agreed with Michael Tsai's assessment of the Pro's value over the Air enough that I ordered a refurb M4 today. With 1TB of storage, 24GB RAM, and the matte display, the cost of US $1,900 (with tax) seemed like a sufficient deal while also allowing me to avoid Tahoe/Liquid Glass until they sufficiently refine that UI. It will replace a 2013 Air—Intel i7, 256GB storage and 8GB RAM that cost $1,550 new. Adjusted for inflation, that's $2,155 today, so all things considered I think us consumers have it pretty good on hardware cost nowadays.
