M5 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air Review Roundup
M5 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air Review Roundup
https://www.macstories.net/news/m5-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-review-roundup/
Publish Date: 2026-03-11 03:00:00
Source Domain: www.macstories.net
The reviews are in, and it looks like my initial impressions from last week’s press releases hold up pretty well.
The M5 MacBook Pro
What was clear to me from what Apple said is that the M5 MacBook Pro is an especially nice upgrade, even from the M4 models. As Jason Snell put it on Six Colors:
The pace of Apple silicon progress is breathtaking, not just at the base level that powers the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, but up here at the level of bespoke chips designed for Apple’s most powerful systems.
Jason reviewed a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro (18-core CPU, 20-core GPU) chip, which he reported is overall 23% faster than his personal M4 Max laptop. Even with its 32 GPU cores, Jason’s M4 Max was only 14% faster than his M5 Pro MacBook Pro review unit, which has just 20 GPU cores. I’ve noticed similar GPU improvements between my M1 Max Mac Studio and the M4 Pro Mac mini. I’m working on a story about my recent tests, which show that even the last-generation M4 Pro can run circles around the M1 Max’s GPUs. It’s astonishing.
What I find remarkable about this is that it has allowed Apple to embrace both ends of the computing spectrum at once. The longevity and capabilities of prior generations of Apple silicon chipsets allow for laptops like the MacBook Neo, which by all accounts is a champ at tackling day-to-day workloads. At the same time, the M5 Max exists, which is the sort of chipset that AI workflows and other pro use cases demand. The spread of capabilities has never been wider, which is great for users who can dial in exactly what they need better than ever.
Cameron Faulkner at The Verge was a little less enthusiastic:
People who bought the last-gen MacBook Pros aren’t missing out on a ton, save for the incredibly fast read/write SSD speeds. But if you bought the M2 Max three years ago and you’re already pushing it to its limits, the M5 Max looks like a significant upgrade.
I can’t disagree that if you have an…
