Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup is now even more supercharged – here’s how
Apple is holding an event tomorrow, but it's certainly not keeping its powder dry...
Apple’s MacBook Pro laptop lineup has been given a huge power-up with new M5 Pro and M5 Max processors.
Apple is holding an event tomorrow and since it has now revealed the iPhone 17e, iPad Air M4, MacBookAir M5 and new Studio Displays in addition to these Pro Macs – there’s a legitimate question as to what it will talk about at the event. It must be that Apple will reveal a cheaper MacBook at the event.
M5 Pro and M5 Max build on the standard M5 chip and Apple is talking up some impressive numbers. There is a downside though and that is that this lineup is more expensive than before starting at $2199/£2199.
Crucially the MacBook Pro now boasts up to twice the SSD speed performance (it was already extremely fast) and storage now starts at a stunning 1TB. I am a little surprised that 512GB is not going to be offered as an option, but it provides another level of distinction for the MacBook Pro.
Apple claims there’s up to 5.4x faster video effects rendering performance for the M5 Max in when compared to MacBook Pro with M1 Max, and up to 3x faster than MacBook Pro with M4 Max.
The Apple-designed N1 networking chip is also used in this lineup for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support. Once again, there’s a claim of 24 hours of battery life. Previous gen models can be eked out to just shy of 20 hours so it’ll be interesting to see if this new gen improves on that.
As before, the Liquid Retina XDR display has a nano-texture option, which I like at times but overall I prefer the screen without it.
Once again the MacBook Pro comes in space black and silver (some new finishes please!) and is available from 11 March, though you can pre-order from tomorrow.
There is now new neural accelerator tech in the graphics processing and Apple is talking up advanced AI work for this Mac. “With Neural Accelerators in the GPU, the new MacBook Pro enables professionals to run advanced LLMs on device and unlock capabilities that no other laptop can do,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
