ADAM ENGST 15 October 2025

Apple can’t be accused of sitting on its hardware laurels. Just a month after launching the iPhone 17 lineup with the new A19 and A19 Pro chips, the company has shifted its attention to the Mac, iPad, and Vision Pro, unveiling models powered by the new M5 system on a chip.

The M5 brings unprecedented performance to the base level of the next generation of Apple’s M-series chip family. It features a new 10-core GPU architecture that promises over 4x the peak GPU compute performance of the M4. Enhanced graphics capabilities and ray tracing deliver results up to 45% faster than the M4. On the CPU side, a 10-core CPU with six efficiency cores and four performance cores offers up to 15% faster multithreaded performance than the M4. Unified memory bandwidth improves to 153 GBps, up from 120 GBps in the M4. Apple also touts an improved 16-core Neural Engine and a powerful media engine.

Apple made no comparisons to the M4 Pro and M4 Max, although I suspect they will continue to outperform the M5 in most ways. We’ll likely see the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips sometime in 2026; the M5 Ultra, however, is less certain, given that Apple hasn’t yet released an M4 Ultra.

Although it seems likely that Apple will eventually (soon?) update the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Air with the M5, the company is delivering it on devices with the word Pro in the name for now: the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro, and the Vision Pro. Interestingly, Apple chose a white-on-black color scheme for its M5, MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro press releases, whereas the Vision Pro release featured a black-on-white color scheme. Read into that what you will—I couldn’t help but think that the Vision Pro doesn’t really count as a Pro device.

14-inch MacBook Pro with M5

There are only a few substantive changes in the latest iteration of the 14-inch MacBook Pro: a faster M5 chip, improved SSD performance, and a 4 TB SSD option.

With the M5 chip, Apple claims the following improvements over the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1. It’s always a little hard to evaluate these unless you’re deeply familiar with the apps cited, but the increases—particularly over the M1—seem significant. As always, if you’re still using any Intel-based Mac, upgrade immediately for mind-blowing performance improvements.

Metric	vs M4	vs M1
Peak GPU Compute	4x faster	>6x faster
Graphics with Ray Tracing	45% faster	6.8x faster
CPU Multithreaded	20% faster	2x faster
3D Rendering (Blender)	1.7x faster	6.8x faster
Game Frame Rates	1.6x faster	3.2x faster
Code Compilation (Xcode)	1.2x faster	2.1x faster
AI Performance	3.5x faster	6x faster
AI Video Enhancement (Topaz Video)	1.8x faster	7.7x faster

Apple says that it increased SSD performance by up to 2x, which is welcome, given that the M4 model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro turned in SSD benchmarks of roughly 2900/3300 MBps read/write for a 1 TB SSD, whereas the M4 Pro model showed 5100/6400 MBps read/write for the same size SSD (2 TB was similar; 512 GB was slower). In other words, improved SSD performance may bring the M5 model closer to the M4 Pro model in terms of storage performance. Apple also added a 4 TB option to the base-level model with the M5, a storage tier that was previously limited to the M4 Pro and M4 Max models.

Otherwise, Apple left nearly everything else about the base-level 14-inch MacBook Pro unchanged. The new model features the same 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion, supporting up to 120 Hz, as well as the same aluminum chassis. It also retains the same collection of ports, including three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, and MagSafe 3. Battery life remains rated at up to 24 hours of video playback, and the 12-megapixel FaceTime camera, six-speaker sound system, and Wi-Fi 6E/Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity are all carried over intact.

The M5 model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is a welcome evolution at the lower end of the MacBook Pro lineup for new purchasers. It might trigger some upgrades from the M1 model of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, but it’s harder to see owners of M2 and M3 models upgrading. Those who needed more performance in the past likely already plunked for a Pro or Max chip, which are likely far more competitive with the M5.

The M5 model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro continues to start at $1599 with 16 GB of unified memory and 512 GB of storage. It’s available in the same silver and space black colors for pre-order now, with availability beginning 22 October 2025.

11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro with M5

While the changes in the 14-inch MacBook Pro were relatively limited, Apple made more sweeping updates to the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models. The M5 chip enables Apple to claim similarly increased performance over the previous M4 and M1 iPad Pro models.

Metric	vs M4	vs M1
AI Performance	3.5x faster	5.6x faster
3D Rendering with Ray Tracing	1.5x faster	6.7x faster
Video Transcode (Final Cut Pro)	1.2x faster	6x faster
AI Image Generation (Draw Things)	2x faster	4x faster
AI Video Upscaling (DaVinci Resolve)	2.3x faster	3.7x faster

The updated iPad Pro models also receive the same faster “up to 2x” storage as the 14-inch MacBook Pro, although they continue to max out at 2 TB of storage. In other specs, Apple bumped the unified memory in the 256 GB and 512 GB models from 8 GB to 12 GB, enabled the iPad Pro to drive external 4K displays at up to 120 Hz with support for Adaptive Sync to reduce latency (helpful for gaming), and added fast charging that enables a 50% charge in 30 minutes with an appropriate charger. As in the previous M4 lineup, the 256 GB and 512 GB models feature a 9-core CPU, whereas the 1 TB and 2 TB models have a 10-core CPU and gain a nano-texture glass option.

Although users may not notice, Apple outfitted these new iPad Pro models with the company’s new C1X cellular modem and N1 wireless networking chip. Apple claims that the C1X provides up to 50% faster cellular performance and up to 30% lower power consumption during active cellular use. (But official battery life estimates remain the same.) The N1 chip enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread networking—the company claims that the N1 provides better performance when connected to 5 GHz networks and improves the overall performance and reliability of features like Personal Hotspot and AirDrop. The fact that Apple is promising reliability improvements acknowledges that both—though improved over the years—have long been flaky.

Beyond these internal upgrades, the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models remain almost visually and functionally identical to their predecessors. Apple carried over the same Ultra Retina XDR display, cameras, ports, and accessory ecosystem (Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil). The chassis and external form factors remain unchanged.

I remain somewhat uncertain as to who buys the iPad Pro. I suppose serious creative professionals might choose one, but I suspect that most of those people would be using even more powerful Macs, such as a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip. Those who found a previous iPad Pro generation insufficiently fast may see the performance increases as sufficiently compelling to upgrade.

Pricing remains the same. The Wi-Fi model of the 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999 with 256 GB of storage; adding cellular connectivity increases the price to $1199. The 13-inch iPad Pro costs $1299 for 256 GB of storage with the Wi-Fi model and $1499 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model. They’re available for pre-order in silver and space black colors now, with availability beginning 22 October 2025.

Vision Pro with M5

Look, Apple updated the Vision Pro! Don’t get too excited, since there are only two changes: a notable upgrade from the M2 to the M5 chip and a new Dual Knit Band that Apple says is more comfortable.

That’s not to say that the performance improvements aren’t welcome. Apple says the Vision Pro with the M5 chip can render 10% more pixels, resulting in a sharper image with crisper text and more detailed visuals. It can also increase the refresh rate up to 120 Hz (from 100 Hz) for reduced motion blur. Battery life also sees a small improvement, with 30 minutes of additional general use (up to 2.5 hours) and video playback (up to 3 hours). Otherwise, the Vision Pro remains the same beast in form, function, philosophy, and, most importantly, price—$3499, with a total cost closer to $4000 after special lenses, sales tax, and AppleCare.

I suppose there may be some Vision Pro owners who, unconstrained by budget, will upgrade for the improved visuals, better performance, and enhanced battery life. However, none of these improvements change the Vision Pro’s core value proposition (or lack thereof), so it’s hard to imagine many people seeing the addition of the M5 as a reason to dive into the virtual world of the Vision Pro.

In “Apple Vision Pro Evokes Deep Ambivalence” (12 June 2023), I concluded with:

Reassessing after the second or third release might be the smart thing to do. The original iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch feel dated today, and for those who aren’t interested in watching movies, playing games, or experimenting with the latest tech, it’s difficult to imagine what real-world problem the Vision Pro solves. By then, we’ll also have a sense of how Apple has addressed social and societal concerns to keep the Vision Pro from playing a role in a Ready Player One-like dystopia.

It appears that the Vision Pro hasn’t solved any real-world problem sufficiently well to garner the necessary level of popularity to trigger societal concerns. While I certainly know of people who own one (mostly industry tech writers), I’ve never seen or heard of anyone using one among the people I interact with in person.