Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro gets M5 chip upgrade and faster storage
▼ Summary
– The 14-inch MacBook Pro has been updated with a new M5 chip, faster storage, and a claimed 24-hour battery life, while the design and starting price of $1,599 remain unchanged.
– Apple states the M5 chip offers 3.5x faster AI performance, 1.6x faster graphics, and 20% higher multithreaded performance compared to the M4, along with increased memory bandwidth.
– Storage options now include up to a 4TB SSD, previously exclusive to M4 Pro upgrades, though this upgrade costs an additional $1,200.
– The laptop retains the same ports, screen, battery, webcam, networking, and speakers as the previous M4 model, with no new color introduced.
– The previous M4 base model was praised for improvements like an extra USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port and anti-glare display option, making it a favorite for students and content creators.
Apple has officially launched an updated version of its 14-inch MacBook Pro, now featuring the powerful new M5 chip, faster storage options, and an impressive battery life rated at up to 24 hours. The base model retains its starting price of $1,599 and includes a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. Preorders are currently open, with the first shipments expected to arrive on October 22nd.
According to Apple, the M5 chip delivers a substantial performance boost, especially in artificial intelligence applications. The company states that AI tasks run up to 3.5 times faster than on the M4 chip, thanks to an advanced 10-core GPU architecture that incorporates a dedicated Neural Accelerator in every core. Graphics performance sees a major uplift as well, with Apple claiming a 1.6x improvement in both graphical speed and gaming frame rates over the previous M4 model. Multithreaded performance also increases by 20 percent, while memory bandwidth jumps to 153Gbps, up from 120Gbps on the M4.
Storage options have been expanded significantly. Buyers can now configure the base 14-inch MacBook Pro with up to 4TB of SSD storage, an option previously reserved for models equipped with the higher-tier M4 Pro chip. However, this upgrade comes at a steep cost, adding the 4TB SSD increases the price by $1,200, nearly matching the cost of the entry-level laptop itself.
Beyond these internal upgrades, the new MacBook Pro remains nearly identical to its predecessor. It features the same selection of ports, display specifications, battery capacity, webcam, networking hardware, and speaker system. Even the available color options are unchanged from the M4 generation.
This consistency isn’t necessarily a drawback. Last year’s revision, which introduced the M4 chip, brought meaningful improvements such as an additional USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 port and an optional anti-reflective display coating. These enhancements made the laptop a notable step up from the M3 version, establishing it as a versatile and highly capable machine well-suited for students, creative professionals, and everyday productivity.
(Source: The Verge)
