Apple’s new MacBook Pros with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are hitting the market this Wednesday, and reviews for the latest models have arrived. Here’s what the reviews are saying.

M5 Pro and M5 Max Chips: Powerful Performance, but Faster SSDs Provide a Significant Boost

Most features of the new MacBook Pro are the same as the M4 models released at the end of 2024.

However, the biggest difference lies in the impressive gains offered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

Here are comparisons of the M5 Max with the M4 Max and M3 Ultra. pic.twitter.com/9qlLr74Vys

— Max Weinbach (@mweinbach) March 9, 2026

Jason Snell writes for Six Colors:

In summary, the M5 CPU core is about 15% faster than the M4 generation, and the Pro and Max 15 or 18-core CPU configurations will leave my 10-core M4 Max behind. My review unit is 23% faster than my M4 Max laptop.

As you would expect, the GPU performance on the Pro laptops depends on which chip class you purchase. The Max versions have significantly more GPU cores and will deliver much better performance. However, the Metal score of the M4 Max was only 14% higher than that of the M5 Pro; while the M4 Max has 32 GPU cores, the M5 Pro has 20 GPU cores. This is quite impressive, and if you need a really large number of GPU cores to apply to your GPU-intensive workflows, the M5 Max is available.

Apple claims that the MacBook Pro's ‘super cores’ are the fastest CPU cores in the world. Tom’s Hardware tested this and compared the M5 Max with several competing PCs.

The new MacBook Pro did not disappoint, and the SSD speeds were a significant surprise.

In Geekbench 6, Apple’s super cores were the fastest with a score of 4,338 in single-core tests. In multi-core tests, the super and performance cores reached a score of 29,430, leaving others behind. The highest scores for both were 3,031 and 17,283, respectively, with the ZenBook Duo.

Apple dazzled in our file transfer test. They claim their SSDs are twice as fast as the previous generation, and the results show. The MacBook Pro completed our 25GB file transfer test at a speed of 3,835.38 MBps. The next fastest was the Framework at 1,724.69 MBps.

In our Handbrake video encoding test, the Mac converted 4K video to 1080p in 1 minute and 55 seconds. This is nearly a minute and a half faster than the next fastest, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, which took 3:18.

The Verge adds: “The new high-performance M5 chip offers noticeable improvements, such as a significant increase in SSD read/write speeds.”

For more information on the new core types used by Apple in the MacBook Pro, Brian Westover writes for PCMag:

In a sense, with the M5 Pro and Max, Apple is taking its usual “big.LITTLE” core hierarchy and adopting something you might call “bigger.BIG” in these chips; where traditional performance cores are positioned as lower-tier cores. These performance cores are multi-threaded workers that offer better efficiency and dynamic range than super cores, but without the limitations that sometimes cause efficiency cores (the third layer of chip cores) to become a bottleneck.

M5 MacBook Pro Reviews: Overall Assessment

If you are looking for a radically new MacBook Pro filled with new features, that model will come later this year.

The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are indeed the only significant changes with this latest MacBook Pro. Apple’s N1 wireless chip is also a nice advantage, but the main reason for the upgrade is pure performance. And based on these early reviews, Apple has definitely succeeded in this regard.

Are you considering switching to a MacBook Pro with M5 Pro or M5 Max? What motivates your purchase? Let us know in the comments.

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