M5 MacBook Pro 14 Review: The GPU Performance Boost Is Real

8.4/ 10
SCORE

Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M5, late 2025)

Pros

• Excellent screen, especially with nano-texture
• Great performance
• Good size and reasonable weight for everyday use
• Same first-rate design as previous models

Cons

• Screen notch remains irritating
• Big drop in performance in low-power mode
• Only two external displays supported in the M5 model
• Prone to fingerprint smudges
• Bundled 70-watt adapter doesn’t support fast charging

It wasn’t the big redesign we were hoping for this time last year, when Apple rolled out its M4 models of the MacBook Pro. In fact, there wasn’t a redesign at all. This generation of the 14-inch MacBook Pro is identical to the 2024 model (prices remain unchanged as well) with a single exception — it incorporates the M5 processor, which debuted this fall. 

On one hand, my testing shows the chip’s upgraded GPU architecture delivers big performance improvements over the M4 in the narrow areas where it applies, namely on-GPU processing for AI (notably image generation) and ray-traced graphics. Those go along with Apple’s typical generation-over-generation performance improvements. So, as expected, one of the best-performing consumer CPUs just got better, bringing a top-performing laptop in its wake.

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That uplift is built on the laptop’s current excellent design; exceptional battery life (I’m still testing it, but the M4 model lasted 22 hours); and a terrific, color-accurate, bright, wide-gamut HDR display that’s made even better with the optional $150 nonreflective nano-texture layer. And it retains one of the best aspects of the MacBook Pro’s performance — that it doesn’t drop when running on battery. There’s still a low-power mode, where you do take a big hit, but the standard battery mode should be good enough for most situations.

On the other hand, though, the performance gains for gaming don’t necessarily tip it over the edge where it’s struggling, notably for AAA games, into solid territory. The good gets better but the borderline passable just edges closer.

Your choices for the MBP 14 are the M5 models, with last-generation Thunderbolt 4 and a limit of two external monitors, or an M4 Pro or Max system with the newer Thunderbolt 5 and, in the case of the Max, support for up to four external monitors. All are otherwise identical. The base M4 Pro model is priced the same as the top M5 model at $1,999 and is probably a better deal. It has less storage, but you can always add an external drive, and it delivers better overall performance (with some narrow exceptions). As usual for the MacBooks, I think the laptop is expensive but not overpriced.

But there’s no compelling reason to upgrade to an M5 model unless you already want to replace your current system. In that case, as always, you’ll at the very least experience better performance than what you’ve got now. For instance, in applications that don’t require real-time rendering, like 3D design, the improved ray-tracing speed is an unambiguous boon. 

But if you’re switching from a Pro or Max-based laptop, then things get a little fuzzier. For instance, the M5 delivers among the fastest single-core CPU speeds I’ve seen in a consumer processor. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into best overall performance — a processor with slower individual cores, but more of them, can surpass it. 

The game performance improvement conundrum

More powerful versions of the chip (the Pro and Max) are based on last year’s M4 architecture. So even though the M5 has the faster, upgraded GPU with a new ray-tracing acceleration cluster, it doesn’t have enough GPU cores to take significant advantage of the additional RT accelerators. In practice, that means games that played well on the M4 — those that aren’t GPU-intensive, like Hades 2 — play a little better on the M5. 

Despite a 50% improvement in ray tracing throughput (as measured by 3DMark’s Solar Bay benchmark), though, it’s held back by the 10-core GPU. Take one of the few games for the Mac that use ray tracing — enough that Apple’s relying on it as a showcase — Cyberpunk 2077. 

On the M5, I could get non-ray-traced frame rates as high as a playable 70fps. But that was at 1,800×1,125-pixel resolution and aggressively using Apple’s Dynamic Scaling, where it looked meh. Raising the resolution to 1,920×1,200 with the same ADS settings looked a little better, but the frame rate dropped to about 60fps. I found the best-looking resolution with ADS to be 2,560×1,600, but the frame rate dropped to about 44fps. Ultimately, if you spend enough time tweaking settings, you can get it playable to your taste.

But tossing in ray tracing makes it slower without adding anything. Cyberpunk’s Low ray-tracing setting just beefs up local shadows a little. It’s not worth it. So better, but not better enough. If the chip were an M5 Pro or M5 Max, though, with more graphics cores, the story might be different. We’ve yet to see that.

For AI, the addition of neural accelerators on each GPU core does make image generation a lot faster. And surprisingly, I was able to run the GPU-intensive Procyon Stable Diffusion benchmark on battery — the M4’s battery consistently gave out before the benchmark finished because it was a lot less efficient. 

Standard, low-power on-device tasks (like document drafting or webcam video processing) that use the CPU’s Neural Accelerator show minimal improvement because not much has changed in that cluster. The fixed 16 neural cores across chips means that a hypothetical M5 Pro or Max won’t make a difference if that part of the architecture remains the same as the base M5.

Decisions, decisions

My typical advice holds: If you don’t need it now, if your current MacBook’s performance and feature set isn’t distressing you, wait. There’s nothing in the newest model that screams “must have!” Especially if we might see more powerful versions of the chip in the spring. 

If you do need to buy and are budget-constrained, you might be able to find M4 models on sale during Black Friday and the holidays. While I always think you’re better off buying the latest when you buy, it’s probably not absolutely necessary if you can’t afford it. (Plus, if you don’t need the Pro features, the M4 MacBook Air 15 might be a better fit.)

But if you’re in the market and could use a general performance boost over your current base model MacBook or MacBook Pro across the board, you definitely won’t be disappointed by what the M5 MacBook Pro 14 delivers.