Apple Updates MacBook Pro With M5 Pro and M5 Max Chips and 1TB Base Storage

Apple is continuing what appears to be a week-long series of product announcements. After introducing the iPhone 17e and the new iPad Air M4, the company has now unveiled an updated MacBook Pro lineup powered by the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

The new MacBook Pro is designed for demanding creative and professional workflows, offering faster CPU and GPU performance, improved on-device AI capabilities, and larger starting storage capacities.

“MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max redefines what’s possible on a pro laptop, now up to 4x faster than the previous generation,” said John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. “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 — all while maintaining exceptional battery life. Combined with even faster unified memory and storage, it empowers users to take their work even further, unleashing new possibilities and pushing the boundaries of what they can do.”

M5 Pro and M5 Max Performance

The new MacBook Pro is available in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, with both models configurable with either the M5 Pro or M5 Max processors. Apple says the new chips deliver major improvements in both computing and AI performance.

According to Apple, the new processors offer up to four times faster AI performance than the previous generation and up to eight times faster AI processing compared to M1-based MacBook Pro models. This added performance is intended to support increasingly AI-driven workflows directly on the device.

The M5 chips are built using Apple’s Fusion Architecture, combining two dies into a single system-on-a-chip design to improve performance and efficiency. The M5 Pro and M5 Max feature up to an 18-core CPU with six performance cores and 12 efficiency cores.

The GPU uses a similar architecture and includes Neural Accelerators in each core, which Apple says deliver up to four times faster processing compared to M4 Pro and M4 Max chips and up to eight times faster AI image generation than M1 Pro and M1 Max models.

Memory and Storage Upgrades

Memory and storage capabilities have also been expanded in the new MacBook Pro lineup.

The M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory with bandwidth reaching 307GB/s. The M5 Max increases this to as much as 128GB of unified memory with up to 614GB/s of bandwidth. These improvements are designed to support demanding creative applications and on-device AI workloads.

Internal storage performance has also improved, with SSD speeds up to twice as fast as the previous generation.

Base storage now starts at 1TB for the M5 Pro models, while M5 Max configurations start with 2TB of storage.

Display, Camera, and Connectivity

Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models feature Apple’s Liquid Retina XDR display, offering up to 1600 nits of peak brightness for HDR content and up to 1000 nits for SDR content.

The laptops include a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with Desk View support, along with studio-quality microphones and a six-speaker sound system with Spatial Audio support.

Connectivity includes support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, along with Apple’s N1 wireless chip designed to improve reliability and performance.

Pricing and Availability

The new MacBook Pro models are available for pre-order starting March 4 and will begin shipping on March 11.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and 1TB storage starts at $2,199, while the 16-inch version starts at $2,699. Models equipped with the M5 Max processor and 2TB of storage start at $3,599 for the 14-inch model and $3,899 for the 16-inch version.

Both models are available in Space Black and Silver.