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Laptops · Apple MacBook Pro

Apple MacBook Pro M5

39owners with an opinion
63%of verdicts positive
19/11positive/negative since 2024
0.5 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and display; criticized for value and noise.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 0.5 years
This feels like the car market during COVID. In December Best Buy had a $1999 configuration of the M5 MacBook Pro on sale for $1749 and I scooped one up. Now that model is $2199. I suspect I could sell the computer I've been using for 6 months at a profit, which is just bizarre. But then of course it would cost a lot if I wanted to replace it.
Doesn’t like it
Gaming laptops they've never competed at all. Windows laptops offer far more form factors with easily upgradeable hardware. One of the only places Apple has an advantage is their chipsets. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips have significantly closed the gap on Apple's ARM based M-chips. I just got a 16" MacBook Pro with an M5 pro chipset and its total pig compared to my 15.6" HP ZBook Power G8. The only area I can see where Apple is still holding their own is their UI/UX has always been buttery smooth compared to Windows or Linux. Not a fan the new liquid glass, but its still a very smooth running UI regardless.
Neutral
I figured my direct family could use an extra Macbook, so I decided to "peel" my M1 Pro away as a gift to my mom. It stays close, I can use her unused space as backup, provide ad-hoc Tailscale to her (way smoother than with her crufty Windows machine), and I get a nice upgrade to my current workflows. Having said that, I did plan on sticking it out 7 years. Ended up bailing on an M5 Pro!
Neutral
It shouldn't be this way, but DDR4 is perfectly fine and will last for years. RAM generally has low failure rates; and prices are relatively better on the used market. If you want ECC, many used DDR4 ECC sticks seem like a 'relative bargain' compared to how much DDR5 ECC goes for. As for GPU, AMD hasn't raised prices by as much; and honestly my 3060 12GB from many, many years ago plays absolutely every single game I want to play at 1440p; with nice visuals. Yeah, I can't pump everything to ultra, and maybe I need some DLSS for the most demanding games, but it's far cry from "old" or "obsolete". In terms of actual experience or enjoyment I get from video games, I'm not missing out on anything. It's legitimate to feel disappointed and upset at the current state of the PC market, but slightly older desktop hardware is still more than plenty fast enough. I own both a MBP M5 Pro 48GB, and a MacBook Neo, and I use my Neo probably 2x as much as my MBP.
Neutral
My favourite feature about this release is that support for ultra wide monitors dramatically improved. I bought a MacBook Pro (M5 Pro) in march and was shocked that it did not work properly with my LG 38WN95C-W Monitor (3840x1600@144Hz via USB-C). This has been fixed with macOS 27. I finally can use the native resolution + HiDPI with my monitor.
Doesn’t like it
There’s roughly 50% more memory bandwidth on an RTX 6000 pro versus the M5 Ultra. I imagine it really comes down to what you’re doing, I know my 5090 runs laps around the M5 Pro I have when it comes to local LLM performance (until it runs out of memory). If it wasn’t for the fact the 6000 Pro is selling for like 100% ($9,000) over MSRP it would probably look a lot more reasonable.
Doesn’t like it
My M5 pro macbook panics one to two times a week. I narrowed it down to an issue with a thunderbolt-linked ethernet adapter. I reported it about ten times, Apple never replied or addressed it. After a while I decided to take things into my own hands, and to write my own driver. Just installing a VM you can load a driver in for development and testing was a two-week effort. Everything locked down. Their VM infrastructure is so bad you can't even properly emulate or route the device, so in the end the only way to test it properly was to install the driver in the real thing, which is extremely disturbing to productivity, as the device you're working on constantly crashes. The whole platform is developer-hostile, which is essentially the same thing as user-hostile as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile, on Linux, zero issues, and writing or testing a driver is child's play. It's literally built for tinkerers.
Doesn’t like it
>I do wonder if my next computer should be a Mac Studio instead of a MBP that lives its life docked. Having owned 3 MacBook Pros since 2008, the decision to make my next computer be a Mac Studio came down to (1) MacBook thermal throttling that slows down CPUs when it starts to overheat and (2) easier upgrade of Mac Studio SSD with after-market storage module whereas the MacBook requires more complicated disassembly and hot air gun to dislodge the surface mounted SSDs. I have a brand new M5 Pro MacBook Pro I don't like it when the fans turn on. The Mac Studio will be faster and quieter for the same workloads.
Neutral
I've been using Dia, and this got better after the recent inclusion of Spaces similar to Arc. But, I'm suffering from RAM issues. Got 24GM RAM M5 (Non-Pro) MacBook Pro and about 10-15 tabs open, I'm consuming 19GB RAM with 5-9GB RAM in swap. I mean... now I'm wondering if I should've got higher RAM. Since I came from Air M1 8GB RAM, I thought 24GB is plenty enough but seems like not.
Likes it
I have an M5 MacBook Pro and I also have a separate GPU setup for running models. The difference in speed is significant. It's not just token generation speed, but time to first token (prompt processing). The M5 hardware is amazing for what it is, but GPUs are still so much faster. Running the models on the GPU box also means I can use the laptop on my lap instead of turning it into a hot plate.
Doesn’t like it
For a MBP I have 48 GB of RAM M5 Pro. It runs at about 12-14 t/s at Q4, you could probably optimize it further. RAM is not a limitation but overall memory bandwidth. Q8 is slower. 35B A3B Qwen is quite speedy, but a little less accurate. With Qwen 3.6 27B dense I can squeeze a 9B parameter model and use that for fast analysis or code scanning while 27B is churning on a task in the background. It is tight, but totally reasonable. The real sweet spot for Qwen 27B is getting it on something like a Dual 3090 system or some other config where it can blaze at 50-80 t/s and that costs well under 6K currently. It is a surprisingly capable model. Using something like GLM for orchestration, specs, task farming and then letting Qwen churn is relatively inexpensive. Overall I recommend people try models of this class out using OpenCode and some for pay service to experiment with them and understand how they work. I find they are very useful. Long term, I am convinced enough that if I wanted to use local models for any number of reasons I would be okay investing in a dual GPU box. The Mac is not fast enough for me and M5 Max is just too expensive relative to GPU linux box. Still, it is nice to have the models local ON the laptop and it is useful for what I care about locally.
Neutral
Not even young people: I have a very expensive MacBook Pro M5 i got from work, but my personal laptop is old and needs replacing. I’m a well-paid senior software developer and could afford any computer I wanted. But the MacBook Neo is a top contender even for me. I mostly need something for like editing documents, hobby coding and watching YouTube videos. It runs Codex or Gemini-CLI fine. For the price point, it seems perfect for a second computer. I could pay premium prices for something better, but honestly: I don’t think I need to.
Likes it
I'd held off from buying a new personal laptop for quite a few years and felt that the M5-128gb was justifiable once I started really seeing payoffs from using AI at work. Running w/ Cursor and doing some "nights and weekends" type coding / conversations, I was hitting $100-200 of usage within a few weeks. I know there's probably better ways to manage costs, but I was getting enough value out of it to keep bumping my spend limit from $20 => $40 => $80 => $120 (and then I stopped spending! :-) Messing around with local-llm, I've settled on `omlx` and `gemma` for "conversational", and I think it's `qwen-120b-a3b-6bit` or something for the "heavy hitter". Gemma "gets it" a lot more, whereas that particular `qwen` tends to fall into the "MuSt WrItE CoOooDeee!" behaviour in a lot of cases instead of holding a conversation, and does an awesome job of randomly spitting out ascii-art diagrams or including full-blown bash shell scripts to illustrate different cases. My POV is: "Local for slightly slower/casual usage", the ~1% of battery usage per minute of LLM is shockingly accurate (eg: 30 minutes == 30% drop!). "Gemma for discussion and emitting DESIGN-... docs", and "Qwen for converting DESIGN-... to PLAN-...", (as well as implementation, but generally from a fresh context loading the relevant PLAN-... or supporting docs) ...then supplement that with direct Cursor usage in case I screw up some setting on being able to get the local LLM working, or if I need to include literal we…
Likes it
If you dont think apple silicon and rosetta rollout was a massively successful and high difficulty technical accomplishment I dont really know what to tell you. Just look at the windows ecosystems attempts to roll out arm devices. I can still use my 900 dollar m1 macbook air for almost anything and I have a desktop computer with 128gigs of memory and a 5090. And the battery lasts for days to the point I barely think of charging it. And my m5pro work laptop is just basically a perfect device. I think I use enough platforms to be a fair judge. I also detect the sloppiness in some of the software, im just saying in comparison its a pretty minor issue and theyre still executing way above the alternatives.
Doesn’t like it
I joined gdm recently, and previously used (neo)vim exclusively. Begrudgingly Cider-V is very, very good. It might be possible to get by without it, but the system is so locked down you’re going to make a lot of sacrifices. (very few authorised extensions, codebase is so large it’s going to break whatever tools your used to using anyway, no git) I’m well thinking I may as well trade my brick of an m5 pro for a 13” chromebook, it’s a strange time.