Earlier this week, Apple unveiled three new products with the M5 chip, built on the third generation 3nm process. While it’s only in one Mac at the moment – the 14-inch MacBook Pro – early benchmark results look incredibly promising.
It’s worth noting that this is only the baseline M5 chip. There’s no M5 Pro, Max, or Ultra chip yet. M5 equips 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, just like M4. For reference, M4 Pro equipped up to 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, with M4 Max having 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
Either way, compared to the M1 Ultra chip from 2022 (which you needed a $4000 Mac Studio to get), base M5 just about matches it in multi-core performance, running just 6% behind in Geekbench 6.
It also scores similarly to the binned M3 Max chip, which obtains a multi-core score of 18933. That puts it just 5% behind that chip.
Apple silicon continues to impress year over year. Performance that required a multi-thousand dollar Mac just a year or two ago is now available at the baseline. Granted, it’s only in the 14-inch MacBook Pro right now, which comes in at $1599. With time though, it’ll make its debut in the $999 MacBook Air and $599 Mac mini.
Are you impressed with the new lineup of M5 products, or will you be holding out? Let us know in the comments.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
Follow Michael: X/Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
