Is Apple’s new M5 chip really worth it? That’s the question swirling around after Apple’s big October 2025 reveal. The hype machine roared to life—new 3nm silicon, fresh MacBook Pros, updated iPad Pros, and even a new Vision Pro. I’ve been using Apple silicon daily since the M2, so I dove in as soon as I could. The M5 is fast—blisteringly fast in some spots—but it left me with mixed feelings.
On paper, it’s impressive. There’s a 10-core CPU (four performance cores, six efficiency cores), a beefy 10-core GPU with second-gen ray tracing, and a 16-core Neural Engine that cranks out 38 trillion operations per second. Memory bandwidth leaps to 153 GB/s. Apple claims AI tasks run 3.5× faster than the M4, and I saw it—generating 4K images or running 7B-parameter language models locally was silky smooth. Battery life? Apple says 24 hours for video playback on the 14-inch Pro. In reality, I got 16–18 hours of real work without sweating over the charger.
Still, this is just the base M5—no Pro, Max, or Ultra versions—at least, not until sometime next year. If you need 64 GB of RAM, serious multi-display support, or a ton of GPU power, you’re stuck waiting. Right now, the 14-inch MacBook Pro feels awkward: too much muscle for the Air crowd, not enough for pros who actually need all that firepower.
The GPU gains look great on spec sheets, but in real life, unless you’re running AI models, the difference isn’t huge. Ray tracing is faster, but in games or 3D rendering, the 10-core GPU still can’t touch a last-gen RTX 4070 laptop—or even the old M3 Max. If you’re holding out hope for Apple silicon to finally beat Nvidia for gaming or heavy-duty 3D work, you’ll be disappointed.
Power draw under load also went up. Push the chip hard in Cinebench or Handbrake for half an hour, and it pulls 28–30 watts. That’s way more than the M4’s 17–20 watts. Light use still gets great battery life, but if you’re exporting video or compiling code nonstop, you’ll see the battery dip faster than before. Apple’s reputation for efficiency is starting to crack at the edges when you really push the hardware.
Then there’s the price. The base model starts at $1,599 for 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, same as last year. But upgrading to 32 GB and 1 TB? That’s another $800. Want the nano-texture display? Add $150–$200, depending where you live. For a lot of people, the MacBook Pro with M5 is now in full-on luxury territory.
And the software? Apple Intelligence features are still rolling out at a crawl. VisionOS is still missing most native apps and MacOS Tahoe already feels sluggish on older M1 and M2 Macs. It’s hard not to get a whiff of planned obsolescence here.
If you’re still on an Intel Mac or your M1/M2 is getting slow, go for it. Otherwise, if you’ve got an M3 Pro or any M4, you might want to wait. The real powerhouses are coming next year. The M5 is excellent, but not even Apple can outrun diminishing returns forever.
By. Hyeonjun Son
Works Cited
Apple Inc. “Apple Unveils M5 Chip with Dramatically Higher Performance and Powerful New AI Features.” Apple Newsroom, 15 Oct. 2025www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unveils-m5-chip-with-dramatically-higher-performance/
Gurman, Mark. “Apple’s M5 Pro and Max Chips Delayed Until 2026.” Bloomberg, 20 Oct. 2025.
Hollister, Sean. “Apple M5 Review: Great for AI, Still Not a Gaming Laptop.” The Verge, 18 Nov. 2025.
Cunningham, Andrew. “MacBook Pro (M5, 2025) Review: Faster, But Not Fast Enough for Pros Yet.” Ars Technica, 19 Nov. 2025.
Patel, Nilay. “The MacBook Pro M5 Is Excellent and Extremely Frustrating.” The Verge, 21 Oct. 2025. – Wikipedia contributors. “Apple M5.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Nov. 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M5.