Copyright Cult of Mac
Apple’s new M5-powered MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro are now on sale. The company unveiled these devices on October 15 through press releases. Not only do they hit store shelves on Wednesday, shoppers who pre-ordered the devices start receiving them today. M5 shines in Apple’s latest lineup Since switching to Apple silicon, every new M-series chip has impressed with its performance and efficiency. The new M5 chip continues that trend, delivering a massive increase in graphics performance and AI workloads. It even packs the world’s fastest CPU core, with 15% faster multithreaded performance over the M4. The next-gen GPU features a dedicated Neural Accelerator in each of the 10 GPU cores. This helps boost GPU compute performance in AI tasks by 4x and provides smoother gameplay. The enhanced shader cores deliver up to 30% better graphics performance compared to M4, and up to 2.5x faster performance than M1. The increased memory bandwidth of 153GB/s also helps deliver more information to the GPU for quicker processing. Even the 16-core Neural Engine gets a performance boost. Apple claims it can now finish on-device AI tasks like Image Playground and Apple Intelligence processing faster. M5 MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro hit store shelves Besides the M5 chip, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro sports a 2x faster SSD. Plus, you can now configure the machine with 32GB of system memory and up to 4TB of storage. Order from: Apple The laptop’s starting price remains unchanged at $1,599. On the M5 iPad Pro, Apple made other upgrades other than just the chip bump. The tablet now uses Apple’s own N1 chip to handle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. And on the cellular models, Apple’s C1x modem takes over connectivity duties. Do note that the 256GB and 512GB storage configurations use a 9-core CPU variant of the M5 chip and pack 12GB RAM. Only the 1TB and higher configurations get a 10-core CPU and 16GB RAM. Order from: Apple The M5 Vision Pro is the same model that Apple initially launched in 2023, but with a faster chip. The faster chip allows the display to render 10% more pixels than before, while boosting the refresh rate to 120Hz to reduce motion blur. Thanks to the faster Neural Engine, many of the system features are now up to 50% faster. Apple ships the M5 Vision Pro with a single new head strap in the box, the Dual Knit Band. It’s easy to put on and take off, while seamlessly integrating an adjustable top band. You simply spin the Fit Dial to loosen or tighten the back; pop it out, and you can adjust the upper band. Pricing for the M5 Vision Pro remains the same as its predecessor: $3499.
