The new product releases are coming out this week, and for fans of the M5-based MacBook Pro notebooks, you’re going to like this.

Apple on Tuesday announced its new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro notebooks featuring M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. The chips are built on Apple’s new Fusion Architecture, which bonds two third-generation 3nm dies into a single chip using advanced packaging. Prior to this, chips were fabricated using a single-die design, and the two bonded dies house the notebook’s CPU, GPU, Media Engine, Neural Engine, unified memory controller, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities together.

Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, which is up from the 14-core and 16-core designs of the M4 Pro and M4 Max, respectively. The CPU now includes six “super cores” alongside 12 efficiency-focused performance cores. Apple claims up to 30 percent faster multithreaded performance over the M4 generation, and up to 2.5x faster than M1 Pro and M1 Max.

The M5 Pro chip features up to 20 GPU cores, while the M5 Max chip offers 40 cores, which each GPU core including a Neural Accelerator that Apple has stated offers four times the peak AI compute compared to M4 Pro and M4 Max. Apple claims up to 50 percent faster graphics overall, with ray-tracing workloads seeing up to 35 percent improvement over the previous generation.

Available RAM/Unified Memory has been boosted as well, with the M5 Pro model supporting up to 64GB of Unified Memory (up from 48GB on the M4 Pro model), with bandwidth now reaching 307GB/s. The M5 Max retains its 128GB maximum but raises bandwidth to 614GB/s.

Storage speeds have also been boosted, with Apple citing up to 2x faster read/write speeds compared to the M4 notebooks, and topping out at 14.5GB/s. Base storage has also increased, the M5 Pro models starting at 1TB, while the M5 Max models start at 2TB.

Where networking is concerned, the new MacBook Pro models ship with Apple’s N1 wireless networking chip, which offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support. This serves as an upgrade from the Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 found in last year’s M4 Pro and M4 Max models.

Other additions include a 16-core Neural Engine with a faster memory connection that Apple says speeds up on-device Apple Intelligence tasks, and an updated Media Engine that adds hardware-accelerated AV1 decode alongside existing H.264, HEVC, and ProRes support. There’s also Memory Integrity Enforcement – an always-on memory safety feature Apple calls an industry first.

The Thunderbolt 5 ports are similar to those from the M4 generation, with each port receiving its own dedicated controller on the chip, allowing for all three ports to run at full bandwidth simultaneously. The M5 Pro can support to two high-resolution monitors, while M5 Max supports up to four.

In terms of battery life, Apple says it tops out at 24 hours on the 16-inch model, and that users can fast-charge to 50 percent in 30 minutes with a 96W or higher USB-C adapter.

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip starts at $2,199, with the 16-inch model starting at $2,699. The 14-inch M5 Max model starts at $3,599, with the 16-inch starting at $3,899. All models are available in space black and silver, with pre-orders opening tomorrow, March 4, and availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

Via MacRumors and Apple