MacBook Pro M5 vs M4: benchmarks soar, everyday gains modest

Synthetic benchmarks for the new MacBook Pro models with M4 and M5 chips are undeniably impressive, yet in everyday work the difference is barely noticeable. Despite Apple promising a “revolutionary” leap in performance, moving to the M5 is unlikely to meet the expectations of most users.

Apple positions the M5 as a substantial upgrade: it’s built on a third‑generation 3‑nm process, features a 10‑core architecture with an improved graphics processor, a new neural engine, and boosts memory bandwidth to 153 GB/s. The company says graphics performance is up 45%, and GPU compute power is more than four times higher compared with the M4.

Tests bear this out. In the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, SSD write speed on the M5 reached 6,440 MB/s and read 6,725 MB/s, while the M4 managed only 3,265 and 2,904 MB/s. In Geekbench AI, the new processor scored 23,628 points against 11,616 for the M4, and in 3DMark Solar Bay Extreme the frame rate climbed by roughly 50%.

Yet those eye‑catching figures fade in practical use. Macworld journalist John Brandon ran both laptops through real tasks—photo export, work in GarageBand, and a Blender render. The gap was minimal: exporting 562 photos took 66 seconds on the M4 and 56 seconds on the M5, and a demanding Blender 3D render finished in 595 and 585 seconds, respectively.

In short, even under heavy workloads the new MacBook Pro saves only about 9–10 seconds. For most people, that’s hardly a reason to spend thousands of dollars on an upgrade. Apple is clearly refining its chips, but in daily use the M5 feels more like a cosmetic refresh than a stride into the future.