Apple recently released the M5 MacBook Pro 14-inch with improved performance. Being a generational upgrade over the M4, the new Apple silicon brings significant improvements in AI, CPU, and GPU performance. However, beyond the new chip, the updated MacBook Pro is light on any other upgrades. If you were hoping for a switch to an OLED display or a touchscreen, you are out of luck and will likely have to wait until 2028 to see the first MacBook with an OLED screen. So, does the MacBook Pro M5 make sense as an upgrade over the M3 or M4 models? Or, if you are in the market for a brand-new workhorse MacBook, is it okay to shell out for the M5 model, or should you save money and get the previous generations?

The one big thing going in favor of the new MacBook Pro, though, is the M5 chip. It not only packs massive improvements on the AI performance front with its new Neural Accelerator in each GPU core and a faster Neural Engine, but also has plenty of extra power for non-AI tasks. It's said to be capable of delivering 1.6 times the graphics performance of the M4, which helps with AI image generation as well as gaming. Moreover, M5 has the world's fastest CPU core on Geekbench, and its 10-core CPU design provides 20% faster multithreaded performance over the M4, resulting in an overall more responsive Mac. So, even if you are not into AI and machine learning, there is much to like here.