With the release of the new M5 MacBook Pro and iPad Pro on October 22nd, we’re 5 generations into the Apple Silicon lineup, marking half a decade since Apple Silicon became available.

Although the new chip was announced quietly, it’s hard to remain silent about something – it gives pro-level chips a real run for their money. The M5 chip seems to be a hotter-running, more performant chip than the M4, and yet it’s still contained in these 5.1 mm (13″) and 5.3 mm (11″) thin devices. .

A Redesigned GPU

• 2nd-Gen Ray tracing & Dynamic caching .
• New Unified image compression .
• Dedicated neural accelerator in each GPU core, to accelerate AI-related workflows .
• New shader Core, and other improvements

Gaming performance already looks quite promising, and according to benchmarks done elsewhere, it appears the M5 chip trades blows with the M1 Pro. According to Geekbench 6: The M5’s GPU is 2x faster than fast as the M1 in OpenCL and Metal.

Neural GPU Accelerators provide a major boost for AI and AI benchmarks. In an M5 MacBook Pro benchmark, Max Weinbach saw a 35% increase in performance in Decode Prefill Qwen3 1.7 512/128 when enabling the Neural GPU accelerators in the M5, versus leaving them off. .

An improved CPU over M4

More performance increased this year on the efficiency cores: The L2 Efficiency Core CPU Cache Cluster is now 6 MB (4 MB on M4). This means all 6 Efficiency cores have access to a total of 6 MB L2 cache altogether. Efficiency core now runs at 3 GHz – nearly the same as M1 performance core clock speeds.

The multicore performance in the M5 rivals the M1 ultra, single core performance is roughly double that of the M1 – imagine what this means for entry level Macs in the future, or how that will affect iPads in the future? .

Apple Intelligence

iOS devices running 18 and later with an A17 Pro chip or better (iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max, or all iPhone 16 models+). While device capability has increased over the years, it’s theorized by some that older devices don’t have enough RAM to properly run Apple Intelligence. This feature is gradually rolling as AI is new to the industry as a whole. .

What You Need to Know

• When you go for the 1 TB model and up, the M5 chip gets bumped to a 10-Core CPU and 16 GB RAM. The 256 GB and 512 GB models have a 9-core CPU and 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM. .
• GPU performance context: outclasses the Radeon Pro 580X from the 2019 Mac Pro. .
• M5 has the same memory bandwidth as the M3 Pro: **153.6 GB/s . **

Geekbench 6.5.0

While artificial benchmarks may not completely reflect real world experiences, they can still provide some perspective by subjecting the iPad to a proverbial water pressure test. It is also a ubiquitous benchmarking app that many individuals use, and in due time some more benchmark comparisons can be made with different benchmarking software.

• Single Core: 4,133 / Multi-Core: 15,437 / Metal GPU: 74,568 .
• Antutu v10.1.3: 3,137,936 .

Details

• Announced October 15th, 2025

• Available October 22nd, 2025

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iOS

• Requires iPadOS 26.0.1 (Build 23A8464) or later. There is also a revised RTM build, 23A8466. .

Core System

Legend: L1i = L1 Instruction Cache, L1d = L1 Data cache, SLC = System Level Cache

Note – All M5 chips have this memory configuration for their cache in their CPUS:

• L1 Per-performance core: 192KB L1i, 128KB L1d

• L1 Per-efficiency core: 128 KB L1i, 64 KB L1d

• 9-Core M5 Chip: 3x 4.61 GHz High Performance Cores: 576K L1i, 384K L1d, 64MB L2, 8MB System Level Cache

• 6x 3.0 GHz energy efficient cores: 768K L1i, 384k L1d, 6MB L2, 8 MB SLC

• 16-Core Neural Engine .

• 10-Core M5 Chip: 4x 4.61 GHz High Performance Cores: 768K L1i, 512K L1d, 64MB L2, 8MB System Level Cache

• 6x 3.0 GHz energy efficient cores: 768K L1i, 384k L1d, 6MB L2, 8 MB SLC

• 16-Core Neural Engine .

Memory

• 12 GB 4800 MHz LPDDR5X-9600 SDRAM*, 153 GB/s Memory Bandwidth

• Upgradeable to 16 GB when you purchase a 1 TB or 2 TB model.

• *Low End Mac is guessing this is the type of RAM used in the M5 based off of several clues presented in Apple Silicon Wikipedia, but this has yet be confirmed. Otherwise it is the same type of RAM used in the M4 Pro/Max: LPDDR5X-8533 (4266 MHz).

Video

• *1000 MHz* *Core Clocked Apple M5 GPU with hardware accelerated Metal 4 graphics.

• *Based on current reporting from Geekbench 6. .

Display

• 11″ Ultra Retina XDR Tandem OLED: 364.8 cm2 (Surface area), 82.3% STB Ratio

• 1668 x 2420 resolution, 267 ppi, 3:2 aspect ratio with Scratch-resistant glass

• Oleophobic Coating + True Tone

• Wide Color (P3) gamut, 1 nit minimum brightness

• HDR Max brightness: 1600 nits, standard max: 1000 nits

• Up to 120 Hz refresh rate .

• 13″ Ultra Retina XDR Tandem OLED: 523.4 cm2 (Surface area), 86.2% STB Ratio

• 2064 x 2752 resolution, 265 ppi, 4:3 aspect ratio with Scratch-resistant glass

• Oleophobic Coating + True Tone

• Wide Color (P3) gamut, 1 nit minimum brightness

• HDR Max brightness: 1600 nits, standard max: 1000 nits

• Up to 120 Hz refresh rate .

• Simultaneously supports the full resolution of internal display @millions of colors, plus:

• 1x 6K60, or 4K120 external display

Drives

• 256 GB, 512GB, 1 TB, or 2 TB NVME-based PCIe SSD .

Camera

• Rear-Facing: 12 MegaPixels, f/1.8, (wide), dual pixel PDAF with:

• 3D LiDAR scanner, Quad-LED dual-tone flash, HDR

• Video: 4K60, 1080p240, ProRes available

• Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) .

• Front-Facing: 12 MegaPixels, f/2.0, 122˚ (ultrawide) with:

• Face detection, HDR, and panorama modes.

• Video: 1080p60 .

Sound

• Quad-Speaker audio, one from each corner .
• Studio-quality quad-mic array .

Battery

• 11-Inch: 8,160 mAh Lithium-Ion Polymer built-in battery (31.29-watt-hour) .
• 13-Inch: 10,290 mAh Lithium-Ion Polymer built-in battery (38.99-watt-hour) .
• iPad Pro can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes using a 40W or better charging brick. .

Expansion / Misc

• 1x USB-C style USB 4.0 port (Up to 40 Gb/s)

• Support for DisplayPort, data transfer, charging, etc;

• Wi‑Fi 7 (802.11be) w/2×2 MIMO

• Apple N1 Chip (For Wi-Fi networking), Apple C1X (For Cellular)

• Bluetooth 6

• Accelerometer, Barometer, Ambient Light Sensor, 3-axis Gyro

• Magnetic Connector .

Included

• iPad Pro 11″ or 13″ (In your color, size and storage of choice)
• USB-C to USB-C cable
• 20W USB-C charging brick
• Introductory papers and documentation .

Physical

• 11″ Size (H x W x D): 9.83″ x 6.99″ x 0.21″, (249.7 x 177.5 x 5.3 mm)

• Weight: 1.03 Lb (444 grams) .

• 11″ Size (H x W x D): 11.09″ x 8.48″ x 0.20″, (281.6 x 215.5 x 5.1 mm)

• Weight: 1.28 Lb (579 grams)