Greg Benz Photography

A photographer’s review of the new M5 MacBook Pro

Amazon has some great sales on the M4 and M5:

 

Apple just announced the launch of their M5 Pro and Max chips for the MacBook Pro (MBP). This launch waass unusual as the base M5 launched several months ago.

What’s new and notable in the M5 MacBook Pro?

Before we discuss what’s new, it’s important to consider just how unique the 14-16″ Apple Silicon MacBook Pros are. All of them (all the way back to M1) offer:

  • The best laptop display for photographers:
    • Best-in-class HDR displays. There is no other laptop on the market which matches it (though some Windows laptops are starting to offer great HDR displays too).
    • Extremely high color accuracy (calibration is optional for most users with these displays).
  • Outstanding performance and battery life with Apple Silicon.
    • These laptops run for a long time, with almost no fan noise, and no need for bulky chargers or proprietary connectors (MagSafe is optional on MBP, you can charge via USB-C).
    • While SnapDragon X Elite chips look very promising for the future of PCs, there simply is not enough support for Windows on ARM software yet (for example, you cannot run any UXP plugins in Photoshop on WinARM).
  • Very high quality. These laptops look great, they’re tough, and the keyboard and trackpad feel great to use.

 

The M5 MBP features:

  • Third-generation 3nm chip technology more cores and faster clock speeds.
  • SSD read / write speeds are ~2x faster.
  • A 4TB SSD upgrade is now an option on the base model.
  • And MacBook Pros may now use the “full” calibration for HDR mode with the Calibrite Display Plus HL (be sure to get that exact model and see the calibration section of my Studio Display XDR review for details).

Otherwise, the MacBook Pro appears to be unchanged (same display, ports, WiFi, BlueTooth, etc). This adds up to an incremental, but certainly welcome improvement in the base MBP.

 

M5 Max test results:

I tested my 14″ M5 Max head to head vs M4 Max after migrating the data (and giving the new computer time to stop indexing), averaging the results of multiple runs for each test. I’m just going to say “M5” or “M4” in this section to avoid spelling out “Max” every time.

Black Magic Disk Speed test shows an absurdly fast 14,800 MB/s write and 13,000 MB/s read. That’s roughly 70x faster than a typical consume external SSD (2-7x faster the super premium ones). It’s twice as fast as the already lightning-quick M4.

My tests:

  • My G-Bench is designed to measure the performance of aspects of Photoshop which matter most for photographers and is weighted to be proportional to perceived benefit. The M5 scored the best results I’ve ever tested at 27.4. However (to my surprise), Photoshop itself sped up quite a bit in the past year since I tested the M4, improving its score from 34.0 to 29.2. The gains from the hardware were smaller than I expected, with a 6% improvement in time (while Adobe’s improvements saved 14% and that was very nice to see).
  • Export 1000 JPG images from LRC is 21% faster (9:02 vs 11:23)
  • Exporting a 12 min 4K video is 19% faster (4:07 vs 4:54)
  • Building my software is 7-14% faster (with the greatest benefits for my dev builds, where I need it the most)

Puget Bench results:

  • Photoshop: 7% improvement (10,921 for M5 vs 10,198 for M4). This is consistent with my finding that Photoshop benefits very little from M5.
  • Lightroom: 12% improvement (12,197 for M5 vs 10,940 for M4). There was significant variation in results and these numbers are lower for both machines than I see in other published results, I suspect LR v15.2 is a factor – but the results remain comparable as both machines are running the same software.
  • Davinci (standard): 19% improvement (105,477 for M5 vs 89,032 for M4)

Geekbench:

  • single-core CPU: 12% improvement (4,263 for M5 vs 3,808 for M4).
  • multi-core CPU: 11% improvement (28,958 for M5 vs 26,169 for M4).
  • GPU (Metal): 27% improvement (28,958 for M5 vs 26,169 for M4)

Overall, generational gains for the GPU were great, but less impressive for the CPU. As a result, the benefits here are primarily for more for video and Lightroom than Photoshop. You’ll get the most from the incredibly fast drive speeds if you disable compression (which otherwise means the CPU is the bottleneck for saving images). Overall, this helps to solidify the MacBook Pro’s position as the best laptop for photographers (especially for HDR). I’m historically agnostic on the Apple vs PC debate – but after trying a wide range of computers over the past few years, I believe Apple has a notable edge in laptops for photography use. They feature a best-in-class HDR display, optimal performance / battery life, and excellent overall quality. When you compare to similar levels of performance and HDR display quality (where that’s even possible), you’ll likely find they are lower cost when you make apples-to-apples comparisons.

There are clear gains here for long or heavy tasks I often need to do (importing images to LR, compiling code, exporting video, etc). My general rule of thumb is that you need a 20-25% improvement to notice a performance boost in everyday tasks, so most photographers will only appreciate the gains here if upgrading from M3 or older (or buying higher specs than the old machine). You’ll notice a significant boost in performance if upgrading from an M2 or older (especially an Intel-based Mac).

If you use Windows, we finally have some realistic alternatives for great HDR performance (covered in my recommended HDR monitors page). I believe the MBP still has a clear edge, but it’s great to see options for those who prefer Windows.

 

Should you buy M5 or wait for M6?:

I generally avoid speculation, but sites like macrumors are claiming we may see a significant upgrade and potentially by the end of 2026. I have no idea if any of these rumors are true, but I’ll offer my perspective for those who are feeling confused by them:

  • OLED display –
    • The Tandem Stack OLED on the iPad would likely be the level of performance expected. That is an outstanding display. The benefits over today’s mini-LED are rather small for HDR photography as you won’t often see haloing. The primary benefit I see for this is watching certain movie content in dark ambient light. Something I would gladly welcome, but I don’t expect a jump of a magnitude that I would wait a year for.
    • Rumors suggest this would only be on the higher tier models and carry a price increase.
  • Lighter – this would be most exciting for me personally (if any weight reduction is significant).
  • M6 chip – every launch has improved the performance by about 15%, so this probably matters most if you have an M3 now and are on the fence. Gains over M4 / M5 will be smallish, and anything older already gets a huge boost from M5.
  • Cellular – this would be a first, though you can use your phone as a hotspot now and it may well be cheaper to do that than add a device to your mobile plan.
  • Smaller notch – I’d be happy to have more room for icons in the menu bar, but it’s not something to plan a major purchase around.

I’m just listing what the rumor sites have suggested generally. We may see many of these fail to materialize or it ships much later than expected. My take: if you need something now or are leaning towards purchase, get it now and enjoy the benefits. There will always be an rumored upgrade not far off. Though if you already have at least an M1, I would recommend strongly considering buying the Studio Display XDR monitor before upgrading your computer. It’s an absolutely incredible HDR display which I’d expect remains great for a decade.

 

Recommended M5 MBP configurations for photographers:

  • Best value:
    • Get an M4 (see sale links at the top of this post).
    • The best part about the M5 launch is that you can still snag a great deal on the 14″ M4 for a little while (if you’re shopping for entry or mid-level configurations, inventory of the top models is typically not stocked for long).
  • Good:
    • 14″ 10-core M5 with 24GB RAM for $1,799
      • This offers a fast, high-quality computer with an outstanding HDR display. 16GB is ok, but an upgrade to 24GB will help you get many more years out of it (you’ll likely also recoup some of this cost when you sell it later).
      • This only gets you 512GB storage, so you’ll be very on external drives for storage (see recommendations below).
    • 16″ M5 Pro with 24 GB RAM for $2,649
      • The extra screen size and performance are nice, but stick with 14″ if you want the lightest laptop
  • Better M5 (ideal for photography):
  • Best (power users).

 

I recommend the following options to compliment the laptop:

  • External SSD drives:
    • Internal storage is convenient, but external is much cheaper and a good way to expand if needed down the road. It’s also essential if you want a way to back up your data quickly.
    • USB SSD’s I personally use and recommend:
      • Sandisk Extreme Portable for up to 8TB. Very fast / compact and connects with a single cable. I find this is a great option for backing up the computer, or adding more storage if you don’t have enough internal to the laptop (always be sure to backup your drives).
      • Samsung T5 EVO 8TB. I’ve only had mine for a few weeks, but it is working great and the price is very attractive.
      • Vectotech 8TB. I have three of these and have used them for a long time without issue. They were my top pick for large storage before the price on the Samsung recently dropped.
      • Glyph 16TB. Any SSD this big is pricy, but I can take a copy of all my work with me (I have 20TB of data in total, much of which is normally on a very bulky RAID drive). It comes with a ruggedized rubber grip and requires only a single cable for both data and power.
    • A Thunderbolt SSD is much faster than USB, but at a higher cost. As I have ample internal storage, I have personally opted for cheaper USB drives and have limited experience with the common Thunderbolt models. Also given cost, most of them have limited reviews. So it is hard to comment on reliability and performance. If you are going to use one as primary storage because you buy a laptop with a small drive, I think this is well worth considering (and you should have a robust backup strategy for any external drive, as likely all of them will be less reliable than the internal Apple SSD). I have not personally tested the following drives, but they seem very promising and have good reviews:
      • LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt has a large number of positive reviews.
      • Sabrent Rocket XTRM Plus Thunderbolt3 offers a very fast (2700MB/s) and affordable 2TB option.
      • OWC Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 offers twice the speed, at roughly twice the price of a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 drive. If you really need ultra fast, this looks like a great drive. It’s probably overkill for photographers given batch imports will be limited by your flash cards and individual images aren’t that large, but could be very attractive for those editing 4k or 8k video.
  • CalDigit TS4 dock. This makes it very easy to plug your laptop into everything with a single cable (which includes power for the laptop and data connections to monitor, hard drives, Ethernet, mouse, etc). It includes two downstream Thunderbolt ports, which I find very handy so that I can turn off my RAID drive without losing access to downstream devices. I owned the previous TS3 and it’s also a great option if you don’t care about multiple downstream TB ports.
  • An external HDR monitor. This is optional, but nice if you also want a larger HDR display to complement the outstanding one built into the MacBook Pro.

 

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