Apple’s M5 Chip Powers a New AI Surge in MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro

Apple Unveils M5 Chip Across New Devices

Apple chose a silent website update instead of a launch event to introduce three flagship products—14‑inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro—each equipped with the new M5 chip.

The M5 maintains the same price as its M4 predecessor while dramatically increasing AI capabilities, offering more than a four‑fold boost in AI throughput and a 45% improvement in graphics performance.

MacBook Pro Highlights

The new 14‑inch MacBook Pro starts at ¥12,999 with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. It retains the M4’s dimensions but adds up to 4 TB storage. Performance gains include:

3D ray‑tracing rendering up to 6.7× faster than M1 and 1.5× faster than M4.

Video transcoding in Final Cut Pro up to 6× faster than M1 and 20% faster than M4.

AI image generation up to 4× faster than M1 and 2× faster than M4.

iPad Pro Highlights

The new iPad Pro features the M5 chip, a high‑speed storage system, and iPadOS 26 with enhanced window management. AI performance improves by 3.5× over M4, and the device supports up to 150 GB/s unified memory bandwidth, enabling smooth multitasking and high‑load gaming.

It also introduces 120 Hz external display support with adaptive sync for low‑latency gaming.

Vision Pro Highlights

Vision Pro receives the M5 chip, boosting its micro‑OLED display rendering by 10% and raising the refresh rate to 120 Hz. The dedicated R1 chip processes inputs from 12 cameras, 5 sensors, and 6 microphones within 12 ms.

M5 Architecture Overview

The M5 is built on a 3‑nm process and introduces a 10‑core GPU, each core embedding its own neural‑network accelerator. This per‑GPU AI acceleration yields over 4× GPU compute performance versus M4 and more than 6× versus M1.

Unified memory bandwidth reaches 153 GB/s—about 30% higher than M4—supporting up to 32 GB RAM, enabling on‑device execution of large AI models without cloud reliance.