# Apple M5

48 Hacker News commenters recommended Apple M5 and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for top single-core speed, fast local AI prompt processing and low power draw; critics note it trails GPUs on large AI workloads.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast local AI prompt processing (7 comments): "the M5 appears to be an actual large leap for LLM inference with the new GPU and Neural Accelerator" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46635429)) "Much less true since the M5 generation. Prefill, aka prompt processing, got a 4x increase." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49442929)) "MATMUL instruction set that massively speeds up the prompt processing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46364767))
- Top single-core speed (5 comments): "The core inside the M5 is faster than every other core design in single-threaded burst performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46641324)) "There is no non Apple desktop/server cpu with faster single core than apple m5 or even m4" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46935898)) "Their M5 is far ahead of basically everything in single-core performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018361))
- Strong per-core performance vs x86 (3 comments): "the highest-end Apple chips (M4 Max/M5) outperform the fastest normal Ryzens in both single core and multi core tests" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47120903)) "Each core in that M3 chip is faster than the corresponding core in an x86 chip." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568659)) "The performance is similar to high end dekstop consumer CPUs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544316))
- Low power draw, long battery (3 comments): "today, the M5 in the iPad Pro outperforms every chip made by EVERYONE else in the world, by 25%, at a tenth the power draw" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640011)) "a computer that scales down to 20 - 40% of GPU power when unplugged is an enormously significant factor" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434826)) "the 2nd fastest CPU core per watt only lose out to Apple M5" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48671004))

## What people warn about

- Slow for large AI workloads vs GPUs (3 comments): "it's pretty obvious why M5s and Mac Studios aren't replacing TPUs and GPUs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48227289)) "half an hour to process 10k tokens on an M5 seems... not great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49164178)) "even the M5 is not that good compared to even a 4090" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48682226))
- Intel Windows laptops beat it sometimes (2 comments): "even the M5 laptops are consistently beat on performance and battery life by Intel Windows laptops" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49434490)) "Panther Lake is barely behind the M5 chip at Cinebench." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46773419))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-ryzen-ai-max-plus-395.md): 44 recommend
- [AMD Ryzen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-ryzen.md): 25 recommend
- [Intel N150](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intel-n150.md): 21 recommend
- [Apple M4](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-m4-chip.md): 21 recommend
- [Intel N100](https://hackerapproved.com/p/intel-n100.md): 18 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.apple.com/mac/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Apple M5", https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-m5-chip/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).