# Apple M5 Pro

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Apple M5 Pro and 5 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend the M5 Pro for running large local AI models and for fast, responsive everyday use. Critics say it is slower than a discrete GPU and that its memory bandwidth limits performance.

## Why people recommend it

- Runs large local AI models (3 comments): "Get a m5 pro mac with 48gb vram and you're good to go for a few years and that computer can be used for others purpose as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50072807)) "The same Gemma 4 MoE model (Q4) runs about 8x more t/s on M5 Pro and loads 2x times faster from disk to memory." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47749342)) "M5 Pro is not that expensive and allows for model below 35GB to be used which is a lot of models" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252048))
- Fast and responsive day to day (2 comments): "just got surprised by how quickly it opened apps and reacted to anything I did" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49442250)) "A tangible and significant difference" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439167))
- Should last years, future proof (2 comments): "Get a m5 pro mac with 48gb vram and you're good to go for a few years and that computer can be used for others purpose as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50072807)) "should be good and future proof" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48229440))

## What people warn about

- Display and networking problems (2 comments): "lost the ability to drive my 4k monitor above 60hz on same dock and monitor setup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571441)) "M5 networking stack is a mess" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49092619))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apple M5](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-m5-chip.md): 48 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

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Apple+MacBook+Pro+M5+Pro+48GB&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.apple.com/)

## Cite as

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