Apple M5 Pro
Shares rank 11 of 16 processors by recommenders
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.
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.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 62%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Runs large local AI models
“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”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Intel D270 GPU AI Accelerator–Up to 480 GB LPDDR5X” “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.”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “I ran Gemma 4 as a local model in Codex CLI” “M5 Pro is not that expensive and allows for model below 35GB to be used which is a lot of models”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “Was my $48K GPU server worth it?” Fast and responsive day to day
“just got surprised by how quickly it opened apps and reacted to anything I did”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra” “A tangible and significant difference”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra” Should last years, future proof
“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”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Intel D270 GPU AI Accelerator–Up to 480 GB LPDDR5X” “should be good and future proof”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Was my $48K GPU server worth it?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Display and networking problems
“lost the ability to drive my 4k monitor above 60hz on same dock and monitor setup”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “New Apple Silicon M4 and M5 HiDPI Limitation on 4K External Displays” “M5 networking stack is a mess”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “VMs can't boot with Network Mode set to Bridged on Apple M5 Pro machines”
Other processors people recommend
The four most recommended other processors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M5 | 48 | 14 | 77% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 | 44 | 14 | 76% | 11 | — | Approved |
| AMD Ryzen | 25 | 12 | 68% | 11 | 1.4 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| Intel N150 | 21 | 1 | 95% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Apple M5 ProThis page | 8 | 5 | 62% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 16 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“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”
“my 5090 runs laps around the M5 Pro I have”
“just got surprised by how quickly it opened apps and reacted to anything I did”
“A tangible and significant difference”
“M5 Pro (20c) 307 20 ~1500 to 1700 ~56”
“if you like to train, data format support and effective performance is limited (M5 Pro)”
“M5 networking stack is a mess”
“It's a great excuse to buy an M5 Pro.”
“M5 Pro is not that expensive and allows for model below 35GB to be used which is a lot of models”
“how severely it's limited by memory bandwidth”
“should be good and future proof”
“in the article's charts that a M5 Pro significantly beats a M4 Max”
“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.”
“lost the ability to drive my 4k monitor above 60hz on same dock and monitor setup”
“It's the RAM bandwidth that's the advantage, 300GB/s for M5 Pro.”
“This isn't a big jump from the M4 generation.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.