If you’re in the market for one of Apple’sbest MacBooks, the MacBook Pro should be top of your list. The latestM4 MacBook Probrought some significant improvements to the range, and with theM4 MacBook Airalso having received its generation-over-generation silicon upgrade, the anticipation has now again shifted to the next flagship laptop from Apple.

That model — complete with Apple’s upcomingM5 series silicon— is an intriguing prospect. Will Apple offer a total revamp, or will it be a more modest upgrade? What can we expect from the M5 chip? And will Apple finally launch its firstOLED MacBook Prowhen the M5 chip makes its debut?

We’ve examined these ideas and many more to bring you everything we know about the M5 MacBook Pro. Read on to find out what could be on the way.

When might we see it?

Apple typically introduces new MacBook Pro models in October, and that’s been the case for the M1, M3 and M4 models, which arrived in 2021, 2023, and 2024, respectively. And while the M2 MacBook Pro launched in January 2023, it was widely rumored that this was a delay from an originally planned release date of October 2022.

This time, there’s no reason to believe that Apple will pick anything other than October 2025 for its M5 MacBook Pro. Mark your diaries for that timeframe. But it appears that Apple is making a slight adjustment to the schedule, once again. According to recent reporting fromBloomberg, Apple originally planned to launch them late in 2025, but has since considered pushing their launch to 2026.

That would make it the first Apple product to launch with the M5 chip, as the M5iPad Prois now expected to hit store shelvesin the first half of 2026. That’s a reversal of the pattern with theM4 chip, which made its way into the iPad Pro before the MacBook Pro. Currently in development under the codenames J714 and J716, the new flagship laptops from Apple will stick to familiar 14-inch and 16-inch formats.

There’s no word on pricing yet, but given the M5 MacBook Pro is expected to be a small update (more on that later), keeping the same $1,599 starting price as the current model would make sense. There’s a chance that US government tariffs could affect the price, but by how much (and if at all) is anyone’s guess.

Design: A familiar look and feel

Put simply, a major redesign of the MacBook Pro is unlikely this year. Apple tends to space out its major design revamps. For instance, the last big MacBook Pro overhaul was in 2021, while the M4 model released last year came with lots of feature changes, including an improved webcam, more memory, and Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.

For those expecting an overhaul, they will have to wait for another generation. We’ve heard plenty of rumors that theM6 MacBook Produe out in 2026 could be a “true overhaul,” with a thinner chassis and an OLED display, and that seems to preclude anything significant happening this year. Given Apple’s tendency to wait a few years between design changes — and with the aforementioned overhaul expected in 2026 — serious updates to the outward appearance of the laptop don’t seem to be in the cards for the M5 model.

Performance and features

Without much in the way of design alterations, the main improvement we’re anticipating in this year’s MacBook Pro is the arrival of the M5 chip. This will probably be a fairly incremental upgrade of around 15%-25% over the M4. Given past patterns, the MacBook Pro will almost certainly also get the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.

Apple analystMing-Chi Kuobelieves the M5 series will be made using manufacturer TSMC’s N3P method. This is a 3nm process (like that used to make the M4 chip series), albeit with TSMC’s System on Integrated Chip (SoIC) tech that allows chip components to be stacked in 3D space and results in improved thermal management. But if you’re waiting for a 2nm process and the performance increase it will bring, you probably won’t find that in the M5 chip.

According to supply chain analystMing-chi Kuo, the M5 series silicon will enter production in the second half of 2025. He previously predicted a timeline of H1 2025 for the baseline M5 silicon, H2 2025 for the M5 Pro and M5 Max variants, and early 2026 for the M5 Ultra that will likely appear inside desktop computers.

As usual, Apple is expected to offer the next-gen MacBook Pro in variants that come with the entry-point M5 silicon, and higher-end configurations with M5 Pro and M5 Max. However,Apple Insiderreports that a base variant with the M5 processor is currently not on the map and only the following variants are headed to the market:

There is no word on any upgrades to the memory situation, so it’s quite likely that we are again getting 16GB of RAM and 512GB storage for the base configuration, going up to 128GB of unified memory and 8TB SSD storage on the 16-inch model with the M5 Max chip.

Interestingly, the rumor mill has been fairly quiet about the CPU and GPU core upgrades that might arrive with the M5 series processors. At the moment, the M4 silicon serves 10 CPU and an equal number of GPU cores. The M4 Pro is shipped in variants with 12 and 14 CPU cores, paired with 16 and 20 GPU cores, respectively.

The M4 Max silicon also comes in two configurations: 14 and 16 CPU cores, paired with 32 and 40 GPU cores. It would be interesting to see whether the M5 silicon goes big on boosting the CPU firepower, or just increases the number of graphics cores. Given the company’s recent focus on gaming with Metal architecture and generative AI pipelines, I would bet on the latter scenario.

A rather curious upgrade that we’ve come across is related to the camera module. In a researchnote, Kuo mentions that Sunny Optical will supply CCM modules to Apple for the M5 series MacBook laptops. A Compact Camera Module (CCM) is typically fitted inside mobile devices such as phones and tablets, and combines the camera sensor, digital signal processor, and the IR filter into a single package. There is no word, however, on what kind of upgrades are planned with the CCM package supplied by Sunny Optical.

You also shouldn’t hold your breath for an OLED display, as theOLED MacBook Proisn’t anticipated to launch before 2026. That’s also the case with Apple’s in-house 5G modem that appeared in the recentiPhone 16e. Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman believes Apple is consideringadding a modem to its MacBooks, but it seems like that’s still several years away from coming to fruition.

In more positive news, there’s a good chance that the entry-level M5 MacBook Pro will be outfitted withThunderbolt 5 portsfor improved data transfer speeds. You can get that tech in the current MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, but it’s missing from the base-level M4 version.

We’ve also heard that future MacBook Pro models could getWi-Fi 7 connectivity, but that doesn’t seem to be something we’ll see in the M5 MacBook Pro. The technology is very new and adoption has been slow, and while it’s present in theiPhone 16range, Apple doesn’t appear to be in any rush to add it to the MacBook Pro. Given the lack of solid rumors that say it will happen imminently, we feel we can rule this one out for now.