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Apple just did that thing it always does: raise the headline price, then tuck the real story into the fine print. The newly announced M5 MacBook Pro lineup—powered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max—walks in with higher starting numbers, but it also quietly fixes the upgrade most buyers ended up paying for anyway.
Let’s talk figures. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro now starts at $2,199, and the 16-inch begins at $2,699—each $200 above where the M4 Pro models kicked off. Step up to M5 Max and the entry point climbs to $3,599 for the 14-inch and $3,899 for the 16-inch.
On the surface, that looks like a straight price hike. In practice, it’s closer to Apple reshuffling what “base model” actually means.
Apple’s new “base” is basically last year’s common upgrade
Here’s the twist: last year’s 14-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro started at $1,999 with 512GB of storage. But if you wanted 1TB—the capacity a lot of professionals consider the real floor—you had to add $200. That pushed the effective price to $2,199. Which is exactly where the M5 Pro model starts now, except 1TB comes standard.
The same logic carries across the range. For many shoppers, Apple hasn’t so much raised the price as pre-loaded the configuration people typically ended up buying.
The M5 Max story is even clearer. The previous M4 Max model began at $3,199 with 1TB. Jumping to 2TB cost an additional $400. Now the M5 Max starts at $3,599 with 2TB included—again, mirroring the “real world” configuration a lot of creators and developers gravitated toward.
It’s still more money at checkout, no question. But it’s also less of the old game where the affordable-looking entry model existed mostly to be upgraded.
Storage isn’t the only change, either. Apple is also rolling in an N1 networking chip that brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, pushing the MacBook Pro further into next-gen wireless territory. SSD performance is reportedly up to 2x faster than the prior generation, and the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips introduce Apple’s “Fusion Architecture,” with the company claiming roughly 30% faster CPU performance compared with M4 Pro and M4 Max.
Even the regular M5 MacBook Pro (the one Apple introduced back in October) got a quiet adjustment. The 512GB option is gone; 1TB is now the starting point at $1,699—about $100 more than before.
Pre-orders are live now, with shipments set for March 11. And looming over all of this is the next big chapter: an OLED MacBook Pro redesign still expected later this year. If that lands on schedule—likely alongside M6 chips—this M5 generation may end up as the last run of the current look before Apple refreshes the entire vibe.
Source: phandroid
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