M4 Pro or M5 Pro MacBook Pro: is the older one worth it

Yes, if you find an M4 Pro MacBook Pro refurbished or discounted, it is still a good Mac for everyday work. The M5 Pro's big gains are in running AI models, rendering and ray-traced games. For email, documents, development, photo work and ordinary video editing, the extra speed is real but smaller than the headline numbers, and the M4 Pro has the same ports and battery rating.

Where the M5 Pro is clearly ahead is the memory ceiling, the number of external displays, storage and wireless. It goes to 64GB of memory where the M4 Pro stops at 48GB, runs three external displays to the M4 Pro's two, starts at 1TB of storage instead of 512GB, and has Wi-Fi 7 where the M4 Pro has Wi-Fi 6E. If none of those four touch your work, the M4 Pro is a sound buy. The rest of this post lays out what Apple says changed, so you can decide by what you do.

What stays the same

Apple's tech specs pages for the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and with M5 Pro match on a lot:

• Thunderbolt 5. Both have three Thunderbolt 5 ports with up to 120Gb/s, plus HDMI, an SDXC card slot, a headphone jack and MagSafe 3. The older Mac has the same ports as the newer one.
• Battery. Both have a 72.4-watt-hour battery, and Apple rates both at 22 hours of video streaming and 14 of wireless web, each an "up to" figure.
• Weight. 3.5 pounds for the 14-inch M4 Pro and for the 14-inch M5 Pro.
• Colors. Space black and silver.
• Chargers. Both ship with a 70W adapter on the lower CPU option and a 96W adapter on the higher one, and both are fast-charge capable with 96W or higher.
• GPU options. Both come with a 16-core or 20-core GPU.

In other words the Mac you carry, charge and plug things into is the same. Everything that follows is the chip and what is built around it.

What the M5 Pro adds

Both start at 24GB of memory, per Apple's tech specs. Apple also says the M5 Pro models' SSD speeds reach up to 14.5GB/s, up to 2x the previous generation. The M5 Pro uses what Apple calls Fusion Architecture, two dies combined into one chip, with super cores alongside performance cores.

Apple's speed claims, and how to read them

Apple compares the M5 Pro with the M4 Pro and says it is up to:

• 3.9x faster at LLM prompt processing
• 3.7x faster at AI image generation
• 1.4x faster at 3D rendering in Redshift
• 1.6x faster at gaming with ray tracing

These are Apple's numbers, for particular tasks and test setups, and each says "up to". The pattern is clear, though: the biggest jumps are in AI and in graphics with ray tracing, and those are the jobs Apple chose to show. Apple also says the CPU and graphics are faster in general, by smaller margins, and for tasks like browsing, email, spreadsheets and most code editing you are unlikely to feel them.

The honest summary is that the M5 Pro is much faster at some new kinds of work and moderately faster at everything else.

Who should buy the M4 Pro

• You do everyday work on a bigger screen, such as documents, spreadsheets, design, photo editing and development, and a Mac a generation back with the same ports and battery is more than enough.
• You want Thunderbolt 5 and the full set of ports but not necessarily the newest chip. The M4 Pro already has them.
• You never run more than two external displays.
• You won't run large local AI models, or you are happy to use small ones.

Who should buy the M5 Pro

• You run AI models on the Mac. Apple's biggest claims, and the 64GB ceiling, are there.
• You render 3D scenes or use ray tracing, where Apple claims the largest gains.
• You need three external displays or the most memory the Pro chip offers.
• You want Wi-Fi 7 and already have, or plan to get, a Wi-Fi 7 router. Wi-Fi 7 and the N1 chip explains what that gets you.

If you already own an M4 Pro

Keep it. Apple's own comparisons for the M5 Pro lead with AI and ray tracing, and those matter only if your work is already waiting on them. If your M4 Pro runs your day without complaint, the case for swapping it is thin: the ports, battery and weight match. The one thing worth checking is whether you hit the 48GB memory ceiling or the two-display limit. If you do, that is a real reason to look at the M5 Pro. If you don't, wait for a generation that changes something you can feel.

A quick way to decide

1. List the heaviest thing you do on the Mac in a normal week.
2. If it is a browser, documents, code or photo editing, the M4 Pro already covers it. Pick a configuration with enough memory and storage, since neither can be added later.
3. If it is local AI models, 3D rendering or demanding games, look at the M5 Pro. If the M6 is also on your list, M6 or M5 Pro weighs those two.

Buying an older Mac

If you buy a Mac a generation old, check the battery. Batteries wear with time and use, so a second-hand M4 Pro may not have its full capacity. System Settings > Battery shows the battery's condition, and how to check the battery cycle count on a Mac explains the number. Ask what battery condition and warranty come with it. Then check About This Mac in the Apple menu for the exact chip and memory, since the M4 Pro came with a 12-core or 14-core CPU and with 24GB or 48GB of memory.

Where Notchpals fits

An M4 Pro MacBook Pro has the same notch as the M5 Pro models, so Notchpals works the same on either: its reminder characters slide down from the notch, and it runs on macOS 14 or later. A Mac that has already had a life, or that came with a 512GB drive, is where the Tech care area earns its place. If the startup disk runs short of room, under 10 percent left, a Tech care character such as Gumdrop, a gumball robot, mentions it, at most once a week.

GumdropYour disk is almost full. Let's sort the keepers from the stale ones!

The same area speaks up below 20 percent battery when the Mac isn't charging, and after a week without a restart. On a second-hand Mac whose battery has seen some wear, the low-battery visit tends to be the one you notice first.