Although every year, Apple launches a new chipand it is usually better than the previous one, of course, it does not always have an important difference, and in many cases it is a very simple redesign that optimizes something of it, but without really being a key change.
However, in other years, things change, and we see much greater performance between one and the other, as is the case of the M4 and the current M5which Apple itself has compared so that we can observe that difference, in case we have doubts about which product to choose.
M4 vs M5 chip: differences
Apple has published data showing that its new chip M5 It is much more powerful than the previous one M4 for AI tasks, especially when you run large language models (LLMs) directly on the device.
The main leap comes from the architecture: the M5 has “neural accelerators” in each core of its GPU, which dramatically speeds up calculations that use AI. Thanks to that, in Apple tests, the time to generate the first “token” (that is, the first word of a phrase) with a local LLM is up to 3.6 times faster than with the M4. Additionally, as the model continues to generate more tokens, the M5 also goes faster thanks to its higher memory bandwidth (153 GB/s compared to the M4's 120 GB/s).
Another key point: it not only improves AI, but also the speed of storage. In the new MacBook Pro with M5, the SSD is up to 2 times faster than in the M4 model, which helps load those large AI models much more efficiently, and all thanks to the chip, and not the type of SSD.
In short, if you're going to use language models on your computer (for example, for local chat, text generation, or AI creative tools), the M5 gives you a much smoother experience– Launches predictions faster and processes large amounts of data more quickly than the M4. Likewise, if your idea is not that, this chip will also be interesting, as it improves many tasks, and you never know when you may need it, since the new Siri, which will arrive in the spring of 2026, will also use it, and surely you will usually ask some questions to the Apple assistant, or at least you will want to when it comes out.
This advance makes the M5 a very appropriate chip for those who want to work with AI directly on their device, without depending so much on the cloud, and without sacrificing speed or efficiency, but also for the rest of the people, being a key leap in the processors and other components of their devices, so if the price between a Mac with M4 and M5 is not very different, have no doubts about which one you should choose.
And you, do you think these jumps are really noticeable, or is the chip you have more than enough for your daily tasks and you don't care about the improvement? Leave us a comment with your opinion.
