Apple is not too far from away from refreshing its flagship laptops, and once again, I’ve got mixed feelings about the potential upgrades aboard the upcomingMacBook Pro with the M5 siliconticking at its heart. So far, the most credible industry watchers and analysts have predicted that nothing substantial is in the pipeline. That’s not too surprising for Apple.
The company has a history of staying loyal to a chassis for at least a few generations, and the upcoming refresh is going to be no different. But that doesn’t mean there is no scope for improvement. On the contrary, Apple has the opportunity to further refine an already fine machine and deliver a knockout punch in its last hurrah beforethe hyped redesign lands on the shelves.
From a comparative perspective, there are a lot of aspects where Apple would be competing against itself instead of the best Windows laptops out there, but it would be interesting if — and how — it manages to pull off any meaningful upgrades. I am still holding on tightly to my M1 Pro MacBook Pro, but I am still hopeful about some potential tweaks that might make me consider a switch to the new model.
Thunderbolt 5 across the board
I count myself among the shoppers who splurged on theMacBook Air, but soon realized that the MacBook Pro would have been a better choice for a variety of reasons. The improved thermals courtesy of the fans, more base storage, and the longer battery life are the core reasons that make me regret getting the Air.
This year, I intend to get the baseline MacBook Pro with the entry-point M5 processor. However, I wish Apple to give it one crucial upgrade that it skipped for the most affordable 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro, which is a faster Thunderbolt port. You see, on the models with the higher-end M4 Pro and M4 Max processors, you get aThunderbolt 5 port, while the most affordable M4 variant gets a Thunderbolt 4 port.
It may not sound like much of a difference, but thespeed gulf is huge. The Thunderbolt 4 port offers a peak speed output of 40 Gbps, while the Thunderbolt 5 port triples those numbers to a hefty 120 Gbps. Technically, the bi-directional bandwidth of Thunderbolt 5 is 80 Gbps, but it climbs up to 120 Gbps with the Bandwidth Boost system for driving high-res screens with minimal latency at data packet transfer.
With Thunderbolt 5, you get double the pace of PCI Express data throughput, linking up with storage devices and higher-speed PC-to-PC connections. It also means you may drive more 4K and 8K panels, while reaching a higher refresh rate ceiling, too. Another major boost would be power delivery, climbing from 100W to a maximum limit of 240W.
Considering the fact that Apple is likely not making changes to the fundamental design or other innards, except for the year-on-year processor upgrade, it would be awesome to finally treat the budget-strapped MacBook Pro shoppers with a next-gen port, even on the cheapest MacBook Pro configuration.
Even better battery life
As mentioned above, Apple is going to reuse the same chassis on the M5 series MacBook Pro laptops as it did for the current-generation M4 series machines. And that means the battery size is not going to climb, unless Apple pulls off some technological marvel by shifting to an entirely new battery architecture. That is unlikely to happen.
What is plausible is that it can further optimize the energy efficiency on the M5 silicon, which is reportedly based on TSMC’s N3P process node, while the M4 was fabricated on the older N3E process. According to a report byETNews, the switch to TSMC’s next-gen process node has delivered a 5% jump in raw performance, while boosting the energy efficiency by a margin of 5-10% compared to the M4 series silicon. At the end of the day, higher performance per watt should be the desirable outcome.
We’ve already seen that happen within the Mac ecosystem. When Apple introduced the M4 line, it claimed that the new silicon can match the M2’s performance but consumes only half the power. If the company’s silicon team can replicate that success, or get close to it, we can safely expect a meaningful jump in battery efficiency on the M5 generation MacBook Pro.
There is certainly some precedent for thatm, as well. Between the M4 and M3/M2 generation MacBook Pro (14-inch), the battery life climbed from 18 hours to 22 hours. For the 16-inch model, the per-charge mileage went from 22 hours to 24 hours. I am hoping that Apple pulls off a similar trick and further pushes the boundaries of what’s possible on an ultra-powerful laptop.
A more powerful neural engine
When Apple lifted the covers from the M4 silicon, it mentioned that the onboard neural engine’s output (worth 38 trillion operations per second) made it the fastest dedicated AI chip of its kind on any PC out there. However, it didn’t take long for the competition to catch up and eclipse Apple.
Take, for example, AMD’s Ryzen Al Max+ 395 mobile processor, which packs 16 CPU cores and can muster 50 TOPS from its integrated NPU.Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra Series 2 silicon in laptopscan manage up to 48 TOPS. Then there’s Qualcomm, which delivers 45 TOPS across the board on itsSnapdragon X series mobile processorsfor Windows on Arm laptops.
Let’s do some catching up here. TOPS is now the industry-wide metric for how powerful a neural processing unit (NPU) fitted on a silicon package is, which eventually translates to the speed and complexity of AI tasks it can accomplish. The higher the NPU’s output in TOPS, the more its readiness to perform demanding AI tasks.
In the context of generative AI experiences that run locally on a device (an approach that is faster, safer, and doesn’t require an internet connection), you can’t underestimate the importance of a beefy NPU. There’s a reason why Microsoft has set a baseline of 40 TOPS to offer AI-drivenCopilot+ features on ̦PCs, such asWindows Recall, image creation, text-to-image editing, live captions and translation, super resolution, and camera studio effects, among others.
Apple has already given us a glimpse of what a powerful NPU can do by gatekeeping Apple Intelligence to MacBooks with M-series processors. Now, the company’s AI bundle is nowhere near matching AI suites such asMicrosoft CopilotorGoogle Gemini. But the year 2026 is shaping up to be a big one for AI and Siri at Apple.
The much-awaitedAI-boosted Siriwill reportedly land in 2026. Moreover, Apple has opened its Foundation Models framework to developers, allowing them to build AI experiences within apps. All of these planned AI-focused upgrades would need a capable NPU, one that is not only powerful by current standards, but also future-proof, as well.
Under-the-hood display improvements?
Now, this is a long shot, but I dearly wish Apple would make one (or a few tweaks) to the Liquid Retina XDR display on the flagship laptop. Ever since the M1-series MacBook Pro landed in its 14-inch and 16-inch avatars, the peak HDR brightness has remained the same at 1,600 nits, though the SDR brightness output has climbed from 500 nits to 1,000 nits.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. These figures are stunning and far better than the majority of Windows laptops out there. But it would be awesome to see Apple giving one last lift to the mini-LED panel on its top-end laptop and giving it a brightness boost, before the machines eventually moves to OLED screens fitted inside a redesigned chassis.
The reason I am asking for it is — especially in the context of MacBook Pros — is because these laptops are long-term warhorses and users typically keep them for more years than an average Windows machine. It would be quite a let-down for someone who splurged on an M5 MacBook Pro, and in just around a year, witnessed Apple launching a successor with a far better OLED panel with higher brightness, better contrast, and wider viewing angles.
And while at it, why not try and give a refresh rate boost to the panel, going from 120Hz to 240Hz? I know. I know. A MacBook Pro doesn’t need such a high-refresh-rate screen. One must leave that to gaming behemoths like theAsus ROG Strix Scar 18, but giventhe recent trajectory of AAA games arriving on macOSand a dedicated Games app taking birth in 2025 withmacOS Tahoe, I wouldlove to push gamesto their visual fluidity limits, wherever it is feasible.
For some,the MacBook Pro already a good enough gaming machine, so there’s that status quo.
Well, that concludes my wish list of what I want to see materialize on the M5 MacBook Pro. I am sure Apple has a few surprises of its own to share, especially when it comes to the underlying silicon, but it would be nice to see some additional hardware-level upgrades, too.
