M5 Max MacBook Pro (2026): OVERKILL?

All right, so we have the MacBook Pro with the M5 Max here. Uh, this cost me a lot of money. Again, I didn't get this from Apple. And by the way, for those wondering, I do have the Samsung Galaxy Book 6 Pro coming today. That was pretty expensive as well. I think I spent close to or over $2,000 with that one. And then I have the Galaxy Book 6 Ultra that should be arriving on Monday. So, we are very busy and I've spent a lot of money. That one is what? $3,000 all said and done. So, I spent over $10,000. This was like $5,000. That was what, uh, three, that's eight. Another two. So, over $10,000 plus tax. So, again, not being sent these devices means I'm going to spend money out of the channel's budget. So, if you do want to help support the channel, uh, hit the links in the description below. They are affiliate links, so I do get a small commission. or just hit the uh subscribe button and hit the like button and watch the videos and that certainly helps support the channel. Now, with that out of the way, uh we have the MacBook Pro here. We looked at the MacBook Neo. It's in the background there. Uh and you know, it's good for what it is and for who it's targeted towards. So, we're going to get the full review on that very soon. I've been putting it through its paces. Uh and now we have this one here. And this one is going to be the opposite side of that. The polar opposite performance is going to be the top 1%, right? You're going to get the best performance out of this. You're going to get the most out of this. And I think most of you don't need to go with the M5 Max chip. This is maybe overkill for most of you, but for those that do high-end video editing and need professionalgrade type of performance, this is going to be uh the one to look at. Now, I've been using this one back here. This is the M4 Max, right? And this one has served me well for over a year. So, uh, this one, uh, does very well with Final Cut Pro, Da Vinci Resolve, and this one is going to this one is replacing this one, right? So, we'll see the performance comparisons and everything, but uh, we'll do an extensive full review uh, after I've used it for a while. But, right now, let's get it out of the box. Let's get an idea of the performance and what you you can expect with this MacBook Pro. Hey everybody, it's Andrew and this is the M5 Max MacBook Pro. Brand new for 2026 coming up. All right, we have pull tabs here. Let's get these off and let's get this out of the box. Okay, we get the unit itself and notice there's no hello on this one like we got on the uh MacBook Neo. So, uh no change in that regard. Physically, this is going to be the same with one minor change in the keyboard. We'll talk about that in a moment. very minor. Uh, this is going to be some documentation and you get the big charging adapter here. I believe this is 140 watts. Yep. 140 watts USBC with US prongs there. Uh, that is your power charger. And then, of course, you get your MagSafe to USB type-C braided cable connection right there. So, that is the cord, the charger, and everything in the box. All right, here it is. I have it in the silver. Of course, you can get it in the space black. Those are the only two colors. Basically, this is going to be the same with one minor exception as we'll show in a moment. Uh but this is it. And you can see uh very good MacBook quality. Obviously, this is going to be the all metal design. Obviously, premium design that we've come to know. All right. So, that is the build. Now, of course, for those wondering, you can do the you know what test there. You can see that. And of course that's going to boot up the unit. And there is the one change physically uh on the keyboard. And no longer are the uh certain keys get the written letters. You now get symbols instead of that. It's a cleaner look. Uh you can get a look at it over here. And I think it looks okay. Right. So that's it. Everything else physically will be the same as the previous M4 models, the M4 series. Right. So, uh, for those wondering, the only change is the key caps will have certain symbols instead of text. All right, let's get a look at the ports. And nothing's changed here. So, on the left is your Macsafe connection. You get two Thunderbolt 5 ports. They are full function supporting 80 and 120 Gbits per second and a 3.5 mm microphone headphone combo jack. And moving over to the right side, good to see, of course, the full-size SD card reader, especially for content creators. I think that's really good. A third USB type-C Thunderbolt 5 port and an HDMI 2.1. All in all, an excellent port selection. Notably missing, as with the last unit in last few years, no USB typeA, no Ethernet or anything like that. You'll have to use dongles for that. And like I said, you can open this with one finger. No issue. Minimal screen wobble. And of course, now you'll see the display here. This is that mini LED display. Uh that's going to be really good. But of course uh they are there are rumors they're moving to a tandem OLED and they are moving to a touch option as well. They're also going to redesign the OS to be more touchfriendly. At least that's what the rumors are right now. Nothing official from Apple just yet. All right. Now before I get this all set up, I'm going to put in my account information in a moment. But uh this is the difference between the M4 Max and the M5 Max. This one has the written text. This one doesn't. Otherwise physically the same. And I didn't wipe this down on purpose because I wanted to show you what this looks like from daily use. This gets a lot of smudges and it doesn't look really good. The keyboard is not my favorite. I know some people love the MacBook keyboards. I'm not the huge I'm not a huge fan of it. It's okay. I do like a ThinkPad keyboard better. I do like some HP keyboards better. I just don't like this one. Okay, so just uh keep that in mind. That being said, uh this does collect a lot of smudges and it does collect a lot of grease. This one hopefully will be a little bit better. I don't anticipate it because I think physically they're going to be the same keyboard. Uh they have the power button which doubles as the fingerprint scanner or in this case what they call it Touch ID. So they both have that physically the same same force touchpad, haptic touchpad. Uh probably the best in the business still. And then of course the the amazing six speaker sound system should be the same. So, we'll check everything out, but I wanted to show you the difference between the keyboard. This one has text. This one has symbols. Okay, let's get a measurement of the weight. With just the unit alone, we're looking at 2.149 kg. And that is 4 lb 11.8 oz. Now, let's put it back into kilogram. And with the power cord, the Max Safe charger cord, and then of course the power charger, 140 watts, 2.493 493 kg and that is 5 lb 7.9 oz. Certainly not the lightest 16in laptop out there, but certainly portable enough to take with you on the go. There is a little bit of heft, though. All right, so this is 2.149 kg. This is the M5 Max, and let's take a look at last year's model just to see if they're the same. And this one is 2.139 kilograms. So, a little bit different there. A little bit heavier this time around, right? So, but minimal. You won't notice the difference, but just a slight difference in the weight. Now, as I'm setting this up, I just want to point out, as I did in the MacBook Neo video, setting up a MacBook is a lot better, quicker, more seamless than on Windows, right? Windows has become atrocious lately, especially with those huge updates and it just takes forever. It's bloated, whatever. I don't know. I don't want to know what you want to call it, but it's not fast. It's not efficient. And this is a much more seamless setup. So, I do give kudos to Mac OS here for a much better experience getting everything set up and a lot quicker. Okay, so this has the Touch ID. Let's set this up. And as with any MacBook, it is a very simple process. Just plant your finger on there, different angles, and voila, it's right there. Done. All right, here we are fully booted up and we have our 16.2 2-in display, miniLEDD, high refresh rate, 120 hertz, um, non-touch. But of course, we're hearing rumors that end of 2026, maybe early 2027, they're going to move to Tandem OLED. They're going to put touch in. They're going to possibly have cellular. They're going to redesign the OS to be more touch friendly. All these rumors, nothing official, of course, so just keep that in mind. Uh, but it is the glossy one. This is the standard display, although it has a good decent anti-reflective coating on it, but there is for $150 more a matte finish type uh which is called the nanoexture option. Right, I have that for my 14inch M5 MacBook Pro. I didn't opt for it this time simply because I couldn't wait the extra two weeks. I wanted to get this out. I have a lot of laptops to review, so I went with this. I should be perfectly fine with this. But if you want less glare, le less reflection, and maybe perhaps a little bit less vibrancy, then go with that $150 nanoexture option. All right, so I'm actually seeing a little bit of a difference in the keyboard. I'm not sure if I like it better now or not as much as previously. Again, I'm not a huge fan of these keyboards, but let me do the test to see which one I feel might be better. Again, initial look here, but let's uh let's give them a look here. All right, so here are the results. The M4 Max got 78 words per minute. The newer M5 Max, 74 words per minute, 93% accuracy on the older one, 91% on the new M5 Max. So, uh, a little bit better, slightly better performance in terms of my typing. Of course, it's purely subjective since it is how you type. Uh, but a little bit better from last year's or the last gen, I should say, because this came out late 2024. So, uh, not seeing an improvement as far as my speed or accuracy, but uh, they do feel a little bit different. I'm going to have to play with this a little bit more to get an idea of what's going on here, but I definitely am seeing some changes here. Now, the Force Pad here is still the best in the business as far as I'm concerned. You can see the scrolling, very smooth, pinch to zoom, gestures. Uh, the best really. I mean, I was using the MacBook Neo all day yesterday. And that's a really good mechanical one. They did a really good job, especially for a potentially $499 price. Again, for educational pricing, $599 for everybody else. But, uh, that is pretty good. But, this is just the best, right? So, this costs more money. Obviously, one of the reasons they didn't put it on the Neo back there, but they keep it here on their high-end professional line. While I'm running some benchmarks here for the first time, setting everything up here and obviously getting initial look at the performance, I want to say something about the design of the MacBook Pro. And you can see it here while I'm running this. You probably could see my first score of Geekbench, but uh still running. Uh but what we're looking at here is the same design for the last few years, right? A boxy design, kind of sharp edges over here. So, uh, is it time for redesign? I think so. And we're hearing the rumors, like I said, the M6 series will move to a different design, a redesign, and they're going to redesign the OS to be more touch friendly because touch is going to be coming according to, uh, my sources. So, we'll see. But, uh, the design is, I think, a little bit dated at this point. Obviously, we have the notch here, and you can see it over here. Uh, that is, of course, not my favorite thing here. And of course, we don't have Face ID, right? I'd like to see that. Let's get our first result real time here. And this is uh pretty good. 4201 28,919. I have the M5 Max here. Uh 48 GB of the memory, the 2 TB of storage, right? But you can go up to all the way up to 128 GB, but of course that becomes even more expensive if that's possible. Right? So this is the result here. 4201 28919. So really good. All right. And we can see here the metal score 20 227705. So a far cry from the five core GPU we have on the MacBook Neo. Obviously these are the polar opposites but this is the higher end. Obviously these are the enhanced graphics. Uh I went for the higherend 40 core GPU 22775 so far. That's initial benchmark on the metal score to test the GPU. Okay. So, I'm running the Cinebench and I am hearing the fans kick in for the first time. Let's give a measurement of that real quick in terms of the noise. All right, that is 40 41 dB the most at the the peak. So, not too bad. All right, I'm running the Cinebench 2026 for the first time here in the CPU multi thread. I'm seeing a 24% increase over my M4 Max in terms of multi-thread. Although that one is the not the highest tier GPU uh that you can get for the M4 Max. I think there's one above that. But this one is 24% better than that one. And as far as single thread is concerned, Cinebench 2026 about 11.5% increase. So not a huge single core increase year-over-year over the M4 Max MacBook Pro. though, the bigger increases in the multi-thread over the single thread. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. But the biggest increase for me from my M4 Max to this M5 Max is the GPU performance. 61% better on this one. Now, I do have the 40 core GPU, which is a little bit better. I think I have the 32 core GPU on that one, not the full one there. So, uh, that's one difference, but I'm seeing about a 61% year-over-year increase or gen overgen increase on that. So, uh, that's where you're going to see with the media engine here and all that and the improvements there. I think that's where you're going to see the biggest, uh, improvements. All right. Now, I just ran the uh, speed test for the SSD. So, this is two terabytes now. So, they've doubled the base storage on this, and this has one terabyte. So, the M4 Max and this is the M5 Max. So the last the previous gen I'm getting about 6,500 uh reads about 7,100 writes. This has really improved 13,000 plus reads 16 almost 17,000 on the right. So you can see a huge uh increase in terms of the disc speeds here as far as the SSDs are concerned. So good in that regard. All right, I'm running the Steel Nomad light test and this is already started. We started them at the same time. So you can see this is going to be a little bit faster or maybe a lot faster. We'll see. Uh this is showing right now about I would say 80 frames per second. This is 120 frames per second so far this initial uh test. So uh I'm expecting a nice improvement in terms of graphics performance. Again I saw on the Cinebench 2026 about a 61 62% increase uh gen over gen. So in terms of graphics now what's interesting is I'm hearing the fans come come on on the M5 Max silent on the M4 Max. already got my result and this one got 118.3 frames per second. This 92.8. So you're seeing an improvement in terms of the graphics. Definitely gen over gen here. Okay. So just to give you a quick example again, I'll do more comparisons in the upcoming full review. Dell XPS16 for 2026 has quad speakers, 10 watts, and I would say the output is amazing, especially for a Windows laptop. One of the best of all time. I think that good. Uh let's compare it to the MacBook Pro 16, which I think is the best in the business. Let's see how much uh if at all Windows has closed the gap. Let me know what you think in the comments section below. Dell XPS 16 first here. Hello honey. How you been such a long time? I can feel my heart jumping. Are you still MacBook Pro? Hello honey. How you been? I wish it's been such a long time. I can feel my heart jumping. XPS come closer to >> MacBook Pro. I guess it wasn't meant to be. All right, let me know what you think about the sound between the Dell and the MacBook Pro. I got to say the Dell sounded really good, especially for a Windows laptop. Whether it's better than the MacBook Pro, it's up for debate. Think I still think the MacBook Pro has a a better quality sound. It might be a little bit louder on the XPS with that 10 watts coming out of it, but uh really good either way. So, let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Okay, so I have the Dell XPS16, brand new redesign here for 2026. Now, uh let me um I will say this, the Dell display is amazing, although I wish the peak brightness would be higher, right? So, what we have here is 3200 by 2000 tandem OLED. So, you're going to get the richer blacks, the deeper blacks, more vibrant colors in my opinion, uh, than on this one, right? So, this has been great. Now, here's the difference in the two keyboards here. Obviously, this is a zero lattice keyboard versus this one. Now, there has been some criticism on the Zero Lattice keyboard. I still like typing on this better than this one. Uh, first of all, the keys don't smudge quite as much as this one. That's one little nitpick, obviously, but it's just a little different. Uh, my the ThinkPad keyboards are my favorite all time. This one is not my all-time favorite, but I do prefer it over the MacBook for whatever reason. Uh, but again, it's purely subjective. Now, they both have haptic touch pads. Uh, this one has now delineations and etchings to let you know where it begins and ends. Uh, excellent job, and I think it's also improved over previous iterations. This one's still the best in the business. This one has closed the gap quite a bit. So, excellent uh force pads, touchpads, whatever you want to call it here uh on both of them, both haptic. Now, this is the example of the camera. It's 8 megapixels, capable of 4K video, IR. That means you can log in with face recognition. It's pretty amazing camera. I got to say they did a great job in the image processing unit or the IPU. And this is the FaceTime camera here on the MacBook Pro M5 Max 2026. This is uh not an IR camera. So there's no Face ID or face recognition, which is a little bit unfortunate. And you do get that notch, so you can hide it. There are applications that you can use to hide the notch. But of course, uh let me know your thoughts on the video quality. What do you think about the audio quality? Let me know. All right, I have a lot more testing to do. Obviously, this is an initial look at the brand new M5 MacBook Pro. Yes, it is expensive. Obviously, I'll leave links for everything in the description below. I went out of pocket here, paid a lot of money, close to $5,000 all said and done. And of course, I could have gone even more, but I do have a limited budget. I went out and I spent over $3,000 on that Galaxy Book 6 Ultra coming on Monday. I spent $2,000 or nearly that or whatever it was on the Galaxy Book 6 Pro coming today supposedly there. It's on the truck. So, uh we have a lot to do here. I spent a lot of money. So, if you are going to help support the channel, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, and if you're going to use my affiliate links, I do get a small kickback, a small commission. That's going to help support the channel. So, I do appreciate it because again, I do not receive review units from Apple, Samsung, or any of these other companies. Most companies I do get, but the ones I don't, like these, and these are the most expensive, it has happens to turn out. Uh, so I do appreciate your support. Uh, I will have a full review. I will compare it to other devices including that XPS16 and all the other devices that we're going to compare it to. Obviously the M4 Max, we already got an idea that we are seeing some improvements here. Is it worth going from the M4 Max to the M5 Max? As far as performance, I think if you're a using graphics, the most things intensive graphics, I think it might be worth it if you are that niche that needs high-end uh graphics performance with the media engine and all that. If you're doing high-end 4K 8K video editing, I think you're going to benefit from going to the newer chipset here. But I think most people with the M4 Pro, M4 Max will be perfectly fine sticking with what you have and not having to spend these high prices to upgrade. Of course, that's my initial assessment. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. So, please hit the like button, please subscribe, please share this video, don't forget to leave a comment in that comment section below. And if you are a casual viewer of my content, why not consider subscribing? Doesn't cost you anything. Help support the channel. We're making our big push for half a million subscribers by the end of the year. And like I said, if you're going to buy something like the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Neo, the MacBook Air, any of those other things, links will be in the description below. Yes, they are affiliate links and I do get a small commission and as I mentioned, it does help support the channel. So, until next time, this is Andrew and I'll see you in the next video.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Series (Affiliate Link): https://howl.link/m4kxxk28hdhxo MacBook Pro featured in this video was purchased with my own money. Apple did not send a review unit and no money has exchanged hands. No copy approval or any editorial approval has been given to Apple. All the opinions expressed in the video are my own. #macbookpro Video Index: 00:00 Intro 02:25 Unboxing 03:17 Build & Design 04:18 Ports & Connections 06:37 Size & Weight 07:29 Initial Setup 08:11 Display 09:13 Keyboard 10:34 Touchpad 11:54 Initial Benchmarks 15:48 Audio & Speaker Test 18:06 Comparison to Dell XPS 16 19:26 Camera Comparison 20:04 Intiial Thoughts after 24 Hours