Don’t Buy the M5 Pro MacBook Pro Before Watching This (6-Month Review)

The exact M5 Pro configuration I’ve been living on for six months is linked above, with a discount attached. If you’re leaning toward the Air instead, that configuration’s linked there too, same discount 👆

Six months ago I told every friend who asked that the M5 Pro was the best value MacBook Apple had made in years. Today I’m putting that claim to a real test after hundreds of charge cycles and half a year as my only machine: what the battery actually looks like now, whether it still feels fast, and the one thing that started to annoy me over these six months. At the end, an honest verdict on who this laptop is actually for.

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⏱ Timestamps:
0:00 — The six-month-old claim and the real test
0:34 — What six months of real work looked like
1:45 — Battery: cycles, health, and real-world runtime
3:09 — Performance: same tests as launch week
4:56 — The one software bug in six months
5:24 — Downside #1: single encoder vs two or four
6:09 — Downside #2: 24GB of memory and local AI models
6:47 — Thunderbolt 5: I was wrong about this one
7:40 — Pro vs Max vs Ultra: real export numbers
9:10 — Who should buy the Pro, and who needs Max or Ultra
10:04 — Where 24GB actually runs out
10:41 — Reliability after six months: crashes, heat, throttling
11:21 — The mini-LED display and zero burn-in
11:53 — Build, keyboard, speakers, Bluetooth
12:30 — Storage: 1TB and how much is actually free now
13:06 — Who doesn’t need the Pro chip at all
13:43 — Final verdict after six months