2015 M5 MacBook vs Later versions

[Apples n' Stone]

Hi all,

As somebody who has owned the 2015 M5 since launch day, the logic board failure stories and such have thankfully missed me. But my question is for anyone who upgraded from the M5 2015; to any later versions of the 12” MacBook, were they really any faster? Been an absolute workhorse! Only criticism is it does like to stutter on some of the more demanding tasks for a small processor and I often work with large spreadsheets with a lot of interactivity and it can be slow then.

Thanks in advance!
- ANS

 

[EugW]

I’ve never owned the 2015 m5. I can just say that the 2017 m3 is noticeably faster than the 2015 m3 and also has a better keyboard.

Also, the 2015 model does not support Sidecar, nor does it support hardware HEVC decode.

 

[Apples n' Stone]

I’ve never owned the 2015 m5. I can just say that the 2017 m3 is noticeably faster than the 2015 m3 and also has a better keyboard.

Also, the 2015 model does not support Sidecar, nor does it support hardware HEVC decode.

Thanks for the info! Did your original suffer from the same stutter I have alluded to? That’s maybe the deal breaker if it’s worth doing or not as the amount of stutter I get when trying to edit values that result in lots of changes is what I feel, originally I pinned this down to RAM but installed one of those applications to see what is available and there was still at least 3GB left in most cases!

While interesting, I am highly unlikely to ever use sidecar and I leave video editing to the Pro but thank you for bringing these difference to my attention.

 

[EugW]

Thanks for the info! Did your original suffer from the same stutter I have alluded to? That’s maybe the deal breaker if it’s worth doing or not as the amount of stutter I get when trying to edit values that result in lots of changes is what I feel, originally I pinned this down to RAM but installed one of those applications to see what is available and there was still at least 3GB left in most cases!

While interesting, I am highly unlikely to ever use sidecar and I leave video editing to the Pro but thank you for bringing these difference to my attention.

I didn’t own the 2015 either but I did try out a few and they were laggier in general even if I wasn’t using much RAM.

However, your usage is very different from mine so it’s hard to compare. It should be noted though that having 16 GB compensates for the horribly inefficient RAM usage (memory leak?) of MS PowerPoint. It also caches MS Office longer so you don’t suffer Office’s long load times as frequently.

Normally I don’t generally get stutters but I have noticed that in Netflix going from full screen to windowed mode I will get a split second lapse in the video (but not audio, and the video stays synced). I don’t get this on my 2017 3.5 GHz iMac.

FWIW, according to Geekbench, the 2017 m3 is approximately 25-30% faster than the 2015 m5, and a whopping 50% faster than the 2015 m3.

Here’s Macworld’s take on it:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/review/mac-laptops/macbook-2017-review-3659971/

 

[PsychicRutabaga]

I have the 2015 1.2Ghz rMB. In order to stop my wife from constantly stealing my MacBook, I bought her the 2016 1.2Ghz rMB. I've used hers a few times and haven't really noticed much difference between them. They are both still in excellent shape and used daily.