Base M5 Pro 1TB and 32GB RAM or wait ?

[ignatius345]

All of the talk of SSD wear and premature SSD failure due to swap has not borne out in over 5-years of Apple silicon. Don't pay attention to memory pressure or swap. System responsiveness is the gauge that you need to monitor.

100% agree. My last MacBook Air M1 8 GB of RAM and I very much underspec'ed it because I hadn't anticipated the work I ended up using it for. Multiple user accounts open simultaneously, loads of design apps launched at the same time. It handled it quite well, though it would hit the wall at some moments (switching users, for instance, or opening a huge Illustrator doc). It definitely could've benefitted from more RAM but it still performed surprisingly well.

Anyway, every time I bothered looking it was of course using gobs of VM. At one point after a year of this use I got curious and compared the SSD wear to my iMac (which had 2x the RAM) and neither one was showing any appreciable wear at all.

 

[kasakka]

EVERYONE is Skipping the M5 Generation MBP until the M6 and Touchscreen TandemOLED Redesign.

It’s would be a documented Catastrophe to buy and M5 MBP with a Standard Display

And soon after They Launch the Redesigned M6 with Touchscreen TandemOLED.

The number one rule of Apple devices is "Don't buy the 1st generation of a new product".

Let's look back at the M1. It had no HDMI 2.1 port so that severely limits its display output capabilities unless you use USB-C -> DP dongles/cables/docks. The M2 line-up fixed this. M3/M4 are not a whole lot different, just faster/more efficient and TB5 is nice to have.

So with the M6, it's very possible there is some significant inconvenience or issue that gets solved by the M7.

By comparison, a M5 Pro/Max will be a familiar design that is just more performant than the previous one. There's only two things I can truly fault on the current Macbook Pro design:

1. HiDPI scaling limitations over a single display output. The MacOS "max 8K framebuffer" limits the HiDPI scaling on 4K+ resolution displays significantly. I have to run my Samsung G95NC 8Kx2K superultrawide as two displays to get around this. 5K/6K displays are also severely limited in scaling options above the "looks like half the native res" option.
2. Extremely slow pixel response times on the internal display. They're worse than the cheapest external IPS display on the market. To the point that the MBP displays are barely good enough for 30 fps motion, while 120 Hz is a total blurfest easily noticeable when just swapping e.g between Spaces.

If Apple moves to OLED on M6 at least #2 would be solved, but the caveat becomes that OLEDs will have a more limited lifetime than LCDs with potential for burn-in.

Thus I see the M5 line-up as a far safer investment for the next few years. It's not fancy and new, but it's safe and largely free of any major hardware quirks.

 

[leifp]

The number one rule of Apple devices is "Don't buy the 1st generation of a new product".

Let's look back at the M1. It had no HDMI 2.1 port so that severely limits its display output capabilities unless you use USB-C -> DP dongles/cables/docks. The M2 line-up fixed this. M3/M4 are not a whole lot different, just faster/more efficient and TB5 is nice to have.

So with the M6, it's very possible there is some significant inconvenience or issue that gets solved by the M7.

By comparison, a M5 Pro/Max will be a familiar design that is just more performant than the previous one. There's only two things I can truly fault on the current Macbook Pro design:

1. HiDPI scaling limitations over a single display output. The MacOS "max 8K framebuffer" limits the HiDPI scaling on 4K+ resolution displays significantly. I have to run my Samsung G95NC 8Kx2K superultrawide as two displays to get around this. 5K/6K displays are also severely limited in scaling options above the "looks like half the native res" option.
2. Extremely slow pixel response times on the internal display. They're worse than the cheapest external IPS display on the market. To the point that the MBP displays are barely good enough for 30 fps motion, while 120 Hz is a total blurfest easily noticeable when just swapping e.g between Spaces.

If Apple moves to OLED on M6 at least #2 would be solved, but the caveat becomes that OLEDs will have a more limited lifetime than LCDs with potential for burn-in.

Thus I see the M5 line-up as a far safer investment for the next few years. It's not fancy and new, but it's safe and largely free of any major hardware quirks.

I won’t comment on HiDPI as it’s not something I’ve dealt with.

Every generation of base M series chips has seen capability upgrades that exceed mere speed bumps.

The M2 added encode/decode engines (from the M1 Pro and Max), arguably the least change but even so, new hardware features. The M3 added mesh shading, raytracing, dynamic caching RAM and new encoding/decoding hardware (among other features). The M4 admittedly only made everything faster, some due to new hardware for already existing functions (those added on the M3, e.g. raytracing) as well obligatory speed bumps. Even so, next generation mesh shading, raytracing et al were through new hardware not just faster versions of old hardware. The M5 put neural accelerators in each GPU core.

Each one of those upgrades can result in failure or defects or be massively improved in subsequent generations (as M3 to M4 shows here).

As to the internal display of the MacBook Pro, I believe the M4 generation resolved prior pixel response time issues with their quantum dot displays.

If you want to play it safe, the M4 is the generation to get.

 

[kasakka]

As to the internal display of the MacBook Pro, I believe the M4 generation resolved prior pixel response time issues with their quantum dot displays.

According to Notebookcheck's reviews, the M4 series has "constant PWM flickering and slow response times". The pixel response times are still completely abysmal at ~77ms, and ~36-40ms for grey-to-grey transitions.

For reference, you need ~8.3ms for 120 Hz without blur, ~16.6ms for 60 Hz and ~33.3ms for 30 Hz. So Macbook Pro displays are not even capable of blur-free 30 fps performance.

 

[leifp]

According to Notebookcheck's reviews, the M4 series has "constant PWM flickering and slow response times". The pixel response times are still completely abysmal at ~77ms, and ~36-40ms for grey-to-grey transitions.

For reference, you need ~8.3ms for 120 Hz without blur, ~16.6ms for 60 Hz and ~33.3ms for 30 Hz. So Macbook Pro displays are not even capable of blur-free 30 fps performance.

Ross Young loves ‘em and BlurBusters is widely considered the resource for such things, even within the industry.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1857208745014776215

https://twitter.com/x/status/1857213457176596792

As to Notebookcheck: I’m not sure how a site can be seen as particularly reliable that notes M2 improvements over M1 include pixel response going from 58 to 36ms and GtG transitions dropping to 26ms from 40 then goes on to find the vastly improved M4 has your noted “abysmal” numbers of 77ms pixel response (notably worse than an M1!) and 36-40ms GtG (equaling the M1 version).

As to PWM I will admit ignorance as I am not aware of being negatively impacted by it.

That said, I am hardly dismissing your preferences! Everybody is different. What they notice and whether they care and how much they care. Ghosting annoys me but way less than colour inaccuracy, blooming, defective HDR implementations, and contrast.

I would be interested in how you find your “dual 4K” Samsung display and how well it plays with macOS. We absolutely have different preferences and needs but we both seem to be quite engaged in display tech. I adore my M1 MBPro display (for work, photo editing, etc), however my OLED devices all beat it (M4 iPad Pro, ASUS PG42UQ for Windows gaming, SONY Bravia 8 for PS5Pro and streaming). I’m now in the market to replace my desktop displays for my MBPro (along with an M5 Studio of some sort) and will leave no stone unturned.

 

[kasakka]

I would be interested in how you find your “dual 4K” Samsung display and how well it plays with macOS. We absolutely have different preferences and needs but we both seem to be quite engaged in display tech. I adore my M1 MBPro display (for work, photo editing, etc), however my OLED devices all beat it (M4 iPad Pro, ASUS PG42UQ for Windows gaming, SONY Bravia 8 for PS5Pro and streaming). I’m now in the market to replace my desktop displays for my MBPro (along with an M5 Studio of some sort) and will leave no stone unturned.

MacOS is truly **** with external display handling. Macs can run many displays at once, but get very limited when using a single very high res display.

You know how on the 5K/6K Apple Studio Displays there's very few scaling levels available above the half res integer scaled option that most people find is a pretty comfortable size? That's because of the 8K framebuffer limit they impose on MacOS. Since any HiDPI resolution is "looks like WxH" res rendered at 2x scale, you quickly hit that 8K limit.

With the Samsung G95NC, I have to run it as two displays using the split screen Picture By Picture mode to be able to achieve scaling above "looks like 3840x1080" which is too large.

I have found that MacOS has an easier time understanding what to do with it if it's split as two 4K displays. But I prefer the 21:9 + 11:9 split for 5120x2160 + 2560x2160. I need the BetterDisplay app's "Configuration protection" features to keep MacOS in check or else when waking up from sleep it will often do weird things like turn on mirroring, detect the 21:9 as 3440x1440 or forget HiDPI exists for the 2560x2160 side because it doesn't understand the oddball resolution.

But when it works, it's a great solution for work with tons of desktop space. I use Spaces for multiple desktops on both sides so that gives me even more room to play with.

I expect MacOS display handling code is a real patchwork piece of crap under the hood. By comparison Windows has none of these issues and just works (which can't be said about many other aspects of the OS...).

 

[leifp]

MacOS is truly **** with external display handling. Macs can run many displays at once, but get very limited when using a single very high res display.

You know how on the 5K/6K Apple Studio Displays there's very few scaling levels available above the half res integer scaled option that most people find is a pretty comfortable size? That's because of the 8K framebuffer limit they impose on MacOS. Since any HiDPI resolution is "looks like WxH" res rendered at 2x scale, you quickly hit that 8K limit.

With the Samsung G95NC, I have to run it as two displays using the split screen Picture By Picture mode to be able to achieve scaling above "looks like 3840x1080" which is too large.

I have found that MacOS has an easier time understanding what to do with it if it's split as two 4K displays. But I prefer the 21:9 + 11:9 split for 5120x2160 + 2560x2160. I need the BetterDisplay app's "Configuration protection" features to keep MacOS in check or else when waking up from sleep it will often do weird things like turn on mirroring, detect the 21:9 as 3440x1440 or forget HiDPI exists for the 2560x2160 side because it doesn't understand the oddball resolution.

But when it works, it's a great solution for work with tons of desktop space. I use Spaces for multiple desktops on both sides so that gives me even more room to play with.

I expect MacOS display handling code is a real patchwork piece of crap under the hood. By comparison Windows has none of these issues and just works (which can't be said about many other aspects of the OS...).

Yeah, in the pursuit of money Apple went a different way from the industry and it has been difficult to square the two since Apple’s monitor selection is incredibly limited and extremely expensive. I’m going Studio [edit: Mac not Display] next not only because I’m old and have fond memories of the desktop era of computing but because I have experienced issues with any display hooked up to my MBPro. There’s some naive hope that a dedicated display will work better than as a second display to the MBPro. This is one of the reasons I have the old 5K iMac in such fond regard.

Thanks for the detailed thoughts on your display and Macs! Very useful. If frustrating. And yes, BetterDisplay is on my list to check out but I didn’t bother while I had standard displays. I probably should have…