The "I just ordered / bought / got my new/refurb MBP" thread [Merged]

[TinaBelcher]

Last night I was so unsure if the price increase would only affect Apple’s official store or all electronic web stores.

So, I looked through all the models on every single web store. I was originally setting my eyes on an M5 Pro chip with 48 gb ram, but apparently only Apples official store had that configuration for the 14-inch. So, I saved the standard M5 chip with 32 gb ram and 1 TB in space black to my shopping cart… and went to bed.

Woke up this morning and sadly all the prices now matched with Apple’s. I panicked!! But luckily, the one I saved to my cart was still there to the old price, and you bet your a** I made the order right away!!

Sadly I have to wait a month and a half. But I’m just glad I made it!

I looked through the models in person, and I’m glad I chose space black even though the finger prints are horrible. I just can’t get past the very blinding bright silver aluminum. It’s unpleasant to look at. Gave me a headache and sickening feeling. That’s why I also returned my silver mba m2 years ago and chose space grey.

 

[DeanCorp]

I just grabbed a discounted one before this crazy price hike. Would have put the brakes on it for while, while I tried to adjust to it.

I'm not sure Apple is even going to break even with this, as people will hunker down most likely.

Apple will be fine. It was a good lesson to always buy what you need when you need it not wait for something unknown.

 

[Macalicious2011]

I'm not sure Apple is even going to break even with this, as people will hunker down most likely.

Some will easy purchases and cling on to older devices. However if you need a ms for work or university studies and want warranty then you will put up with the new prices.

 

[MrGunny94]

Well... I was waiting for the OLED model to move away from my M2 Pro 14 Inch with 16GB, I have been living with 8GB of compressed memory daily.

A little background from me on why I had 16GB.. back in the day I bought this I was mostly working with Terminal and Cloud VMs in Azure, but now it's quite the opposite.. I lead in terms of architecture and I started using a lot of Local AI I'm using LM Studio, Diffusion Bee.

When I need more Frontier thinking or RAG around documents & what not I leverage Claude Code a lot especially for planning & architecture as It speeds up my PoCs and deployments a lot. For the RAG stuff and beyond I mainly use AWS or Oracle Cloud.

With that in mind I went ahead and bought an M5 Pro (18c CPU/20c GPU/16c NE), 1TB SSD, 48GB RAM in Space Black. I finally moved from the 14 Inch format to the 16 Inch and I no longer feel cramped with two applications open even though I had 'More Space' display option in my 14 inch.

Got it for 2950€ without VAT in Amazon Spain, last night they moved the price up to 4170€.. Before VAT was 3600€

 

[MrGunny94]

@PBG4 Dude Thanks for the feedback. I went back and re-read some posts. You don’t use yours in clamshell mode, correct? I only ask because that’s how I use my MBP 80% of the time. So that I am sure would also affect my heat/noise/performance. I also use iStat Menus and I’ve only got my 16” M5 Pro fans to kick on when running Cinebench and the 3DMark Steel Nomad rasterized benchmark (interestingly the Solar Bay Extreme ray tracing benchmark did not kick the fans on so maybe the ray tracing in the new GPU cores are super efficient) and only when running extended prompts fans will spin up to about 25% if qwen or Gemma take more than 90secs generating responses. And even then it’s a nice low swoosh and not anywhere near my old Intel MBP. It’s been so pleasant to not hear the fans at all always 0% during normal computing.

More than the CPU/GPU it’s the 128GB that I really wish I had. I can’t run qwen3.6’s full size context and 8-bit quantization in 64GB (not comfortably). In order to take advantage of RAG, I need to install a tool that creates a vector database of my documents and then feeds relevant documents to the context window for processing. This approach is intended to avoid exceeding context window size by injecting only relevant information rather than entire documents to the model’s context window. And while that is great for 64GB, and 32k context is probably sufficient for my use now, getting everything to work and fit in 64GB requires a bit of tweaking, qwen, context, any agentic tools. 64GB is great to get started with local AI, but 128GB is really the sweet spot for >70B parameter 8-bit models with large context and associated tools/agents.

Ran your prompt for a short story about a penguin to the moon using qwen3.6 35B 8-bit 32k context (Penguin was named "Barnaby" lol). 55.4t/s, 3,071 toks, 41sec. Zero fans. I can set it for 262k context the max for the model but I'm left with about 7GB left for any tools or RAG, so 64GB is kind of tight if I want higher precision and large context. For 64GB, a 4-bit model is great as it takes roughly half the RAM so there's plenty of room for agents/tools. But I give up precision/accuracy and risk more hallucinations. Might not even be a problem for my uses, I'm not coding which in that case it would be a bigger issue, but just knowing I can comfortably run higher precision/higher parameter models is what I'm looking for. I will see if WWDC announces any new Studios/Minis before I make a decision. At minimum, I'd have a lot more flexibility with 128GB so that is definitely what I'll want to have later this year.

Here's my memory with Safari (8 tabs), Excel (2 worksheets), Mail, Calendar, Preview, Parallels 26 with a Win11 VM. Not even including Teams which I use often (and this takes a few gig), this is my standard day without any local AI. Zero fans.

View attachment 2635070

Here's my memory with all the above and qwen 8-bit 32k context running. No agents or tools and no processing just a model in memory. I'm right around 7GB free which fills up quickly depending on what I'm doing. I see compressed memory go up but no swap.
View attachment 2635075

For fun, I loaded gpt-oss 120B 4-bit 32k context, and immediately went to swap. Took about 90 seconds before the model even started responding and then I could probably type faster than the output. Clicking on just about anything on my Mac resulted in a spinning beachball. 128GB would allow for running that larger model at least in 4-bit (though I'd need even more memory to run 8-bit since it takes 124GB just to load the gpt-oss 120B 8-bit model).

View attachment 2635077
Ok, well I think I'll start a local AI thread or move the discussion to a more relevant thread elsewhere.

Thanks everyone for the input!

Great insight, thank you very much! Let me know and I'll join your thread on local AI 🙂

 

[Macalicious2011]

Well... I was waiting for the OLED model to move away from my M2 Pro 14 Inch with 16GB, I have been living with 8GB of compressed memory daily.

A little background from me on why I had 16GB.. back in the day I bought this I was mostly working with Terminal and Cloud VMs in Azure, but now it's quite the opposite.. I lead in terms of architecture and I started using a lot of Local AI I'm using LM Studio, Diffusion Bee.

When I need more Frontier thinking or RAG around documents & what not I leverage Claude Code a lot especially for planning & architecture as It speeds up my PoCs and deployments a lot. For the RAG stuff and beyond I mainly use AWS or Oracle Cloud.

With that in mind I went ahead and bought an M5 Pro (18c CPU/20c GPU/16c NE), 1TB SSD, 48GB RAM in Space Black. I finally moved from the 14 Inch format to the 16 Inch and I no longer feel cramped with two applications open even though I had 'More Space' display option in my 14 inch.

Got it for 2950€ without VAT in Amazon Spain, last night they moved the price up to 4170€.. Before VAT was 3600€

Does the 16 feel much heavier to hold and move around

 

[MrGunny94]

Does the 16 feel much heavier to hold and move around

It feels slightly but but today I went back to my 14" to backup some things I didn't because Claude Code wasn't syncing and now it feels like a toy.

Honestly the great thing about the 16' is the screen real estate and how you can multi task very well with multiple windows

 

[donawalt]

I bought a M5 Max, 18 core CPU, 40 core GPU, 128GB, 4TB, standard display for $5,999.00 I checked today, it's $7,999.00 now

 

[MarkMissoula]

Costco had the MacBook Pro M5 512 GB/ 16 GB Ram on clearance for $1,199.97 due to apple discontinuing the base 512 GB. I picked one up for that price couple days ago. Love it.

Me too🙂 price was too good to pass up. Space black was the only color option though.

 

[wegster]

Welp, kills me as it's literally the most expensive Mac I've bought - I usually do refurb, sometimes eBay and can hold out for a while on a decent deal. I had been waiting for a 256GB Mac Studio to do more local LLM work, but even used M2 Ultras are a scam-fest/unobtanium, let alone refurbs from Apple and new ones at 96Gb just don't cut it while also waiting months to ship.

With the price hikes, I said screw it and picked up an Apple refurb MBP 14 M5 Max 128GB RAM 4TB. Waffled all over the place on it, as my current M1 Max MBP is 2TB and I have some space to go, but at the same time expect to keep it at least 4 years. The moderately good news is between refurb and vet discount, it wound up around $2K less than the new pricing.

I'd been hoping to keep the M1 Max MBP (64GB 2TB) a while longer, pick up a Studio 256GB 2TB (and add external SSDs which I have a few on hand/not buying those new either for a while now.. :-/ ) to see what the MacBook Pro 'Ultra' was once it came out, but pricing insanity kind of solved that 'problem' for me.

I have no doubt it'll be a nice machine, and will get me through for some time to come, at roughly double the compute speeds of my M1 Max, and what should be significant gains in tokens/s processing for my local LLMs but limiting me on running multiple, and undoubtedly will get to hear the fans kicking in/thermal throttling on occasion.

I suspect it may well be time for Apple to buy or create it's own memory/storage company...

 

[PBG4 Dude]

My M5 Max gets to 100C in about a minute of LLM computations. Apple’s default fan curve doesn’t seem to ramp up the fans until the MBP is near 100C so if I’m going to do some long running computations, I use istat menus to crank the fans to full which keeps the GPU from hitting 100C.

In cinebench multithread tests, I go from upper 70K default fans to lower 90K results with maxed fans. With the fans maxed the M5 Max compares to an M3 Ultra in this test.

 

[danpass]

Traded in an MBA13M3 24/1tb for a MBP14M5 32/1tb. I made the switch primarily for the screen quality. The new MBP was fine but then I decided to go for a 4 to 5 year machine in the form of an M5Pro 48/2tb and returned the M5.

The M5 was available in store but the 48/2tb had to be ordered. I stalled for about two days, trying to figure out how to apply a credit/downpayment to an online finance order (cannot be done) and finally discovered that online full payment order had to be converted over the phone with Goldman Sachs (for you future people GS was the Apple Card issuer before Chase).

So I placed a regular one-time payment order so I could apply my trade in gift card credit.

Three days after I placed the order the prices went up. I dodged a $600 price increase for my configuration.

(when the order finally shipped I called GS and converted the payment to the typical 0% finance plan)

-

 

[hovscorpion12]

My M5 Max gets to 100C in about a minute of LLM computations. Apple’s default fan curve doesn’t seem to ramp up the fans until the MBP is near 100C so if I’m going to do some long running computations, I use istat menus to crank the fans to full which keeps the GPU from hitting 100C.

In cinebench multithread tests, I go from upper 70K default fans to lower 90K results with maxed fans. With the fans maxed the M5 Max compares to an M3 Ultra in this test.

Apple's default fan's are fine for standard usage, but not for pro usage.

This is why I always recommend TG pro. For $10, you can create your custom fan curve and stay cool.

 

[Brookzy]

I was able to snap up a brand new 14" M5 512GB base model for £1180 (inc. tax) from an official retailer today.

As a like-for-like for our American friends, that's about the same as a $1300 list price before tax in the US. Not as good as the $1200 Costco offer, but Apple is always more expensive in the UK sadly.

As the list price for the 1TB model is now £1999, I couldn't resist!

Crazy price hikes. Sales are surely going to plummet. Will enjoy using it, and will probably be able to sell it used for not much less than I paid, once all the price rises feed through, and perhaps even repeat, over the coming year.

 

[wegster]

My M5 Max gets to 100C in about a minute of LLM computations. Apple’s default fan curve doesn’t seem to ramp up the fans until the MBP is near 100C so if I’m going to do some long running computations, I use istat menus to crank the fans to full which keeps the GPU from hitting 100C.

In cinebench multithread tests, I go from upper 70K default fans to lower 90K results with maxed fans. With the fans maxed the M5 Max compares to an M3 Ultra in this test.

Yeah, pretty much what I was considering doing, although I think I let my paid iStats sub lapse/probably time to renew it anyways. Really wanted to hold out for a Studio but meanwhile I'm sort of hammering my 'poor' M1 Max/it's time for <something> so had to pull the trigger. I'm sure it'll be good for a bit, just less headroom for some things had planned to do.

 

[conmee]

My M5 Max gets to 100C in about a minute of LLM computations. Apple’s default fan curve doesn’t seem to ramp up the fans until the MBP is near 100C so if I’m going to do some long running computations, I use istat menus to crank the fans to full which keeps the GPU from hitting 100C.

In cinebench multithread tests, I go from upper 70K default fans to lower 90K results with maxed fans. With the fans maxed the M5 Max compares to an M3 Ultra in this test.

@PBG4 Dude I plan on posting this info in another thread on 14" M5 Max throttling but thought I'd also post it here for folks considering or already have a 14" M5 Max.

I recorded a ton of Cinebench 2026 results on my 14" M5 Max. I didn't do the same for my 16" M5 Pro before I sold it so I only have one data point from that machine but included it as a reference point.

Some findings/thoughts:

• Undocked is more efficient than clamshell as expected (too bad I use clamshell 80% of the time lol); Clamshell starts off 6% slower and throttles a bit more over the course of the 30-Minute test than Undocked.
• Throttling kicks in around 5-Minute mark for Clamshell and Undocked. Throttling tends to level off after 10-Minute mark. 1-3% additional throttling by 30-Minute mark. So any workloads under 5 minutes usually at full power.
• 14" M5 Max Clamshell is still 45% faster than a 16” M5 Pro Undocked even with 14” M5 Max max-throttling; 14” fans run at 95%; 16” fans run at 45-50%. So there's still a lot of GPU performance headroom to the 14" M5 Max even in clamshell mode vs the 16" M5 Pro but it comes with a lot more fan noise.
• CPU cores generate more heat (mid-80s) vs GPU cores (low/mid-70s); but GPU cores throttle more than CPU cores.
• Highest temp reached during all tests was 86º even in clamshell mode. NOTE: If your 14” M5 Max is routinely running into the high 90ºs or bumping 100º, you may have a defective MBP. One YouTuber (see below) discusses this and exchanged his first 14” M5 Max after getting inconsistent results and lots of throttling. His replacement MBP ran cooler and without as much throttling. Some YouTubers think it might have been a thermal paste issue or heat sink not seated properly during manufacturing of the first batch of M5 Max. Just a thought.
• Coil Whine and "Clicking": When I first ran 3DMark Solar Bay (ray tracing) I heard three or four clicks like a mechanical pencil and very audible coil whine for about 10 seconds then it started to subside. But interesting thing is that I haven't heard any coil whines or clicks with any subsequent tests or extended benchmark loops or daily workload. So I guess whatever caused it initially, it sorted itself out lol.
• Local LLMs/AI: 14” M5 Max 64GB vs. 16” M5 Pro 64GB is 58% faster Tokens/Sec; 35% more Tokens Generated; 27% faster Time To First Token (based on qwen3.6-35b 8-bit 32k context model); very apparent speed increase with Max vs Pro in prompt processing.
• MLX vs GGUF model was 7% faster Tokens/Sec, but generated 3% fewer tokens, and was 495% slower Time To First Token. I’ll continue to play with the configuration parameters for the MLX model as it “should” outperform GGUF on Apple Silicon across all metrics.
• For short, bursty work 14” M5 Max delivers significant improvement over 16” M5 Pro despite throttling and capped power draw. The biggest drawback to 14” M5 Max isn’t the throttling as much as the fans. If you want much less throttling and less fan noise, the 16” is obviously the chassis to select for M5 Max unless you are prioritizing portability.
• Sweet spot (price/value) is the 16” M5 Pro. Good performance, minimal throttling, much less fan noise when pushed. But isn’t nearly as responsive with local AI and GPU performance obviously lags the M5 Max due to half the cores and isn't nearly as convenient portability-wise as the 14" chassis.

For me, the improved prompt processing of the 14" M5 Max vs my previous 16" M5 Pro was worth making the switch. I didn't get 128GB at the time because I was saving that money for the M5 Max/Ultra Studio that still hasn't launched. And now who the hell knows how much it will cost when it's available. If I knew then what I know now, I would have just maxed out the memory to 128GB on my MBP and wait it out for awhile on a Studio (maybe an M5 Max/Ultra refurb with 256GB to 512GB in the distant future). I also do appreciate the portability as I took the 14" M5 Max on a trip to Colorado. Since I haven't done "serious" work on the road in years, I appreciated the portability over the larger 16" screen that I used to swear by.

 

[DeanCorp]

My M5 Max gets to 100C in about a minute of LLM computations. Apple’s default fan curve doesn’t seem to ramp up the fans until the MBP is near 100C so if I’m going to do some long running computations, I use istat menus to crank the fans to full which keeps the GPU from hitting 100C.

In cinebench multithread tests, I go from upper 70K default fans to lower 90K results with maxed fans. With the fans maxed the M5 Max compares to an M3 Ultra in this test.

This is why I returned my 14” M5 Max for 14” M5 Pro identical CPU and never hear the fans. It is 16” M5 Max or nothing for the M5 Max chip imo. Thermal throttling is real

 

[MacCheetah3]

Similar story to most of the recent posts. I decided to grab a current Mac model now as there’s no clear sight to when this train wreck is going to be cleaned up, so to speak.

I’ve purchased Apple refurbished in the past, although lately, I’ve been snagging Best Buy open box deals (e.g., Apple TV, Watch, Pencil Pro).

This was my first Mac via that approach. And, as such, while I typically wouldn’t put effort into an unboxing showcase, it feels relevant in this instance.

The following photos are the out-of-box experience/appearance:


After a gentle ‘scrubbing’ (isopropyl alcohol on a lint-free, soft cloth) of the keyboard, trackpad, and case plus a quick wipe down of the display/screen with a dry microfiber cloth:


For fun, here are some appearance comparison shots against a mid-2007 13-inch, black MacBook or “BlackBook” and a Space Gray 16-inch MacBook Pro:

The anodized aluminum reflects light quite well. The navy, almost deep purple hue in the first couple of comparison photos is from a cloudy twilight through a halfway blinded window off-camera to the right. The ceiling light is a warm-colored LED bulb.

The second set has the MacBooks on a granite kitchen countertop with a cool-colored a.k.a. “daylight” LED bulb hanging in the center surrounded by inset/in-ceiling warm-colored LED bulbs.

P.S. At the time of posting, the current price of this MBP model/config in open box “Excellent” condition is $2,812. The silver variant is $2,585. At the time of purchase, the silver model was $2,627.

 

[beansbaxter]

After reading Apple planned on increasing prices, made my order.

And then 6 days later, Apple raised prices.

Feel thankful that I got my order submitted in time.

 

[Stussi]

About a month ago I got myself a new MacBook. I've been debating if I should upgrade or not from my M1 Max. I looked at a lot of benchmarks, specifically for my programs (I'm a photographer) and debated if I should wait or see what happens with the "Ultra" MacBook. But there were so many uncertainties and I assumed there is no nano texture option available in the beginning. Also I had a gut feeling, the prices would increase... so I went for a good deal at a retailer and got a 16" M5 Max MacBook Pro with 64GB of RAM, 2TB SSD and Nanotexture. So far I'm really happy and the machine runs way way faster than my (still fine) old one, which will be the laptop for my fiancé soon!

Now the same Machine is about 1300€ or so more.

 

[hovscorpion12]

Finally shipping to store!!!!

Hopefully I can pick it up next week!!

 

[samryanfilms]

No one in my life has empathized with my giddiness I've had for a month so I had to dust off my account on here...

I had a base M4 Pro Mac mini and 14" M1 Pro MBP as my editing ecosystem. Wanted to upgrade the laptop and need to be more mobile these days so figured I'd consolidate and just get a more future-proof setup. I honed in on the M5 Max with the upgraded cores and RAM as the dream machine, originally $4,399 from Apple.

In early June, Microcenter had MBP's for 15% off. Great deal but it still felt like a lot of money for a freelancer to drop so I hesitated. One day I refresh the page and it's 20% off... My finger broke the sound barrier hitting "order now".

Boom... A week later, Apple price increases hit. I let out the biggest exhale of my computer-buying life. Was patient on Marketplace and sold my Mac mini for $1,500 and the M1 Pro MBP for $700.

My new rig now costs $5,000 from Apple, and I effectively got it for $1,319 including the value of my replaced computers (freelancer math)

Can I get a hell yeah lol

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Very very nice! 😎

 

[BeatCrazy]

A couple of hours ago, the US refurb site had a couple of the base M5 14" MBP with nano-texture, silver or black for $1569. These were the discontinued 512GB versions (not 1TB). I've never had the nano before, I hope I like it 😀

I went ahead and grabbed the silver one, I don't need 1TB and I don't foresee any "new" MBPs being available for under $2K for quite some time.

 

[littlepud]

Just picked up an open-box M5 Pro 48 GB 1 TB for almost 40% off in a private sale. It’ll be my workstation for AI tinkering.