Latest MacBook Pro battery life unaffected despite a big change
Source: 9to5Mac
Chip architecture changes
We noted that the brand‑new M5 Pro and M5 Max versions of the MacBook Pro have a significantly different chip architecture to their predecessors. While the M4 Pro and M4 Max models had a mix of efficiency and performance cores to balance battery life against power, the new models ditch the efficiency cores.
The M4 Pro chip was available in two configurations:
- 12‑core CPU – eight performance cores + four efficiency cores
- 14‑core CPU – ten performance cores + four efficiency cores
The M4 Max offered a 16‑core CPU – twelve performance cores + four efficiency cores.
With the M5 Pro and M5 Max, Apple has dropped the efficiency cores altogether. The company now uses a brand‑new core type that blends the characteristics of the previous cores, even though Apple has reused one of the old names (as we explained earlier: ).
Battery life
You might expect the replacement of efficiency cores with balanced ones to affect battery life, but this doesn’t appear to be the case. Macworld spotted that the new M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models list the same maximum battery life as their predecessors for the undemanding task of wireless web browsing:
M5 Pro
- 14‑inch: 14 hours
- 16‑inch: 17 hours
M5 Max
- 14‑inch: 13 hours
- 16‑inch: 14 hours
Likely explanation
The likely explanation is Apple’s new Fusion architecture (), which combines two dies into a single system‑on‑chip, presumably improving power efficiency.
Image: 9to5Mac/Apple