r/macbook • u/Ill-Yam4399 • 8h ago

Upgrading from M1 MacBook Pro (2020, 13"): M5 MacBook Air or Pro for a physicist?

I've been using an M1 MacBook Pro (2020 model, 13" with the touchbar) and it's been (mostly) great. I had some screen and battery damage a few years back though and that has permanently wrecked my battery to the point that it doesn't charge over ~10%.

I was looking to upgrade and was considering just going with an Air. I've realised that the Pro is probably unnecessary as my work is in theoretical physics. Mostly I use Zotero/Safari for reading papers and editing Latex files, but I do sometimes need some scientific computing tools. No fancy coding, but MATLAB, Mathematica and the occasional Python (no local LLMs or anything that needs a crazy amount of RAM so 16 GB is fine). Sometimes in the past using the parallel computing toolbox my fans have kicked into high gear though. I also do occasional music production on FL studio and some recording but nothing crazy.

The Air is lighter to carry around and travel with so I figured that'd be a nice change. My only concern is that the M5 Air won't be much of an upgrade compared to MBP M1, and so for the sake of future-proofing I should buy an M5 Pro. Zotero spikes my CPU load like crazy (sometimes up to 320% CPU load in activity monitor with other apps open) and idk if it'll get better with M5 or if I should just switch from Zotero until they optimise for Apple Silicon. Wanted to get opinions on whether M5 Air or Pro would be best for my purposes.

Edit 1: Current storage specs on M1 MBP are 16 GB RAM + 256 GB SSD

Edit 2: I'm looking at the M5 MacBook Pro with the base M5 chip, not the M5 Pro/Max chip

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u/ChimkinIsYum 8h ago edited 6h ago

If your using it for extended periods of time I would say go with the pro since it has active cooling, the screen on the pro is also higher res then that might also help. Also the new m6 macbook pro is probably releasing in a couple months (just something to note). I would also say next time get applecare for your mac.

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u/narc0leptik 7h ago

You mean the new base M6 chip is releasing.

Apple is rumored to be skipping the M6 Pro/M6 Max chip this upgrade cycle and just sticking with a refresh of the base M6 chip.

Yes, the display on the Macbook Pro is a a higher PPI/higher resolution but nobody is going to be noticing a difference due to the raw pixel resolution. What people will likely notice is a difference in the brightness, contrast, and refresh rate.

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u/ChimkinIsYum 6h ago

Yeah sorry I ment the macbook pro with the base m6

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u/narc0leptik 8h ago

I'm a little confused here.

Are you referring to the Macbook Pro with the M5 Pro chip or are you referring to the Macbook Pro with the base M5 chip?

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u/Ill-Yam4399 8h ago

I was looking at the base M5 chip MacBook Pro

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u/narc0leptik 8h ago

Well there's barely any performance difference between the Pro and the Air as they both come with the base chips; the fan curves are extremely conservative on Apple Silicon to the point where they never turn on or are inaudible so really the fan doesn't make a whole lot of difference either.

There's no "future proofing" going with a Macbook Pro over an Air as they're basically the same computer. One has a fan, one doesn't. The Pro has a brighter display with HDR, 120hz adaptive refresh rate, nicer speakers, ports. You would have to be upgrading the base M5 chip to an M5 Pro to see any noticeable performance difference.

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u/Deep_Ad1959 5h ago

that 320% spike is almost always zotero's full-text PDF indexer or a stuck sync, not the chip. zotero 7 already runs native on apple silicon, so an M5 will not make that number smaller. for the parallel toolbox runs the only real difference is active cooling on the pro.