Apple's M5 Max has a HUGE Problem transcript

I was up until 2:00 a.m. last night just being like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" I guess now we know why. Those Jaggies are definitely sus. >> [laughter] >> On the outside, these three MacBooks right here look identical, but the one in the center is very special because it houses Apple's brand new [music] M5 Max processor, which promises to be the absolute fastest mobile processor on the market. And it absolutely is sometimes, sort of.

I don't know. Now, before we get into my really weird test results, I just want to show you the difference between these two machines. This one right here is the normal M5. We've got one heat pipe, one fan, and kind of a loads of space around on the board, whereas this with the M5 Max has two fans, just way more room for stuff around the chip, and quite a more substantial cooler right here. Although, maybe not substantial enough.

Now, just looking at the spec sheet of the M5 Max, I was incredibly stoked. This thing right here gets six super cores and 12 performance cores, which should absolutely dominate the uh four performance cores and six efficiency cores that you get on the M5, but it turns out that it actually isn't that exciting. Apple has rebranded their performance cores to super cores, and then the performance cores that are in the M5 Max are not really efficiency cores, but they're also not the old performance cores.

They're like a new thing that's in the middle. So, they have more L2 cache and way more clock speed than an efficiency core, but it is nowhere near what an actual performance core would be in something like this. Now, everything was looking really good with the single-threaded results. Like, these two laptops right here, completely identical results, which makes sense given that they now called a performance cores in the M5 super cores.

Uh yeah, they both have 200 in single core, which is fantastic and the best on the market. But, where things got weird is when I ran the multi-core test on the M5 Max. So, if we compare this number that I literally just got on this laptop right here to the best number that I have got on this laptop, the best-case scenario is a 41.5% increase in performance, which is just absolutely insane. And I have found this to be consistent across many different multi-threaded workloads, like Cinebench 2026.

Geekbench is actually pretty consistent. That's a pretty short [music] test, but kind of no matter what I do, I just get totally different numbers out of this thing. And I'm not 100% sure why. What the [ __ ] is this? Like, do you see this spiky line right here? The frequency is just all over the place. Of course, the first thing that I do when I have really weird results is see if anyone else can replicate it. And for the most part, people seem to be having really excellent performance on this chip, minus Notebookcheck, who did report a bunch of thermal throttling.

But, I'm just genuinely flabbergasted. Hi, Jake. So, the highest that I've got is 8,669. Yeah, okay. That's That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah, and then next time it might be 7,000, sometimes in the 6,000s. 6,000, eh? >> Yeah. Man, you might have gotten a dud. I don't know. That's crazy. Yeah. What's the odd getting a broken laptop directly from the Apple Store? Well, thing is, Notebookcheck has been seeing pretty much the exact same thing that I [music] have been.

So, the odds of getting a broken M5 Max is much higher than zero. Like, I have no clue what their failure rate is, but I have a sample rate of like six people I've been talking to and two of those six appear to have broken ones. That's not very good. [laughter] See you in a couple days. All right, it's a couple days later. We're supposed to be on vacation. So Andy's with his family and I am at Jake's. I have also confirmed that my old MacBook M5 Max was completely [ __ ] Yeah, we exchanged it and this new one right here, wow, it's so much better.

The results like make sense. It's doing things in a way that are logical. I'm the having a working laptop pretty cool. >> [laughter] >> So now that it is working, this thing I can confirm just absolutely dominates everything else. So like AMD, Intel, completely dead. Not not even close. Single core performance is still tied with the M5 base, which is also tied with the absolute best that you can buy and the multi-core performance just takes a dump on everything that I have access to.

Besides maybe like a 24-core Intel CPU that's drawing 200 watts. Like this is going to beat it. Now as far as I can tell what was wrong with my previous MacBook was the thermal. So something was incorrect with maybe the thermal paste application or the way that the heat sink was applied. But with this one right here, the thermals are much better, although it does still thermal throttle. So under short bursty loads, we can hit 75 watts on the CPU and then that drops down to a sustained 50 watts.

Now with the previous one, it would go down to the 50 watts and just the temperature would keep on climbing and climbing until it got over 95° C. Whereas this one right here locked at 85° C and 50 watts no matter how long I run the tests for. So it's pretty good, but I do think that Apple could definitely have more performance out of this thing with a little [music] bit more cooling. Huge thanks to you Green for sponsoring today's video.

The MacBook Pro is a proper workhorse, but it has [music] one big problem. There are just not enough ports. Like, where's my USB-A, Apple? But, not anymore. The Ugreen Max 120 W 5 docking station has you covered. Watch this. One cable with 17 ports in total, it is one of the most port-rich docks available. And with two Thunderbolt 5 ports that can deliver up to 120 GB per second, you can transfer a 6 GB 4K movie in about a second.

It also has a built-in NVMe PCIe Gen 4 by 4 M.2 slot on the bottom, which is a very unique feature for these stuff. And it means that you don't have to pay Apple a kidney and a half for more storage. It also supports three independent displays on Windows, two independent displays on Mac, or a single 8K 60 Hz or dual 6K 60 Hz outputs paired with 240 W total power output, and a built-in 2.5 GB Ethernet port, so you can have your battle station ready with just plugging in a single cable.

Andy, can I keep your monitor like this? Nope. Darn. Well, if you think of that dock is overkill, they also have a 10-port version. So, don't wait. Check out Ugreen at the link down below, and huge thanks for sponsoring this video. Now, if what you are looking for is just CPU performance, though, you can get this CPU, like the exact one, in the M5 Pro and save yourself some money. So, make sure that if you're getting the Mac, you know that you're going to be using the GPU, and you're not just spending a bunch extra money so that I don't know, you can say that you have the Mac.

For RAM, I got 36 GB version cuz we're not absolute ballers here. And realistically, you don't need more than 36 GB for anything unless you're loading massive AI models into this. And even 36 GB is a pretty stupid amount of RAM for the vast majority of people. My main use case for it is just irresponsible, completely reckless multitasking. Like, I have been just running like hundreds of Chrome tabs while having Windows also open, 16 GB dedicated to that with SolidWorks open, everything.

You can just have so many programs open, including like heavy demanding ones, and this thing just will not slow down. It doesn't care in the slightest. It is so refreshing after using the MacBook Neo for a little bit to hop into this and just be like, "All right, I never have to worry about closing a single application ever." If you are into AI work clothes and just sold a kidney, you can get 128 GB of RAM in this, so you can run massive models locally, which is great cuz then at least you're paying for the RAM instead of all of us just getting shafted by Sam Altman.

What really impressed me though with the M5 Max are the storage speeds. We have upgraded from PCIe Gen 4 to Gen 5 in this, and it has double the SSD read and write speeds of the M5 base, which already just spanks everything that I have tested. Like, yes, while I download the Cinebench zip as a little test right here, this does have Wi-Fi 7, and it is very fast and very consistent. Okay, watch this. We're going to unzip Cinebench.

This is 3.18 GB, 4.5 GB, about 10 seconds, about 5 seconds. Done. That is insane. [laughter] And especially when you combine it with Thunderbolt 5, which we have three of here. If you have a quick SSD, man, this thing is fast. Like, we're probably going to take this entire footage from this video and transfer it onto this after, and it's just going to be like bam, immediately done. It's wild. Like, when I tested it, it did 1.2 GB per second read and write.

It's just insane. We got the 32-core GPU on the M5 Max instead of the 40-core, so you can get a bit more performance if you spend an extra $300, but we didn't feel like doing it. This was a very expensive video. It is still incredibly quick with that 32-core, so it wasn't quite able to beat the RTX 570 Ti that we have in this Asus G14 in the vast majority of tests, but the M5 does pull off some wins in Blender's GPU render and in Dirt Rally, which is one of the few benchmarks that we can run on Windows and Mac.

The area where Apple is absolutely destroying Windows, though, is efficiency. This Asus G14 right here, she draws 110 W while gaming, whereas the M5 Max draws just a tiny little 50. So, pretty similar performance between these two in GPU tasks and half the power draw on Apple silicon. And you can take advantage of all of that performance while on battery with Apple, whereas the Windows laptops just totally poop themselves.

Or if they don't, then you get maybe an hour away from the wall. And of course, gaming on macOS is nowhere near as seamless as it is on Windows, but I am incredibly impressed with how it has improved. Ever since the drop of the Steam Deck and also Windows on ARM, game emulation has progressed incredibly far, and most Windows games seem to run just great on the Mac. In Cyberpunk 2077, I saw a 14% performance decrease by emulating the Windows version on Mac instead of just running it natively.

And Shadow of the Tomb Raider, we saw an 18% performance decrease. So, that means even if you're emulating stuff on this, you're still getting more than our 5060 performance, which is pretty freaking crazy. The one thing I did find in crossover is that you need to click show all resolutions in the display settings to get all of the resolutions to show up in emulated games, which [music] is kind of weird. I didn't test emulating a bunch of games, but Trackmania ran great, Elden Ring ran great, and hilariously, the Halo Master Chief Collection runs awesome on a Mac now.

Forget Windows. That said, Forza Horizon just wouldn't work no matter what I did. So, that means that in that game specifically, the Asus G14 gets infinitely more FPS than the M5 Max, and that also brings the average to the G14 getting infinitely more gaming performance. So, I'm sorry that's the math, guys. Windows still completely wins. Let's get rid of this thing right here. All we need is this for [music] Windows.

Oh, yeah, and you saw it in the graphs there, but the M5 Max just panther-like for gaming performance. I didn't mention this briefly before, but with the amount of RAM and cores that we have in the M5 Max, running Windows in a VM is just a piece of cake. I have had no issues getting SolidWorks running. You can see right here I have the front sub from my Golf, which is an import from a 3D scan with just a stupid number of faces and polygons on the back.

Like, my personal desktop with a 3080 chugs opening this model. And on the MacBook, it is definitely running better even though it's in a VM that is Windows on ARM, which is emulating x86 in order to run SolidWorks, and Apple still just does it cuz it's so fast. In Parallels, I've also not had issues running really tricky software. So, like BMW's INPA, which I've seen people struggle to just get working on Windows 11, I have it working on a MacBook.

That said though, to achieve all of the excellent Windows compatibility that I have shown does come at a significant cost. So, Crossover, that's $74 US per year, and Parallels is 120. So, you need to spend nearly $200 a year for Windows basic program and game compatibility. It is on sale, and Parallels and Crossover do both contribute a lot to Windows and emulation in general, but it's pretty steep. As for the other bits of the MacBook, it is basically unchanged.

The display is still one of the best on the market. So, we're looking at 3024 by 1964 resolution, a 1600 nits peak brightness, which we can really see with the sun right here. That looks fantastic. And 100% DCI-P3 with Apple's incredible management of HDR color and accuracy. So, a lot of Windows laptops, you'll have really overblown HDR experiences, and on this, it's just accurate. It looks completely amazing. In my opinion, this is the second best laptop display on the market with the only one that beats it being the 1600 nit OLED on the ASUS ProArt P16, but then you have to deal with having an Intel or AMD processor and it being really [ __ ] slow compared to this.

I guess that does get like a 5090 or something. That's pretty fast. But 1600 nits on an OLED looks insane. We do get other typical MacBook things. So, the trackpad is force touch, best on the market once again. The keyboard is uh it's like fine. I would say that I'm able to get up to full speed, no problem at all. But if you are typing on it for a really, really long time, like I'm talking like more than 4 hours, there are Windows laptops that will be better than this for you.

So, laptops that have more key travel and a bit of an easier bottoming out, you can type on for like 8 hours a day. This right here, you can get about 4,000 words in a day before your fingers start hurting. So, really great, but not the best. Oh yeah, what's also the best on the market are the speakers. We have the sports canceling ones. They play down to 100 h. Uh that's pretty crap in any speaker unless it's a laptop, in which case that is the best you can get cuz they are small.

Oh, wait. No. What What was the really stupid one? Oh yes, the XPS M2010 from 2006 weighing at 18.3 lb has better speakers than this. >> [laughter] >> Jake, do you know see that thing? It's amazing. And I miss when laptops had subs in them. As for the battery, that's also unchanged. So, 72.4 Wh and Apple claims that you can get 20 hours of battery life on the M5 compared to the 24 on the base M5. We can see that right here.

We're looking at 0 W almost all the time even though we're screen recording on this. So, it is really, really good at just using very little power, but it's using so little power that I need to throw to future Alex to let you know how it does in the full test. Future Alex here and just YouTube playback at 200 nits, the M5 Max was able to go for 24 hours and 3 minutes on battery, which is astounding and also annoyingly long.

So, if you guys have ideas for better battery tests that might not take that long, uh let me know down below cuz 24 hours and 3 minutes is a real long time to have one of these just sitting around doing a battery test. Wow, those battery test results were really something. And at $3,700, this is an incredibly expensive laptop, but it also shits on the faces of every Windows laptop out there. So, uh yeah. It's It It's the best laptop.

What else do I have to say? If we're being honest here, uh if you're looking to do fast everyday stuff and have a bunch of money, it's great. If you want to be a video editor and transfer really large files onto it, it's literally the best you can get. As long as you don't want to play Forza Horizon 5, this is laptop for you. Oh yeah, I've just been so busy glazing this I totally forgot that we got a totally broken one.

So, that is a really big problem. If you get one of these, please spend some time make sure that the benchmarks make sense compared to what it should be getting because if you have one of these like the subjective experience of using the broken one was really good except for occasional like frame drops and games and stuff like that. So, just verify you're getting what you paid for cuz you're paying a lot for it and if it's just broken from the factory, that's a huge problem.

The one time that you don't buy this laptop is if you want to get a refurbished this laptop but older. So, an M4 Max which is not significantly slower, you can have for $1,000 less. So, that's pretty tempting. That's probably what I would do. So, huge thanks to making it >> the video. If you like the video, hit the like button, get subscribed and maybe, you know, comment down below how much you think the Jack who channel is just like ever so slightly better than Ziptied Tech.

Definitely not better than Ziptied Tuning. Um subscribe to Alex and Annie on Patreon. Goodbye. Meow to suck. And have a great old day. Hi Arlo. Didn't even look over. What a jerk. Hello.