Comment by jdprgm
4 hours ago
One thing I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is M5 Pro now supporting 64GB ram . I believe prior gens you had to go Max to get 64. m5 Pro 64GB is $3000 meanwhile to upgrade ram on the max you need the 40 gpu core variant with 64GB is $4300. $1300 dollar mark up for twice the gpu compute and 50% higher mem bandwidth isn't great value imo.
Anyone who cares about value isn’t getting a non-base model Mac. They are buying the silver shiny thing or their company is paying.
For example, grab yourself an Omen Transcend 14, spec it to 64GB RAM and the RTX 5070. You’re under $2000 and getting better graphics performance for anything that isn’t AI, and you’ve got an upgradable 1TB SSD and removable WiFi card.
You’re also getting an OLED screen which most people would prefer.
This model in particular I’ve chosen because it’s just as quiet as the M4 MacBook Pro models within 3dB during high intensity usage and gets very similar battery life, actually better battery life than the M4 Pro/Max models for light tasks.
> Anyone who cares about value isn’t getting a non-base model Mac. They are buying the silver shiny thing or their company is paying.
Or they value things differently than you do.
Like screen brightness. Or external IO. Or more than 64GB of memory. Or not being stuck with Windows. Or an SSD larger than 2TB.
> removable WiFi card
I could stick my hand into a wood chipper and still use the stump to count the number of people I've ever seen mention much less desire a removable wifi card in the decision making process about a laptop.