The new MacBook Pro 14 is thinner and lighter than before, but the fans are louder than before
When Apple unveiled the new MacBook Pro with its PROLED XDR panel just over a week ago, we already voiced our concern that the weight savings in the new versions could negatively affect cooling.
Our in-depth review of the new MacBook Pro 14 now shows that our suspicions were correct. While the M5 Pro processor's performance has not been reduced and remains at its usual high level, the cooling system has to compensate for the thinner design. The result is louder fans and noticeably higher surface temperatures under load. However, the cooling system has to compensate for the thinner design. As usual, the MacBook Pro offers three different power profiles, with Low Power mode drastically reducing performance while continuing to allow virtually silent operation.
In Automatic mode, the fan speed increases from 5,100 rpm and 41 dB(A) on the old Mini-LED model to 5,600 rpm and 44 dB(A) on the new OLED version. The difference is even more pronounced in "High Power" mode. Here, the speed rises from 7,500 rpm to 8,700 rpm. The resulting noise is noticeably intrusive, with the noise level increasing from 51 dB(A) to a very loud 55 dB(A). At the same time, the device also gets considerably warmer overall. We measured temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius on both the top and bottom of the base unit. In our view, this is an unwelcome development and does not bode well for the coming years, as future M-series processors will certainly not consume less power than the current models, despite manufacturing improvements.
We would have liked Apple to offer a better solution here, such as a vapor chamber of the kind found in other premium multimedia or gaming laptops. The 14-inch model in particular would have benefited from more powerful cooling, as the current M5 Pro and M5 Max SoCs deliver slightly better performance in the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
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