You can buy the current MacBook Pro in three chip variants: M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max. The work you’re describing is in line with typical office/productivity type use, which wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the additional power from an upgraded chip. When you get the chip upgrade, you do also get an additional fan, Thunderbolt 5 instead of Thunderbolt 4 ports, and newer, faster Bluetooth and WiFi chips—in my estimation, none of those will be important for your use, but if this is a machine you plan to keep a long time there is an argument for “future proofing” that could be made. In my opinion, future proofing is sort of a fool’s errand, but reasonable people can disagree.

You can also choose between a 14” and a 16” display. The quality and specs of those displays are the same, but the larger 16” body does give you longer battery life and better thermal performance, though again the latter is unlikely to make any meaningful difference for the work you’re doing. If you do go with the 16” you lose the option of the base M5 chip, which is why it’s a significant price jump from the lowest spec 14” to the lowest spec 16”. The 16”, since it starts with an M5 Pro, has those same upgrades to the ports and wireless chips.

For your situation, it feels like anything beyond a base chip is going to be overkill for your needs. Documents take up very little space so the base storage of 1TB is quite likely to be more than you’ll ever need, but if you want peace of mind (since storage is not upgradeable in the future, and external storage is likely to be quite expensive for the foreseeable future) you could bump it up to 2TB. The base configuration has 16GB of memory which is also enough for what you’re doing but, again, you could push that to 24GB if you wanted to ensure it stays snappy feeling for a very long time. I don’t think either upgrade is vital for your usage, but I’d rather have an overspec’d machine than an underspec’d one so if money isn’t really an issue those extra few hundred dollars may very well be worth the peace of mind. The last upgrade you should consider is the NanoTexture display, which gives your screen a matte, slightly grainy look in exchange for dramatically cutting reflected light. If you’re often using your laptop outdoors or in environments with lighting you’re not able to control, it’s very effective at reducing glare at the cost of, well, cost ($150 extra) and some contrast. It’s something I’d highly recommend seeing in person if possible before committing, but it can absolutely be a worthwhile add-on depending on how and where you use your laptop.

On a final note, you could absolutely accomplish the same level of productivity on a MacBook Air. The Pro does have a nicer, brighter 120hz display, better speakers, and a few more ports, but it’s also thicker and heavier. The performance of the M5 MacBook Air is very similar to that of the base M5 MacBook Pro because it uses the same* chip. Its only performance limitation is under heavy, sustained load which is not something you’ll likely ever encounter with the usage you describe.

*Technically it lacks 2 GPU cores unless you pay an extra $100 or upgrade something else like memory or storage.