After more than three years of biding our time, the OLED MacBook Pro is finally here, it’s somehow all that more dazzling. Officially called the “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display” is Apple’s first laptop with a touchscreen. More than that, it’s the company’s lightest “pro”-level laptop, its most feature-rich Mac, and its most expensive MacBook to date. Oh, and the glowing Apple logo from past MacBooks is back!
The new MacBook Pro is the first MacBook to feature an OLED display, specifically what Apple calls its ProLED XDR. That means it’s using the same self-emissive diodes to provide better contrast and black levels than any of the previous mini LED “Liquid Retina XDR” displays in MacBook Pros. Apple is claiming up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR and SDR brightness and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio
There’s another big benefit to this new screen design: no notch. Instead, there’s now a Dynamic Island around the 12-megapixel webcam cutout, just like on current-gen iPhones. The black bubble expands to show you Live Activities or background tasks.
Not to get into the weeds of Apple’s past history, but the Cupertino tech giant has been hostile toward putting a touchscreen on a Mac product. Over the years, execs like previous CEO Tim Cook seemed similarly wary. Then—over time—execs began acting very guarded about the idea, hinting the company had slowly changed its mind. Now it’s finally here, and Apple is making a show over it.
Speaking of ergonomics, Apple has also changed the overall internals of the new MacBook Pro, making the laptops lighter. The 14-inch MacBook Pro is now three pounds, half a pound lighter than the old model. The 16-inch model now weighs four pounds, also half a pound lighter.
Apple also says that the six-speaker system provides 50% deeper bass.
Despite opting for a more-premium chassis, you may not see a huge performance leap if you already own today’s top-end MacBooks. The base OLED MacBook comes with an M5 Pro chip that we saw in the Macs Apple launched back in March this year. The top-end model supports the same, incredibly powerful M5 Max chip we already had the chance to put through its paces. The good news is that the M5 Max chip still has not been beat in terms of benchmark numbers, not for lack of trying by folks like Nvidia. Both models can be configured with up to 128GB of unified memory (RAM) and up to 16TB of SSD storage.
The new MacBook Pros are port-packed just like before. Each model has three Thunderbolt 5, a full-sized HDMI, an SDXC memory card slot, a headphone jack, and MagSafe for charging. Speaking of charging, Apple says that the new laptops can get up to 50% power with 30 minutes of charging. Battery life is rated at up to 24 hours of use.
All that is going to cost you. The rumors proved correct, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display with an M5 Pro chip starts at $2,899 ($2749 with an education discount in the U.S.), while the 16-inch model starts at $3,399 ($3,199 with education savings).
The models with M5 Max chips will cost even more. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display starts at $4,449 ($4,199 with education savings) and the 16-inch version starts at $4,799 ($4,499 with education savings).
Pricing is getting pretty onerous. The M6 14-inch MacBook Pro that Apple debuted yesterday starts at $1,999. Apple likely expects that there are fans lining up for the chance to finally peruse macOS 27 Golden Gate on an OLED display. We’ll see for ourselves soon enough. The new MacBook Pro is available to pre-order today, Oct. 28, and will be available starting on Nov. 6. They’ll be available in space black or silver. Nano-texture display options will also be available for an additional $150.
Raymond Wong contributed to this report.
