Apple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display today, the first Mac with a touchscreen. It comes in 14- and 16-inch sizes, only with M5 Pro or M5 Max chips, and replaces the mini-LED panel of current MacBook Pro models with tandem OLED: two layers of pixels that make their own light, with no backlight behind them. It starts at $2,899 in the US, preorders are open now, and it arrives Friday, November 6. In Mexico, Apple's store has it on preorder starting at $64,999 pesos.
The details
- Display: according to the press release, up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR and SDR brightness, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, and ProMotion from 10Hz to 120Hz. Apple's product page notes that the 1,000-nit full-screen sustained brightness applies below 25°C (77°F). A nano-texture glass option is available.
- Touch: the touch sensor is built into the panel itself rather than layered on top. You can scroll, pinch to zoom, drag and drop, or double-tap a window to fill the screen. macOS translates touches into clicks, so many apps you already use work on day one, and Apple has new gesture APIs for developers. Among the apps getting touch features, it lists Notion, Zoom, Word, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Blender, Logic Pro, and Final Cut Pro, though a footnote says the apps on that list arrive later this year.
- Dynamic Island: the iPhone's Dynamic Island comes to the top of the screen; on the Mac, Apple says it is where Spotlight and Live Activities now live.
- Chips: M5 Pro or M5 Max, with up to 128GB of memory and 16TB of storage. Per the tech specs, the entry 14-inch model has an M5 Pro with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU, 24GB, and 1TB. There is no M6 version.
- Design: the 14-inch weighs from 3.0 pounds (1.38kg) and is 0.59 inch (1.50cm) thick; the 16-inch starts at 4.0 pounds (1.82kg). The glowing Apple logo on the lid is also back, after Apple dropped it from its laptops in 2016.
- Battery: Apple advertises up to 24 hours, but that figure belongs to the 16-inch M5 Pro. The 14-inch M5 Pro gets up to 22 hours of video, the same as its mini-LED counterpart.
- Everything else: three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot, MagSafe 3, a headphone jack, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, Touch ID, a 12MP Center Stage camera, and six speakers, in space black and silver.
Same chip, $400 more: you're paying for the screen
The comparison that matters is the MacBook Pro with a Liquid Retina XDR (mini-LED) display, which Apple still sells. The 14-inch M5 Pro has cost $2,499 since Apple's June price increase, , so the PROLED XDR model is $400 more. In Mexico, lists the entry 14-inch M5 Pro (15-core CPU, 16-core GPU, 24GB, 1TB) at $54,999 pesos, and the entry PROLED XDR model, with exactly that configuration, at $64,999 pesos: a gap of $10,000 pesos.
