Apple announced the first touchscreen Mac on October 28: a MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED display, M5 Pro or M5 Max, from $2,899 for 14 inches and $3,399 for 16. Pre-orders are open and it ships November 6.
Apple announced the first touchscreen Mac on Wednesday, October 28. It is a new MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED display Apple calls PROLED XDR. The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399, according to 9to5Mac and MacRumors. Pre-orders are open now. Deliveries and store sales start Friday, November 6.
The price gap is the number to hold onto. MacRumors compares the new prices with the non-touch models’ prices just before the launch: the entry 14-inch M5 Pro is about $400 and 16 percent higher, and the entry 16-inch about $400 and 13 percent higher. The M5 Max versions rise by about 10 and 9 percent. Apple is selling the OLED models next to the existing mini-LED models and the new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro.
What Apple confirmed
- Display. Tandem OLED with up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR and SDR brightness, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 10Hz to 120Hz refresh. Sizes are 14.2 and 16.3 inches. Nano-texture glass is optional.
- Touch. The touch sensor is built into the panel. macOS turns touch into clicks, so many existing apps respond to it. Apple lists swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom and double-tap to fill a window. A new hinge is meant to keep the screen steady, and video stabilization smooths the camera feed while you touch the screen.
- Chips. The same M5 Pro and M5 Max as the models Apple announced in March, with a new thermal design that moves warm air away from the display. Memory goes up to 128GB.
- Body. Up to 1mm thinner. About 3 pounds for the 14-inch and 4 pounds for the 16-inch. The notch is gone, replaced by a small Dynamic Island. The Apple logo on the lid lights up.
- Ports and wireless. Three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot, MagSafe and a headphone jack. Up to four external displays. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.
- Storage and sound. Up to 16TB of storage and a six-speaker system with 50 percent deeper bass, per MacRumors.
- Charging. 50 percent in 30 minutes.
- Colors. Silver and space black.
Fully configured, MacRumors reports the 14-inch reaches $14,249 and the 16-inch $14,549, both with M5 Max, 128GB of memory, a 16TB SSD and nano-texture glass. The 16TB option alone costs $7,000.
Confirmed vs. unconfirmed
Everything above comes from Apple’s announcement as reported by 9to5Mac and MacRumors. The brightness, contrast and touch claims are Apple’s own. Nobody outside Apple has measured the display or the touch latency yet, and I haven’t tested this laptop.
What it means
Touch is the only new thing for most buyers, because the chips match what Apple already sells. If you run Slack, Zoom and a browser all day, the M5 Pro in the cheaper mini-LED model does the same work. Pay the extra $400 only if you expect to use the touch screen or you want the OLED panel, the lighter body and the Dynamic Island.
Who should consider it: designers, musicians and developers who test iPhone and iPad apps, the groups Apple names for touch. For a team laptop, I’d order one and have a person use it for a week before buying a fleet.
Who should wait: anyone who buys on price. Retailers were already cutting the 16-inch M5 Max, and the launch pushes the non-touch models further down. Check the trade-in values before you sell the old one, because Apple raised them on October 26.
If the laptop sits on a desk most days, the monitor matters as much as the lid. See Enzo’s best monitor for a MacBook Pro and the two-monitor setup guide. The earlier reports are in the touchscreen price report and the event preview. Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra is the Windows comparison.
Primary source: Apple’s MacBook Pro page. Reported by 9to5Mac and MacRumors, with configuration prices from MacRumors.