Apple has unveiled the first Mac laptop with an OLED screen and its first-ever touchscreen laptop at an event in Los Angeles, with pre-orders open immediately and sales starting on Friday, 6 November.
The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display was announced by Apple CEO John Ternus at a relaxed and intimate event in Los Angeles. It marks the first time Apple has offered a touchscreen on a laptop, a feature that many non-Apple laptops have had for years. The event also highlighted the return of a backlit Apple logo on the laptop's lid.
Design and Display Features
The new laptop is thinner and noticeably lighter than current MacBook Pro models, and it replaces the notch at the top of the screen with a much smaller cut-out. This includes Apple's trademark Dynamic Island, which expands to display useful information like the music track being played.
The display uses Tandem OLED, which places two sets of light-emitting layers in the place of one, delivering outstanding contrast and deep black shades. Brightness levels were measured at up to 1,000 nits of sustained brightness across the full screen, the same as previous MacBook Pro screens using mini-LED, but peak brightness is up to 2,000 nits instead of 1,600 nits. Apple says the contrast ratio is 10 million-to-one, against the already high million-to-one contrast ratio of a regular MacBook Pro.
Touchscreen and Ergonomics
Apple has resisted putting a touchscreen on its laptops until now, so the change is a major one, though Apple was emphasising the OLED upgrade more. The ergonomics of a device with keyboard and trackpad mean fingers stay low, but touching a screen involves a different movement. Apple has added specialities: when touching the screen to close a window, the relevant icons grow so it's easier to tap just where needed.
The 14-inch model is 170g lighter than the non-OLED model, and the change in dimensions is good to have but not dramatically different from the current range.
Processor and Pricing
The new model offers a choice of M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, both super-fast and offering professional and demanding users lots of power.
The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display was the third new Mac computer announced this week, after the reveals of the first MacBook Pro with M6 chip and an upgraded iMac, also with M6 included. All the new models became available to pre-order seconds after the latest one was announced and go on sale on Friday, 6 November. The price of the new model is higher than the rest of the range, starting at £2,899, compared to the latest MacBook Pro without OLED, which costs from £1,999.
