After so many years since the last major redesign back in October 2021, Apple officially unleashed its breakthrough pro laptop yet – the all-new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. Apparently, Apple is doing away with the “Retina” trademark for marketing its advanced displays and instead going all in with a different name that should reflect its even more advanced capabilities. On top of that, Apple went all-in on making the MacBook Pro even more advanced than ever before. Here’s everything that’s new with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display.

PROLED XDR

The iPad Pro with M4 introduced tandem OLED displays where two OLED panels are stacked on top of each other to give you excellent brightness levels and contrast ratios, but with the new MacBook Pro, the PROLED XDR display raises the bar again in many areas. This display is now even brighter for both HDR and SDR. According to Apple, these are how bright these displays are in various scenarios:

  • XDR brightness: up to 1000 nits sustained full-screen, 2000 nits peak (HDR content only)
  • SDR brightness: up to 1000 nits sustained full-screen, 2000 nits peak (outdoor)
  • 1 nit minimum brightness

This is the first time we’ve seen a one-nit minimum brightness on a Mac’s built-in display. The displays of other iPhones and Apple Watches have had this minimum brightness spec. Even the just-announced Apple HomeView and iPad mini (A20 Pro) now feature this as well, so this is a welcome change, especially when working in pitch-black rooms and environments.

But more surprisingly, the PROXDR display now has a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio – this further exceeds that of even the current iPad Pro, which features a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The 14.2-inch model features a resolution of 3024-by-1986 pixels, and the 16.3-inch model features a resolution of 3472-by-2266 pixels – both with a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch.

The PROLED XDR continues to offer support for up to 1 billion colors, True Tone technology, and ProMotion technology with fixed refresh rate options. For the first time, this MacBook Pro also supports Adobe RGB wide color gamuts on top of P3. As with the current mini-LED models, there is a nano-texture glass option as well.

All of these features make PROLED XDR the most advanced display not just in this MacBook Pro, but also in any laptop in the world.

Direct Touch Input

Yes, you’ve heard that right. For the first time ever, Apple is finally bringing direct multi-touch support to the Mac. This means that you are no longer restricted to using the built-in Force Touch trackpad. As you may know, drawing, even when doing a quick sketch or annotation, isn’t practical on the trackpad no matter how spacious it is. It’d be a lot more precise when drawing directly on the display. Thankfully, you can also directly touch the PROLED XDR display as a secondary input. Since the touch sensor is built directly into the display panel, this further reduces latency, which gives the impression that you’re directly interacting with the content and other UI elements.

Touch opens up a wide range of use cases for graphic designers, musicians, editors, and so on. The expansive PROLED display gives you the entire space to draw and illustrate. Music apps such as Logic Pro in the Apple Creative Studio allow musicians to play on-screen software instruments to create tracks or sound loops. I can imagine that Final Cut Pro will let editors directly interact with the timeline onscreen for trimming, adjusting the colors, dragging footage, etc. The sky is the limit on how you could interact with the display, as Apple provides system gesture APIs for developers to use in their apps, which expands new capabilities that are made possible with Touch.

Even Apple was meticulous about making the experience even more optimal by redesigning the hinge to be sturdier when using Touch and implementing advanced video stabilization that “smooths the camera feed in real time while using Touch on a video call”

Dynamic Island

Apple also did away with the notch as they are bringing the Dynamic Island to the Mac for the very first time, which also serves as the new home for Siri AI, Spotlight, and Live Activities. Similar to how you’d interact on the iPhone, the Dynamic Island is a one-stop solution to quickly access essential information as well as perform quick actions like controlling what you’re playing on Apple Music.

Thinner & Lighter Design

Thanks to the advancements of the PROLED XDR display, Apple is now able to make both the 14-inch and the 16-inch MacBook Pro models not only thinner, but also substantially lighter. In fact, the 14-inch model now weighs 3 pounds, and the 16-inch model now weighs 4 pounds, compared to the mini-LED models that weigh 3.5 pounds and 4.7 pounds, respectively.

Performance

This MacBook Pro continues to feature the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that can take even the most demanding workflows to extreme levels. The M5 Pro features up to 18 CPU cores (6 super / 12 performance) and up to 20 GPU cores, and the M5 Max features 18 CPU cores (6 super and 12 performance cores) and up to 40 GPU cores.

Advanced Audio System

The new MacBook Pro continues to feature the industry-leading six-speaker audio system; Apple has improved this audio system substantially with an all-new woofer design and all-new tweeters. For the first time, this audio system now enables Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos for a more immersive sound experience. This MacBook Pro continues to feature studio-quality microphones, and users can enjoy an even better experience when the MacBook Pro is in closed-lid operation when connected to an external display thanks to the dedicated audio tuning.

Connectivity

The new MacBook Pro continues to feature the most advanced connectivity in any pro laptop with three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe, and a headphone jack, so pro customers continue to connect up to three external displays with M5 Pro and up to four with M5 Max. The new MacBook Pro continues to feature the N1 chip for both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.

Pricing & Availability

Here are the starting prices for all the models:

  • 14-inch with M5 Pro: $2,899
  • 16-inch with M5 Pro: $3,399
  • 14-inch with M5 Max: $4,499
  • 16-inch with M5 Max: $4,799

Additionally, the new MacBook Pro models can now be configured with up to 16TB of SSD storage along with up to 128GB of unified memory.

These new MacBook Pros will not replace the mini-LED models with the M5 Pro and M5 Max, for Apple will continue to offer those models for those who want them.

Pre-orders begin now, along with other products that were announced this week, including the OLED iPad mini with A20 Pro, the iMac with M6, and the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6. All of these products are available on Friday, November 6.

Here are the official videos from Apple that summarize the new features of MacBook Pro with PROLED Display:

With that, that concludes this week’s run of product announcements, and this is possibly the last major one for this year. All in all, this was the most exciting season for new hardware from Apple, and this year’s products are surely hard to beat. Apple will certainly have a great holiday season!

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