Apple unveiled the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display last week, and it brings some of the biggest changes to the Mac in years. There’s a tandem OLED screen, a significantly lighter design, and the long-awaited addition of touch. Oh, and the Apple logo glows again.
Here’s what it’s like actually using the new MacBook Pro.
- Pre-order 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display
- Pre-order 16-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display
Design
In 2016, Apple unveiled an all-new MacBook Pro design that prioritized thinness and portability above almost everything else, kickstarting what proved to be a rocky period for Apple laptops. The thinner, lighter MacBook Pro was marred by the butterfly keyboard, poor thermals, and an overall focus on form over function.
In 2021, Apple righted the ship. It unveiled a completely redesigned MacBook Pro that reversed many of those controversial decisions, bringing back ports, replacing the Touch Bar with a physical function row, and dramatically improving performance with Apple Silicon.
There was a trade-off, though: the MacBook Pro got bigger and noticeably heavier. The smaller model grew from 13 inches and 3.1 pounds to 14 inches and 3.5 pounds, while the 16-inch model went from 4.3 pounds to 4.7 pounds.
At the time, we were all willing to make that compromise. Now, with the new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, Apple is once again making its pro laptops lighter — but without sacrificing what made the 2021 redesign so great.
The 14-inch model has dropped from 3.5 pounds to just 3.0 pounds, while the 16-inch model has gone from 4.7 pounds to 4.0 pounds. In fact, both new MacBook Pro models weigh essentially the same as their 2016 counterparts, despite having larger displays, significantly more powerful hardware, and none of the compromises that defined that generation.
Both models are also slightly thinner than before, with the 14-inch model measuring 0.59 inches thick (down from 0.61 inches) and the 16-inch measuring 0.63 inches (down from 0.66 inches).
How did Apple pull this off? The biggest change is the switch from mini-LED to OLED. Because OLED doesn’t require a separate backlight, Apple could make the display assembly significantly thinner and lighter. The company is also using custom on-cell touch technology to integrate touch sensing into the display panel, instead of adding multiple separate layers.
But while the new display technology played a major role, the weight reduction also came from countless other smaller engineering optimizations throughout the machine.
You notice the lighter weight of the new MacBook Pro immediately when you pick it up. My review unit is the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and I’m genuinely surprised at how nice it feels. It’s not light, but it feels less like a tank.
I’ve always used the smaller of the two MacBook Pro models for portability, most recently a 14-inch M4 Pro. The weight of the new 16-inch MacBook Pro has me reconsidering that preference, though. It feels remarkably nice for a laptop with such a large display, and I’ve really enjoyed having the extra screen space without feeling like I’m sacrificing too much portability.
The new MacBook Pro also features slimmer bezels around the display. Apple has eliminated the thicker bottom bezel, and for the first time, all four corners of the display are rounded. It’s a relatively small change, but I think it gives the MacBook Pro a cleaner, more symmetrical look.
And finally: the glowing Apple logo is back. Unlike older MacBooks, which used light from the display’s backlight to illuminate the logo, the new OLED MacBook Pro has no backlight to draw from, requiring a different approach.
The logo’s brightness is still tied to the display brightness, just like it was a decade ago. The higher your display brightness, the brighter the Apple logo on the back. It also factors in your environment’s ambient brightness.
When the MacBook Pro is closed, the logo looks like polished metal, just like it has since the 2016 redesign. Open it up, and it glows. It’s unnecessary, but I’m so thrilled it’s back.
PROLED XDR Display
The display is what Apple is most proud of on this new MacBook Pro. After all, the full marketing name is apparently “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display.” It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but I think it shows what Apple sees as the big differentiator compared to other MacBook Pro models it still sells.
And rightfully so. The PROLED XDR Display is stunning. It’s a major upgrade over the mini-LED display that Apple debuted in the MacBook Pro back in 2021 (which was no slouch, to be clear). The OLED panel’s color saturation, contrast, and deep blacks are miles better than any other laptop I’ve seen, including Windows PCs with high-end OLED displays.
The viewing angles are also noticeably better, with colors and brightness staying remarkably consistent even when you look at the display from the side.
One downside of the MacBook Pro with mini-LED is blooming. Because the mini-LED display used local dimming zones, there was a subtle halo around bright objects against dark backgrounds. With the OLED display on these new MacBook Pros, every pixel is independently illuminated, so that blooming effect is gone.
If you’re worried about burn-in, Apple says the new MacBook Pros have a revamped display engine that continuously monitors pixel usage, temperature, and other factors. It compensates individual pixels in real time to mitigate burn-in and maintain brightness. We’ll have to wait and see whether this holds true over time, but anecdotally I haven’t noticed any burn-in on my OLED iPad Pro after more than two years.
The improvements on the new MacBook Pro’s display go well beyond simply being OLED. Brightness is another area Apple emphasizes.
In direct sunlight by a window or on the patio, the display gets more than bright enough to remain easily readable. I rarely find myself needing to crank the brightness all the way up.
Those brightness improvements dovetail nicely with another area of emphasis on the new MacBook Pro: reflectivity. The new MacBook Pro’s glossy display has just 1% reflectance, which Apple says is due to two things. First, the OLED panel itself is designed to minimize reflections. It also has a custom antireflective coating that reduces reflections from the cover glass.
My review unit has a standard glossy display, and my previous MacBook Pro was a 14-inch model with nano-texture, so I’ve been paying especially close attention to the differences in reflectivity.
As I write this review, I’m sitting next to a large window that gets a lot of direct light. I’m very impressed with how well this glossy 16-inch MacBook Pro display handles reflections. It’s not, of course, as antireflective as my 14-inch MacBook Pro with nano-texture. But it’s much closer than I expected, and significantly better than my glossy MacBook Air.
I haven’t had a chance to try the nano-texture on the new MacBook Pro with PROLED, but Apple says the nano-texture is now “precisely etched into the cover glass,” so it should be even better than before.
All told, the PROLED XDR Display is impressive by every metric, both on paper and in the real world. Whether it’s the core improvements of an OLED panel, improved reflectivity, or higher brightness, you’ll notice the better display from the moment you turn the MacBook Pro on.
Oh, and it’s a touchscreen…
Touch
There’s something uncanny about using the new touchscreen MacBook Pro for the first time. This is still unmistakably macOS, with the same interface and software controls that we’ve known for years. Except now, you can reach out and touch the screen … and it actually responds.
Apple famously resisted adding touch to the Mac until now. Steve Jobs called the idea of a touchscreen Mac “ergonomically terrible” in 2010.
When Apple announced these touchscreen MacBooks, that clip of Jobs went viral. As usual, Jobs’ comments have more nuance than last week’s social media reaction suggests.
“Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical,” Jobs said at the time. “It gives great demo, but after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off.”
A lot has changed since those comments from Jobs, but I don’t think adding touch to the MacBook Pro proves him wrong. The ergonomics of using a touchscreen as the primary input method on a laptop-style device are, in fact, terrible. Your arm does get tired.
The good news, however, is that Apple is very intentionally not trying to make touch the primary interaction method on these new MacBook Pros. It’s clear from both using this touchscreen MacBook Pro and Apple’s own messaging that touch is intended to be a secondary input method. It’s there when you need it or want it, but you can also ignore it completely and never feel like you’re missing out.
So, with that out of the way: what’s it like using a touchscreen MacBook Pro?
Apple has made a variety of small tweaks throughout macOS to accommodate touch input. For example, when macOS detects touch input, items in contextual menus are spaced further apart.
When you long-press on something like an app icon in the Dock, it enlarges and shows you a more spaced-out list of contextual menu items. If you long-press an item in Finder, it lifts up under your finger, and you can drag it or drop it anywhere else.
The classic traffic light window controls also expand after you tap them. The first tap expands the controls without actually activating any of them. Then, tap a second time on the specific control you’re trying to activate. It’s a bit awkward having to tap the same spot twice in a row like that.
These tweaks are all about making macOS dynamically adapt to the fact that your finger is less precise than a pointer. Rather than redesigning macOS around touch, Apple has made the existing interface accommodate it when needed.
You also get all the typical touch gestures. You can pinch to zoom, swipe with four fingers to switch between Spaces or Mission Control, and swipe up to reveal the dock. You can pull to refresh in Safari, double-tap a window to fill the screen, and flick a window to the side to tile it.
Apple has also added automatic video stabilization that compensates for screen movement when you tap the display during a video call. This helps keep your camera feed steady, even when the screen itself wobbles slightly. It seems to work as advertised in my testing.
So far, I’ve found the touchscreen on MacBook Pro to be a “nice-to-have” addition, but not a reinvention of how I use the Mac. I catch myself idly reaching up to scroll a webpage instead of using the trackpad, tapping on the occasional Dock icon, and using pinch-to-zoom in the Photos app.
Touch input is also legitimately useful in places like iPhone Mirroring and the Xcode simulator. I can imagine people who regularly use rendering apps like Blender will find the touchscreen more useful than I do, since my primary job is manipulating text.
One reason I think touch might be less useful, or less important, on a Mac than on a Windows PC is that Apple’s trackpads are simply too good. There’s little reason for me to bother reaching up and using four fingers to swipe between Spaces when I can do it on the beautiful, big, glass trackpad. On a Windows PC with a crappy plastic trackpad? I bet multi-touch interaction is much more appealing on the touchscreen.
There have been a few instances where I just forget this MacBook Pro has a touchscreen until I reach up to flick a piece of lint or dog hair off the screen, and accidentally tap on something.
But I think that’s exactly how it should be. Using the touchscreen is a conscious choice, not a requirement. You can buy this computer and literally never touch the screen. For some Mac users, this is probably the most important thing. Apple hasn’t compromised the traditional macOS experience to accommodate touch.
Performance
The one thing that hasn’t changed with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is performance. Much like the standard MacBook Pro models unveiled earlier this year, the new PROLED models are available with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips.
Apple says that the new MacBook Pro has a redesigned thermal system optimized for the new design, while also maintaining the same performance of M5 Pro and M5 Max we’ve come to expect.
My review unit is the 16-inch M5 Pro configuration with an 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, and 48GB of unified memory. In GeekBench testing, the new MacBook Pro performs virtually the same as the models introduced earlier this year.
In my day-to-day use, I haven’t noticed any differences in performance or thermal behavior compared to my previous MacBook Pro. Admittedly, my workflow of writing, researching, editing photos, and dozens of Safari tabs doesn’t come close to pushing the M5 Pro to its limits. But the new MacBook Pro handles all of that effortlessly, without noticeable heat or fan noise. In fact, I haven’t heard the fans kick in once.
That’s not a definitive test of Apple’s claims about sustained performance, but it’s reassuring that the thinner and lighter design hasn’t introduced any noticeable compromises in my everyday use or in benchmarks.
This makes for an interesting predicament for MacBook Pro shoppers. Rumors say that Apple believes the M7 generation will offer such a dramatic improvement in performance, particularly around AI, that it’s skipping the higher-end M6 chips altogether.
The first M7 chips are expected sometime next year, likely late in the year for the high-end MacBook Pro. This means that if you buy an M5-equipped MacBook Pro right now, you’re buying a computer with a chip that will effectively be two generations behind in less than a year.
The M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are plenty fast, and these MacBook Pros also come with OLED, touch, and other changes mentioned throughout this review. Still, there’s something a little strange about Apple pairing its biggest MacBook Pro redesign in five years with chips that debuted eight months ago, particularly with the next major leap in Apple silicon reportedly on the horizon.
The little things
Dynamic Island
The Dynamic Island comes to the Mac for the first time with the new MacBook Pro. It never made sense to me that Apple added the notch to the MacBook Pro with so little software accommodation. The Dynamic Island finally addresses that, bringing a familiar iPhone experience to the Mac.
Live Activities now show up in the Dynamic Island, along with Now Playing info from apps like Music and Podcasts. For example, clicking (or tapping) the Dynamic Island while Music is playing brings up the mini player for easy access to controls. From the mini player, you can click again to open the full Music app. Live Activities from your iPhone also show up in the Dynamic Island on MacBook Pro, rather than in your menu bar like on other Macs. Spotlight on Mac bounces out of the Dynamic Island.
I’ve very much enjoyed having the Dynamic Island on the Mac. It’s one of my favorite iPhone features, especially for Live Activities. The implementation on the Mac is a great continuation of that experience.
Speakers
Apple says that the new MacBook Pro has a redesigned six-speaker system that delivers 50% deeper bass. The speakers do indeed sound fantastic. Apple also specifically calls out improved speaker tuning when using the MacBook Pro with its lid closed and connected to an external display. In my testing, the difference is noticeable. The speakers sound less muffled and significantly louder.
Battery life
Apple says battery life is unchanged on the new MacBook Pro models compared to the non-OLED variants.
- 14-inch M5 Pro: Up to 22 hours video streaming, 14 hours web browsing
- 14-inch M5 Max: Up to 20 hours video streaming, 13 hours web browsing
- 16-inch M5 Pro: Up to 24 hours video streaming, 17 hours web browsing
- 16-inch M5 Max: Up to 22 hours video streaming, 16 hours web browsing
I haven’t done any scientific battery testing, but anecdotally, my 16-inch M5 Pro model seems on track to match Apple’s claim of up to 17 hours of wireless web browsing.
9to5Mac’s Take
The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is a fascinating product. It’s both a major evolution of the MacBook Pro and a better version of the same laptop we’ve come to love since its Apple Silicon reinvigoration in 2021.
The addition of touch is getting all the attention, but I think the lighter design is actually the more significant change in day-to-day use. I never expected a 16-inch MacBook Pro to have me reconsidering my longstanding preference for the 14-inch model.
Touch hasn’t fundamentally changed how I use the Mac, but it’s a welcome addition that feels overdue. People reasonably expect to touch their laptop screen and have it respond. Some people will undoubtedly find it more useful than I have, and Apple has done an excellent job integrating it into macOS without compromising the traditional experience.
With or without touch, the PROLED XDR display is a spectacular upgrade, with improvements in brightness, contrast, and reflectivity that you’ll notice every time you open the lid.
These new OLED MacBook Pro models command a $400 premium over the mini-LED M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro models Apple is still selling. Those machines are also heavier, lack touchscreens, and miss some of the bells and whistles of the pricier models. Presumably, these two product lines will eventually converge, but right now the MacBook Pro lineup is a little awkward. The 14-inch PROLED model starts at $2,899, while the 16-inch starts at $3,399.
But that awkward positioning doesn’t take away from the product. This is still the same MacBook Pro we’ve come to love over the last five years. Apple has taken an already excellent laptop and made meaningful improvements to nearly every aspect of the experience. And it just so happens to have a touchscreen now, too.
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