Apple reveals OLED touchscreen MacBook Pro with Dynamic Island and M5 Pro power in 3-pound design

Apple has capped off its week of “Pro and tell” announcements by unveiling the long-awaited touchscreen MacBook Pro OLED. In what could be the biggest update to MacBook Pro lineup since its inception twenty years ago, we now have a tandem OLED display on Apple’s premium laptop for the first time.

In addition, Apple has dropped the notch in favor of an all-new Dynamic Island similar to what we’re used to on the best iPhones. And guess what, the illuminated Apple logo on the lid is back!

Tom’s Guide is in attendance at Apple’s “Pro and tell” showcase in LA today, and we’ll bring you our full reaction and hands-on with the new MacBook Pro OLED imminently. In the meantime, check out our live blog right here.

Specs

Price and release date

We’ll get the bad news out of the way first, the MacBook Pro OLED is set to start at $2,899 for the base-level 14-inch spec with the M5 Pro and rise to $3,399 for the 16-inch model.

If you want to go for the M5 Max spec, the starting price for the 14-inch version will set you back $4,499 while the 16-inch model is $4,799.

Pre-orders begin today, Wednesday, October 28, with shipping (and in-store availability) due to start on November 6.

That’s a serious chunk of change compared to the $1,999 starting price of the M6 MacBook Pro announced yesterday. It’s the highest starting price of any MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 price of the 17-inch model Apple revealed in 2006.

PROLED XDR Display with touch

Here’s why you’re going to be paying a premium for this laptop — it’s the step-up in display quality that we’ve been hoping for for years. Apple has named this device the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and claims the laptop “offers a visual experience unlike any other.”

We’re talking about a tandem OLED panel that will outshine and outclass the mini-LED Liquid Retina XDR panel on the regular MacBook Pro. Users will get true per-pixel blacks and zero blooming around UI elements on this display.

Apple can push this display to peak HDR brightness of 2000 nits and for anyone who uses a MacBook Pro for visual creative work, this is going to be a game-changer.

“PROLED XDR is the world’s best laptop display, delivering true-to-life color and unparalleled brightness and contrast,” Apple’s press release explains.

“The PROLED XDR display offers tandem OLED technology unlike any other, with deep innovations in its layers that keep brightness and grayscale uniform across the entire display, while minimizing internal reflections common in traditional OLED designs.

“It’s all backed by advanced algorithms in the display engine that precisely control each pixel in real time, plus a meticulous manufacturing process and precise calibration of every panel for consistency from display to display.”

In addition, the notch cutout that Apple introduced in 2021 has been replaced with a true Dynamic Island, just like you’ll find on the iPhone. This will bring Live Activities to the MacBook for the first time.

And finally, despite what Steve Jobs may have said, the MacBook now has touch input for the first time.

Apple says it’s crafted touch input specifically for the Mac, with a touch sensor built directly into the display panel — not layered on top of it.

“Everyday tasks are simple and intuitive, allowing users to scroll through a webpage with a natural swipe; pinch to zoom in on a photo; drag and drop slides from one presentation to another; and double-tap a window to fill the screen, or flick to tile it into place,” Apple wrote.

Design

Apple has made a few notable changes to the traditional design of the MacBook Pro, as a result of the new display. Because OLED panels don’t require the same backlight array, the company has been able to make the chassis thinner and lighter than its non-OLED counterparts.

With slimmer display borders, the 16-inch display now grows to 16.3 inches, while the 14-inch display delivers a more portable 14.2-inch design. What’s more, this iteration of MacBook Pro is lighter, with the 14-inch weighing half a pound less at three pounds. The 16-inch version tips the scales at just four pounds.

Rumors before the event were that Apple has redesigned and stiffened the hinge to avoid the dreaded wobble when you reach up and touch the screen. It’s something we’ll be testing for in our hands-on.

The new MacBook Pro includes three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe, and a headphone jack. In addition to the PROLED XDR display, it supports up to three external displays with M5 Pro and up to four with M5 Max. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 are on board, as you’d expect.

Oh, and probably the most talked-about update to the design — the Apple logo glows. It feels like 2008 all over again!

macOS 27 Golden Gate

Apple has taken a leaf from the iPhone Duo book and made some subtle changes to macOS to optimise it for touchscreen input. The company says its own apps are optimized for the new MacBook Pro, and many existing apps work with Touch right away, because macOS automatically translates touches into clicks.

We don’t know exactly how it’s been implemented yet, but I hope we get context-aware touch scaling that means when you reach out to touch the display, target hitboxes will dynamically expand while context menus appear enlarged around your fingers.

Interactions familiar from iOS and iPadOS should be included, such as pull-to-refresh across native apps, multi-touch zooming, pinch-to-navigate in Safari, and direct scrubbing across timelines in creative suites like Final Cut Pro and Logic.

Of course, the MacBook Pro OLED’s full Force Touch trackpad continues to serve as the primary input, but having the option to interact directly with the screen is long overdue.

“Graphic designers can now use the entire display as their canvas, no longer constrained by the area of the trackpad when drawing; musicians can play software instruments right onscreen; and app developers can test how Touch performs in their iOS and iPadOS apps directly on the MacBook Pro display,” Apple said.

Performance and power

The MacBook Pro OLED will ship with the M5 Pro / M5 Max chipset rather than the newer M6 processor in the non-OLED MacBook Pro. That may seem counter-intuitive but it’s a question of use cases. The M6 is more performant for single-core speeds but the Pro / Max delivers faster data transfer and better multitasking.

The MacBook Pro OLED is now configurable with up to 128GB of unified memory and now up to 16TB of storage.

Outlook

MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is almost certain to prove a huge hit, despite those wallet-trembling price points.

The combination of an OLED touchscreen display on a MacBook for the first time, not to mention a slimmer and lighter profile as well as the ability to cram even more memory and storage into the chassis are what a lot of Apple users have been asking for. It still keeps the 12MP Center Stage camera tucked inside that Dynamic Island, though.

We’ll be getting hands-on with it as soon as possible and, following that, we’ll be putting the MacBook Pro OLED through our usual battery of lab tests when we get one in for review. Stay tuned to Tom’s Guide to find out just how good this ultra-premium MacBook Pro really is and whether or not it’s been worth the wait

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Jeff is UK Editor-in-Chief for Tom’s Guide looking after the day-to-day output of the site’s British contingent.

A tech journalist for over a decade, he’s travelled the world testing any gadget he can get his hands on. Jeff has a keen interest in fitness and wearables as well as the latest tablets and laptops.

A lapsed gamer, he fondly remembers the days when technical problems were solved by taking out the cartridge and blowing out the dust.