A glowing Apple logo is back on the lid, now its own OLED panel, and Brandon Butch's channel thinks it alone will sell a lot of these. The rest of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is a bigger change: a touchscreen, a Dynamic Island in place of the notch, and a tandem OLED panel, all on the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips the older design still sells with.
At a glance
| Chips | M5 Pro or M5 Max |
|---|---|
| Weight | 3.0 lb (14-inch), 4.0 lb (16-inch), with M5 Pro |
| Display | Tandem OLED, 2,000 nits peak, 10Hz to 120Hz |
| Battery | Up to 22 hours of video (14-inch), 24 (16-inch) |
| Ships | November 6 |
What's new on the screen and around it
- Touch turns any tap into a click, and iPad gestures carry over: swipe up for the Dock, drag files between apps, flick a window to fill one side, pinch to zoom. The hands-on demos won the channel over, mostly for nudging a Final Cut Pro timeline with one hand, though there's no Apple Pencil support.
- The Dynamic Island shows Live Activities you can tap, and the bezels are thinner. There's still no Face ID.
- The speakers get new tweeters and, by Apple's figure, 50 percent deeper bass.
- Nano-texture glass is an option, though the channel noticed fingerprints lingering longer on it during hands-on time.
Who it's for, per the video
- M4 or M5 MacBook Pro owners. Skip it, unless the redesign or the touchscreen is the point.
- Anyone already shopping for a MacBook Pro. Choose this model over the old-design M5 Pro for the new screen and body.
- Anyone who isn't a creative professional. The M6 MacBook Pro announced the same week is enough.
- M5 Pro or M5 Max. The M5 Pro covers nearly everyone; the channel ordered the base 14-inch with nano-texture.
On the chip question, the channel doesn't hedge.
If you even have to ask the question, to be honest, just get M5 Pro, not M5 Max.
The fingerprint note is the one I'd wait on. A matte screen you now touch all day is new territory for a Mac, and it's the thing hands-on reviews will settle faster than any spec sheet. The modem from the OLED MacBook Pro cellular rumors didn't ship, so a hotspot is still part of the kit.
