Apple has given the MacBook Pro an OLED display and, for the first time on any Mac, a touchscreen. The new 14- and 16-inch models, announced on 28 October, the day of Apple’s Los Angeles launch event, start at £2,899 in the UK and can be pre-ordered now, with deliveries from Friday 6 November.
The company calls the screen a “PROLED XDR” display, built on tandem OLED technology with two light-emitting layers. “The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is a monumental step forward for the Mac,” Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, said in Apple’s announcement.
In brief
- Apple’s first touchscreen Mac pairs a tandem OLED panel with M5 Pro or M5 Max chips.
- UK prices run from £2,899 for the 14-inch M5 Pro to £4,799 for the 16-inch M5 Max.
- Apple’s “up to 24 hours” battery figure comes from one 16-inch model playing video.
What Apple says the display does
Apple claims up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness for both HDR and standard content, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and refresh rates from 10Hz to 120Hz. The panel covers both the P3 and Adobe RGB colour spaces and more than 80% of the Rec. 2020 range used in HDR video work, Apple says. A nano-texture glass option is available to cut glare.
For comparison, the existing mini-LED MacBook Pro is listed on Apple’s specifications page at 1,600 nits peak and 1,000,000:1 contrast.
Touch works as you would expect from a phone or tablet: swiping to scroll, pinching to zoom, dragging items between windows and tapping a window to fill the screen. Apple says the touch sensor is “built directly into the display panel — not layered on top of it”, which it says reduces latency. The Dynamic Island, familiar from the iPhone, also arrives on the Mac, as the home for Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI.
Chips, ports and price
Inside are the M5 Pro or M5 Max, with up to 128GB of unified memory and up to 16TB of storage. Apple lists three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 and a headphone jack, plus a 12MP Center Stage camera and a six-speaker system that it says has 50% deeper bass. The laptops ship with macOS 27.
According to Apple’s UK newsroom, pre-orders are open in 30 countries and regions, including the UK. UK prices are:
- 14-inch with M5 Pro: £2,899 (£2,749 with education savings)
- 16-inch with M5 Pro: £3,399 (£3,199)
- 14-inch with M5 Max: £4,499 (£4,199)
- 16-inch with M5 Max: £4,799 (£4,499)
In the US the same models cost $2,899, $3,399, $4,499 and $4,799.
Apple’s 24 hours applies to one model
Apple’s announcement promises “up to 24 hours of battery life”, and that is the number most buyers will remember. The small print tells a narrower story. A footnote on the product page says Apple measured it in September on a preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro, streaming video in Safari with the brightness set eight steps up from the lowest setting.
Apple’s own specifications list 24 hours of video streaming only for that 16-inch M5 Pro. The 16-inch M5 Max is rated at 22 hours, the 14-inch M5 Pro at 22 and the 14-inch M5 Max at 20. For wireless web browsing, the figures drop to between 13 and 17 hours, with the 14-inch M5 Max at the bottom.
That is still a long day for a pro laptop with a very bright display. But someone buying the smaller, cheaper model should plan around 22 hours of video and 14 hours of web use at best, and less with real work and higher brightness. All of these are Apple’s figures from preproduction hardware; independent tests will settle how close shipping machines come.
Weight is the other trade Apple is advertising. The specifications put the 14-inch M5 Pro at 1.38kg, against 1.60kg for the current mini-LED 14-inch M5 Pro, a saving of about a fifth of a kilo.
Where it sits in Apple’s line-up
The launch fills the gap left by the M6 MacBook Pro and iMac announced on 27 October. The M6 model, from £1,999, kept a mini-LED screen and replaced only the entry 14-inch machine, while Apple’s store still listed M5 Pro and M5 Max models. The OLED machines now take the top of the range, though with M5-generation chips rather than M6.
The touchscreen is the bigger change in direction. Apple has added Touch to the Mac alongside the trackpad, and has brought OLED to its iPad mini this month too. Apple’s Siri AI, which gets a home in the Mac’s new Dynamic Island, is still in beta.
Reviews after 6 November will show whether the touch layer, the brightness and the battery figures hold up outside Apple’s labs.
Sources
- Apple Newsroom, “Apple unveils groundbreaking MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display and Touch for the first time on Mac”, 28 October 2026
- Apple Newsroom UK edition of the same release, with UK prices, 28 October 2026
- Apple, MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display product page, read 28 October 2026
- Apple, MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display technical specifications, read 28 October 2026
- Apple, MacBook Pro (mini-LED) technical specifications, read 28 October 2026
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- Apple’s 28 October LA Event Follows Its M6 MacBook Pro and iMac
- Apple Gives iPad mini an 8.5-Inch OLED Screen and A20 Pro, From £699
- Apple’s Siri AI Beta Now Works in Five More Languages With iOS 27.2
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