The MacBook Pro gets an OLED screen and touch, from 6 November
Apple's new MacBook Pro has a tandem OLED screen, a touch panel and a lighter body, and it starts arriving on 6 November. What's new, what it costs, and who should wait.
On Friday 6 November Apple starts delivering a very different MacBook Pro. The new models have an OLED screen and, for the first time on this laptop, you can touch it. Pre-orders opened on 28 October, and Apple says machines will reach customers and its shops from that day.
What’s new
The screen comes first. Apple calls it PROLED XDR, and it uses tandem OLED, meaning two layers of self-lit pixels. Apple quotes up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness, a contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1 and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and it claims the world’s best laptop display. That’s the maker’s phrase, so it should be treated as one until independent tests are in.
Touch is built into the panel, and works alongside the keyboard and trackpad rather than replacing them. Apple has redesigned the hinge to keep the screen steady when you prod it. The Dynamic Island, familiar from the iPhone, also arrives on the Mac, as a home for search and Siri.
The laptops are also lighter. Apple puts the 14-inch at 3lb, half a pound down, and the 16-inch at 4lb, down by 0.7lb. It quotes up to 24 hours of battery life, which is its own test result rather than a promise for your working day. The chips are the M5 Pro and M5 Max, with up to 128GB of memory and up to 16TB of storage.
| Model | UK starting price |
|---|---|
| 14-inch, M5 Pro | £2,899 |
| 16-inch, M5 Pro | £3,399 |
| 14-inch, M5 Max | £4,499 |
| 16-inch, M5 Max | £4,799 |
Why it matters to you
Probably less than the launch suggests, and that’s the useful part. These machines are aimed at people who grade films, edit photographs for print or model things in three dimensions. If that’s your work, a portable reference screen could pay for itself. If your day is email, documents and video calls, you’d be paying for a great deal you’d never see.
Nor is this the only new MacBook Pro. A 14-inch model with the M6 chip has a Liquid Retina XDR screen rather than OLED, starts at £1,999 and arrives on the same day. Below that, the MacBook Air is still the laptop we’d suggest for almost everyone, as we set out in our guide to the tech kit worth owning.
One practical thought: a touchscreen you carry into meetings will collect fingerprints, so keep a cloth in the bag. Apple also offers a nano-texture glass option, designed to cut reflections and glare. Whichever you choose, the first generation of any new idea is the one where you pay most to find out. There’s no shame in waiting a few weeks for independent reviews.
How we checked: specifications, dates and UK prices are from Apple’s press releases of 27 and 28 October 2026 on its UK newsroom, read on 4 November 2026. The laptops were not seen or handled for this piece, and the photograph shows an older MacBook Pro for illustration. The opinions are ours, and nobody paid to appear here.
