Happy tapping on your Mac day! Apple’s new PROLED MacBook Pro is now in customers’ hands. We took one of the new machines to leave our fingerprints all over that pristine OLED display.
It’s been five years since Apple last redesigned the MacBook Pro, so an update was in order. The MacBook Pro PROLED looks a lot like the mini-LED model, but is thinner and lighter. The 14-inch model is about half a millimeter thinner and weighs just over a pound and a half, while the 16-inch model is nearly a millimeter thinner and weighs four pounds. Apple trimmed about a pound for the 14-inch model and 0.7 pounds for the 16-inch model, and while it doesn’t seem like a lot, it makes a big difference. You can feel how much lighter it is the moment you take it out of the box. Apple brought back the glowing logo for the MacBook Pro PROLED, so everyone around you will know you’ve got the cool new OLED model.
The OLED display is the main new feature, and it looks as good as you’d expect from a display in a laptop starting at $2,899. The blacks are true blacks, and because each pixel lights up individually, there’s none of the glare you get with mini-LED when viewing bright objects against a dark background. Even the PROLED MacBook Pro can get super bright, and that brightness, paired with deep blacks, makes HDR content look great. OLED is sometimes not bright enough outdoors, but this is not the case.
The display bezels are thinner, and the 16-inch machine is actually 16.3 inches instead of 16.2. There’s also an iPhone-like dynamic island that replaces the notch and houses Siri artificial intelligence, live activities, and more. Dynamic Island makes sense because you can now touch the MacBook Pro display. It works like tapping on an iPhone or iPad, so you can scroll through web pages, tap buttons, drag and drop, and pinch to zoom.
Touch isn’t meant to replace the trackpad and keyboard, but it’s there if you want it. Apple made some changes to macOS, so menu options expand a little more when you tap them than when you click them, and the little window resize buttons get bigger. Apple put a sturdier hinge in the MacBook Pro PROLED so the display doesn’t move much when you touch it, but it’s not perfect. It keeps swinging depending on where you touch.
Touch functionality is fine, but probably not a reason to go get the MacBook Pro PROLED. It has the potential to be useful in some situations, but it won’t fundamentally change the way most people use a laptop.
The new chips weren’t ready in time for the PROLED machines, so they use the same M5 Pro and M5 Max as the mini-LED models. This is a disappointment for a laptop that starts at nearly $3,000. Since Apple continues to sell mini-LED models, you’re essentially paying a $400 premium for the higher-end OLED display, thinner and lighter design, and touch functionality.
The better display and lighter weight will be worth the price for some people, and the touch is just a bonus.
