Have a nice day Touch your Mac! Apple’s new MacBook Pro PROLED is now in the hands of customers. We grabbed one of the new machines to leave our greasy fingerprints all over that pristine OLED screen.
It’s been five years since Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro, so it was due for an update. The PROLED MacBook Pro looks a lot like the mini-LED model, but it’s thinner and lighter. The 14-inch model is about half a millimeter thinner and weighs just over three pounds, while the 16-inch model is almost a millimeter thinner and weighs four pounds. Apple shaved off about half a pound for the 14-inch model and 0.7 pounds for the 16-inch model, and while that doesn’t seem like much, it makes a big difference. You can feel how much lighter it is as soon as you take it out of the box. Apple has brought back the light-up logo for the PROLED MacBook Pro, so everyone around you knows you have the fancy new OLED model.
The OLED display is the major new feature, and it’s as good-looking as you’d expect from a laptop screen starting at $2,899. Blacks are true black, and because each pixel lights up individually, there’s none of the blooming you get with mini-LED when looking at bright objects against a dark background. The PROLED MacBook Pro can also get very bright, and that brightness coupled with the deep blacks makes HDR content look great. OLED is sometimes not bright enough outdoors, but that’s not the case here.
The screen bezels are thinner and the 16-inch machine actually measures 16.3 inches instead of 16.2. There’s also an iPhone-like Dynamic Island that replaces the notch and hosts Siri AI, Live Activities, and more. The Dynamic Island makes sense because you can now touch the MacBook Pro screen. It works like tapping an iPhone or iPad, so you can navigate web pages, press 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 has made some changes to macOS, so that the menu options expand a little more when you touch them than when you click them, and the small window resize buttons become larger. Apple put a stronger hinge in the PROLED MacBook Pro so the screen doesn’t move as much when you press on it, but it’s not perfect. It still moves depending on where you press.
The touch function is good, but that’s probably not a reason to go out and buy the PROLED MacBook Pro. This can be useful in some situations, but it won’t radically 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. That’s a disappointment for a laptop that starts at almost $3,000. Since Apple still sells the mini-LED models, you’re essentially paying a $400 premium for the premium OLED screen, thinner, lighter design, and touch functionality.
The better display and lighter weight will be worth the price for some people, and the feel is just a bonus.
Gn tech
