Apple's OLED Touch MacBook Pro Ships: Lighter, Brighter, $2,899

Apple's touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro is officially out of the box and onto people's desks. The new PROLED MacBook Pro hit customers Friday, marking the first full redesign of the laptop in five years. MacRumors got its hands on one and confirmed what the spec sheet promised: it's lighter, slimmer, and the display is the star of the show.

Apple trimmed real weight here. The 14-inch model lost about half a pound and now sits just over three pounds, while the 16-inch shed 0.7 pounds and lands at four pounds. The 14-inch is roughly half a millimeter thinner, the 16-inch nearly a full millimeter thinner. Apple also brought back the glowing rear logo, so the whole coffee shop knows you sprung for the fancy one.

That OLED panel is the headline feature, and it earns the billing. Blacks are genuinely black, and because every pixel lights itself, the halo effect that plagues mini-LED on dark backgrounds is gone. It gets bright enough to survive outdoors too, and HDR content pops with the contrast. Bezel borders are thinner, and the 16-inch model now measures 16.3 inches rather than 16.2.

The notch is dead — replaced by an iPhone-style Dynamic Island that lives in Siri AI, Live Activities and more. Touch works just like an iPhone or iPad: swipe through pages, tap buttons, drag and drop, pinch to zoom. Apple beefed up the hinge so the screen holds steadier under your finger, though MacRumors notes it still jiggles depending on where you tap. macOS got small tweaks too, with menus expanding wider on touch and window resize buttons growing bigger.

Here's the catch. New silicon wasn't ready in time, so the PROLED machines run the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips as the cheaper mini-LED models — a tough look on a laptop starting at $2,899, with the 16-inch at $3,399. Since Apple still sells the mini-LED versions, buyers are effectively paying a $400 premium for the OLED display, the lighter chassis and touch. MacRumors rates touch as a nice bonus rather than the reason to buy — the screen and the weight are what justify the spend.

The MacBook Pro wasn't the only hardware news on Apple's docket. Apple also unveiled a new iPad mini with an 8.5-inch OLED display, a thinner and lighter build, the A20 Pro chip, an Acoustic Display audio system that ditches speaker holes, IP67 water and dust resistance, a landscape front camera, and the N1 chip with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.