A WIRED reviewer has spent several days with Apple's new OLED MacBook Pro, a machine that carries something Apple had long resisted: a touchscreen, paired with a display that now rivals the best laptop screens he has seen. The change is quiet on the outside, but the glowing logo, the lighter frame, and the notch-free top edge signal a company slowly testing whether its own old certainties still hold. His verdict lands in two halves, enthusiasm for the light and color and skepticism about the touch, and the price asks buyers to decide how much that brightness is worth to them.
Apple's OLED MacBook Pro Brings Touch and Stunning HDR, But at a Steep Premium
It's here, but I'm not sure why
Mark
Why does a touchscreen on a MacBook Pro matter so much?
Mimi
Because Apple has resisted it for years. The reviewer says he never thought this machine would exist, and it arrives in a very un-Apple way.
Mark
But he says he forgets the touchscreen when working.
Mimi
Yes. Swiping a notification or scrolling on the couch works, but tapping tiny controls feels clumsy, and third-party apps have to opt in.
Luke
Worth noting that's one reviewer's few days of use, and his workflow. He isn't an artist, so the creative-pro case is untested by him.
Mark
And the display?
Mimi
Brightest laptop screen he's tested. 1,000 nits in SDR, 1,849 measured in HDR peaks, and deep OLED blacks.
Luke
Keep that in perspective. That's only 12 percent brighter than the Mini-LED model. The 2,000-nit figure is Apple's claim; he measured 1,849.
Mark
What about performance?
Mimi
Same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips as last year, and his tests showed parity, which is what Apple aimed for.
Luke
And the rumor that Apple skips M6 Pro and Max is just that, a rumor. The price gap of almost $1,000 is the firm number here.
Der Puls
- The reviewer's verdict is split down the middle: the OLED display dazzles while the touchscreen keeps feeling like an afterthought.
- Tapping small controls in macOS proves clumsy, and the reviewer forgets the screen even responds to touch during real work.
- Apple is adapting its interface with larger window controls and spaced menus, but third-party apps must still do the heavy lifting.
- The chips are unchanged from the previous generation, so the near-$1,000 premium over a year-earlier model rests almost entirely on the screen.
- The outcome now depends on developers embracing touch and on buyers choosing OLED over the cheaper Mini-LED model.
A WIRED reviewer has spent several days with Apple's new OLED MacBook Pro, a machine that carries something Apple had long resisted: a touchscreen, paired with a display that now rivals the best laptop screens he has seen. The change is quiet on the outside, but the glowing logo, the lighter frame, and the notch-free top edge signal a company slowly testing whether its own old certainties still hold. His verdict lands in two halves, enthusiasm for the light and color and skepticism about the touch, and the price asks buyers to decide how much that brightness is worth to them.
For several days a WIRED reviewer has lived with a MacBook Pro that has a touchscreen, something he never expected Apple to build. Apple has long resisted touch on laptops for ergonomic reasons, so the reversal feels as surprising to him as it may to longtime Mac users. His verdict is divided: he loves the display, and he remains unconvinced by the touch.
From the outside, the OLED model looks almost identical to the Mini-LED version, with the same colors, sizes, ports, and keyboard. The giveaway is a glowing Apple logo on the lid, which he calls an unabashed status symbol and admits he loves. The 16-inch model weighs about half a pound less than its non-OLED counterpart, the notch has been replaced by a punch-hole camera, and the bezels are slightly smaller. The cost, though, is nearly $1,000 more than a comparable machine from a year ago.
The display is where the reviewer is most impressed. It reaches up to 1,000 nits in ordinary use and climbs to around 2,000 nits in bright conditions or with HDR content. He calls it the brightest laptop screen he has tested, and paired with OLED's deep blacks, HDR footage looks better than anything he has seen on a laptop. Touch, by contrast, rarely earns its place. Swiping a notification or scrolling on the couch works, but tapping small icons feels clumsy, and the creative demos Apple offers strike him as closer to gimmicks than real workflows. The chips are the same M5 Pro and M5 Max as before, which makes the premium rest mostly on the panel. He hopes Apple commits further to touch, and the open questions are whether developers will follow and whether buyers will pay for the brighter screen.
For the past few days, a WIRED reviewer has been working on a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, a machine he says he never expected Apple to build. Apple rarely reverses course on design questions, and the old arguments against touchscreen laptops, mostly about ergonomics, were reasonable ones. Yet the OLED MacBook Pro exists, and he describes how it arrived as the most un-Apple way he could have imagined. His verdict is split: he loves the display, and he is unconvinced by the touch.
Apple now sells two versions of its flagship laptop. The standard Mini-LED model gets the M6 processor, with better graphics and battery life, but otherwise looks much as before. The OLED model is the biggest change since 2021, though little shows on the outside. Colors are still Silver and Space Black, sizes remain 14 and 16 inches, and the ports, keyboard and trackpad are the same. The tell is a glowing Apple logo on the lid, available only on the OLED model. The reviewer calls it an unabashed status symbol, says he loves it, and notes it matches the display's brightness so it doesn't distract in a dark room.
Other changes are felt in the hand or seen at the top of the screen. The 16-inch model he tested weighs 4 pounds, well over half a pound less than the non-OLED equivalent, mostly because OLED uses thinner, lighter layers. The notch is gone, replaced by a punch-hole camera, which he calls the change he was most excited about. As on newer iPhones, a Dynamic Island shows Live Activities such as timers or music playback. The rubber feet have rounder edges and the bezels are slightly smaller. The price is the catch: compared with a similarly specced MacBook Pro from a year ago, the OLED model costs almost $1,000 more.
The display is the headline. Apple first put tandem OLED in the iPad Pro more than two years ago, and here it pushes the panel further. This is the brightest laptop display the reviewer has tested, reaching up to 1,000 nits in SDR across ordinary content. It can reach 2,000 nits in two situations. In bright light or outdoors, the ambient light sensor in the webcam module raises brightness past the 1,000-nit limit, provided the automatic brightness setting is on. In HDR content, the panel can go higher still. In his testing it peaked at 1,849 nits, including in a 25 percent window, and 1,025 nits with every pixel lit. Only the latest OLED TVs are brighter.
He points out that this is only 12 percent brighter than the Mini-LED MacBook Pro, which he retested for the comparison. But paired with OLED's deep blacks, he says HDR looks better than anything he has seen on a laptop, and side-by-side with professional HDR footage the difference was very noticeable. Apple's glass-screen unit, with its anti-reflective coating, looked about as reflective as the Mini-LED model, so he recommends the optional nano-texture finish for outdoor use. He also says the six-speaker system, which Apple says has 50 percent deeper bass, does sound fuller next to the previous generation.
Touch is a different story. When he is deep in work, he forgets the screen is touch-capable. Swiping away a notification or thumbing through Instagram on the couch works, but those moments are rare. Tapping small icons feels clumsy, as it does in Windows 11, though Apple has done more than Microsoft to adapt macOS. Tapping the window controls pops them out for more precise selection, and menu bar drop-downs are spaced out and can be dragged through. There are no hardware changes such as a flexible hinge, and Apple Pencil isn't supported. Third-party apps must optimize for touch, and some apps run through Rosetta, such as Steam, lack features like the enlarged window controls. Apple pitches touch to creative pros, with Pixelmator Pro drawing, ZBrush brush textures, and Logic Pro drums and Remix FX automation, but he finds these closer to gimmicks. He never got the sense Apple wants touch to replace the keyboard and trackpad, and he hopes Apple commits further.
Inside, the 2026 OLED model uses the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips as the previous generation, the first time Apple has not updated the chip with a new Mac since introducing Apple Silicon in 2020. Apple says the internals were redesigned to support the display, aiming for performance parity with the non-OLED M5 models, and his Cinebench 2026 and game results matched that. Rumor says Apple may skip the M6 Pro and M6 Max entirely. What to watch is whether third-party developers embrace touch and whether buyers will pay the near-$1,000 premium over the Mini-LED model.
Bemerkenswerte Zitate
He never got the impression that touch was meant to replace the keyboard and trackpad as the primary input method.— WIRED reviewer, paraphrasing discussions with Apple
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