Apple announces first touchscreen MacBook Pro, from $2,899 with OLED display

Apple announced a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen at its “Pro and Tell” event on Wednesday, October 28. It is the first Mac with touch, and the first real change to the MacBook Pro’s look since the 2021 redesign. ¹

The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 and the 16-inch at $3,399. Preorders are open, and the laptops reach stores on Friday, November 6. ²³

First, what is physically different. The screen is a tandem OLED, meaning two stacked layers of self-lit pixels instead of one. Apple calls it PROLED XDR and lists up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness (a nit is one candela per square meter), a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a 120Hz variable refresh rate. ³ Apple says the touch sensor is built into the display panel itself rather than layered on top, which it claims cuts latency. ²

The body got slimmer, too. The 14-inch weighs 3 pounds (1.38 kg) and the 16-inch weighs 4 pounds (1.82 kg), lighter than their non-touch predecessors. ⁴ Apple says the 14-inch is half a millimeter thinner and the 16-inch nearly a millimeter thinner. Thinner bezels grow the screens to 14.2 and 16.3 inches. ² A new hinge is meant to keep the screen steady when you tap it. ⁴

The notch is replaced by a Dynamic Island, the pill-shaped cutout from the iPhone that can show Live Activities. The glowing Apple logo on the lid is back. ² Ports are three Thunderbolt 5, HDMI, an SD card slot, MagSafe 3 and a headphone jack. Apple claims up to 24 hours of battery life. ²

Chips are the M5 Pro or M5 Max, not the M6 that went into the standard MacBook Pro this week. ¹ Memory tops out at 128GB and storage at 16TB. ³

Now the price. The base 14-inch carries an M5 Pro with a 15-core CPU and 16-core GPU, 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. ¹ The 16-inch starts at $3,399 with the same RAM and storage. A 16-inch with the M5 Max, 128GB of RAM and a 16TB SSD costs $14,399. ¹

That is a steep step up. The non-touch 14-inch with the M6 chip starts at $1,999, so the entry fee for touch and OLED is $900 more, though on a different chip tier. ⁴ CNBC notes both new prices are notable increases over existing models, in a year when memory costs have pushed up laptop prices across the industry. ⁵

Apple’s own rationale is that touch is for things like playing instruments on screen, manipulating 3D models and testing iOS apps, and that an updated API lets developers add touch to their apps. ² CNBC points out that touchscreens haven’t typically driven laptop sales, so software support will decide whether the feature matters. ⁵ The machine still runs macOS, not an iPad-style system. ⁵

Our read: The new screen and lighter body are the real news here; touch is the headline but may prove the least-used part. Whether $900 over the M6 model is worth it depends on how much you value that panel and the extra chip power. If you do color-critical work, the OLED is the draw. Everyone else has a cheaper laptop sitting right next to it in the lineup.

On the bench: if you edit photo or video on the road, this is the first MacBook Pro in five years worth walking into a store to look at, but compare the $1,999 M6 model before you commit, because touch alone doesn’t justify the jump.

Footnotes

1. IGN, “Apple Announces Its First Touchscreen MacBook”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. The Verge, “Apple announces its first touchscreen MacBook Pro”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

3. Apple, “Apple unveils groundbreaking MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. TechCrunch, “Apple launches its new touchscreen MacBook Pro”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. CNBC, “Apple brings touch to the Mac, reversing years-old stance on touchscreen laptop”. Retrieved October 28, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³