Apple's First Touchscreen MacBook Pro Reviews Are In: Stunning OLED Display Wins Praise, Touch Gets Shrug

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Early reviews of Apple's first touchscreen Mac have praised its new OLED display and lighter design. Many critics were less excited about the touchscreen itself, and most said the price is the biggest drawback.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display comes in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes and went on sale Friday. It is Apple's first laptop with an OLED panel and the first Mac to accept touch input on its screen. Prices start at $2,899 for the 14-inch model with an M5 Pro chip and $3,399 for the 16-inch model. Those prices are $400 more than standard MacBook Pro models with the same chips.

Apple also released a lower-cost 14-inch MacBook Pro with its new M6 chip, starting at $1,999. That model keeps the older design and mini-LED screen and does not have touch.

Reviewers were most impressed by the screen. It uses tandem OLED technology, which stacks two light-emitting layers for higher brightness and longer life. Apple says it reaches 2,000 nits of peak brightness for both standard and HDR content, with per-pixel blacks and no blooming around bright objects.

"This laptop absolutely slaps, and the incredible PROLED XDR display is the headline. It's stunning," wrote Timothy Beck Werth of Mashable.

Tom's Guide called it the brightest laptop display the site has tested. Tom's Hardware headlined its review "The screen that every Mac deserves."

The touchscreen got a more mixed reception. Several reviewers said it worked smoothly but was not something they used often.

TechRadar said touch was not the laptop's most interesting feature. "Instead, it's the gorgeous tandem OLED screen and industry-leading battery life that should get you excited here," its review said.

Some reviewers were won over. "I don't often use touch controls on laptops with touchscreens because they can feel clunky, but I found myself using the MacBook Pro's touch controls more than I expected," wrote Tony Polanco of Tom's Guide. "Tapping, swiping, and even pinch-to-zoom are as smooth and snappy as on an iPad Pro."

Apple has adjusted macOS so it works with both touch and a traditional pointer. The new models also replace the camera notch with a Dynamic Island cutout, like the one on the iPhone, and have a rear Apple logo that lights up.

The redesign is also thinner and lighter. The 14-inch model weighs about 3 pounds, close to a MacBook Air, compared with 3.4 pounds for the M6 MacBook Pro. Reviewers said the weight savings were noticeable in daily use.

Performance was less of a story. The OLED models use the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips as the current MacBook Pros, so they are no faster than those machines, which reviewers noted.

The M6 model, meanwhile, was described as a modest update. Engadget said it was roughly 30% faster than the M5 model in a multi-threaded Cinebench test and lasted 9 hours and 35 minutes in a battery benchmark. The reviewer added: "I didn't miss the PROLED XDR MacBook Pro's touchscreen one bit."

Price was the most common complaint. A fully loaded 16-inch model with an M5 Max chip, 128GB of memory and 2TB of storage reviewed by Tom's Hardware cost $7,399. Several reviews said that buyers who don't need the best screen available would get similar performance for $900 less with the M6 model.

The launch is a reversal for Apple. Its executives long argued that touchscreens did not belong on Macs and pointed customers toward the iPad instead. Reports that Apple would add OLED and touch to the MacBook Pro circulated for years before Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said the redesign would arrive in late 2026 or early 2027.

Early reviews suggest that Apple got the display right. Whether touch becomes a must-have Mac feature or stays a convenience is less clear, and it will probably take more than one product generation to find out.