Apple Touch Screen MacBook Pro Announced – PROLED XDR Tandem OLED Display, M5 Pro and M5 Max, Genlock

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by Nino LeitnerToday

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The MacBook Pro many of us have been waiting for is finally here: Apple has announced a new MacBook Pro with a tandem OLED display it calls PROLED XDR, rated at 2000 nits peak, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and more than 80 percent Rec. 2020 coverage. It is also the first Mac with a touch screen, it supports genlock, and it is lighter than the current models. Inside are the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips that Apple introduced in March. I personally can’t wait to get my hands on one for a review.

Let me get the big picture out of the way first. The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display comes in 14-inch and 16-inch versions, with screen diagonals of 14.2 and 16.3 inches. The tandem OLED panel delivers up to 1000 nits sustained full-screen brightness and 2000 nits peak for HDR content, plus up to 2000 nits peak SDR brightness in outdoor conditions. Minimum brightness is 1 nit. The color gamut covers P3 and now also Adobe RGB, and Apple quotes more than 80 percent Rec. 2020 coverage. ProMotion runs from 10Hz to 120Hz, and the fixed refresh rates of 47.95, 48, 50, 59.94 and 60Hz carry over. The M5 Pro version has up to 64GB of unified memory, and the M5 Max version has up to 128GB and up to 16TB of storage. Three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI and an SDXC slot stay, and the 14-inch model now weighs 1.38kg / 3.0lb. Prices start at $2,899.

An OLED MacBook Pro has been rumored for years, and a touch screen Mac for even longer (Apple spent a good part of the last decade explaining why it would never build one). Now both arrive in one machine, and that is why I think this is a bigger deal than the usual chip refresh. We have had touch screens with a keyboard on Windows laptops and on the iPad with a Magic Keyboard for a long time, but neither gives you the full macOS with Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro and every plugin and driver you rely on. To have the benefits of touch combined with a keyboard and the full power of macOS is groundbreaking, and I say that as someone who is usually the first to roll his eyes at Apple’s keynote adjectives.

Where this sits in the lineup

This is not a replacement for the Liquid Retina XDR MacBook Pro. Apple continues to sell the mini-LED models next to the new ones: the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 that we covered yesterday, and the 14-inch and 16-inch models with M5 Pro and M5 Max that Apple announced in March together with the Studio Display XDR. The PROLED XDR models use exactly the same chip configurations as those M5 Pro and M5 Max machines, and in Apple’s US store each PROLED XDR configuration costs $400 more than the Liquid Retina XDR model with the same chip.

So the choice between the two lines is a choice of display, weight and Touch, not of processing power. My guess is that this is a deliberate transition year: Apple gets the OLED panels into the hands of the people who will pay for them first, and the mini-LED models stay as the “value” option until the next chip generation. But that is just my guess.

What the PROLED XDR panel changes

According to Apple, the tandem OLED stack has changes in its layers that keep brightness and grayscale uniform across the screen and reduce the internal reflections that are common in OLED designs. A display engine controls the color and luminance of each pixel at sub-millisecond intervals. It compensates for content, pixel use, temperature and environment, and it monitors the use of each pixel over time to keep image quality consistent (in plain words: this is Apple’s answer to burn-in, and I want to see how it holds up after a year of timelines with static UI elements). Apple calibrates every panel at the factory for luminance, white point and color gamut.

Compared with the mini-LED Liquid Retina XDR display, the figures move in the direction that matters for HDR review. Peak HDR brightness goes from 1600 to 2000 nits, and the contrast ratio goes from 1,000,000:1 to 10,000,000:1. Because OLED controls light at the pixel level, there is no local-dimming zone structure, so the blooming around bright objects on dark backgrounds that we all know from mini-LED panels should be gone. That alone is worth a lot to anyone who has tried to judge a night exterior on the current MacBook Pro screen. The resolution changes a little: the 14.2-inch panel has 3024 x 1986 pixels and the 16.3-inch panel has 3472 x 2266 pixels, both at 254ppi. The 16-inch screen grows from 16.2 inches because of thinner borders.

The antireflective coating is new, and the optional nano-texture finish is now etched directly into the cover glass. On set, high SDR brightness and lower reflections are more useful than the HDR peak, because the laptop screen is often the only monitor you have for a quick check of the footage.

Reference modes, calibration and genlock

For color work, the reference mode list is the most useful part of the spec sheet. It includes HDR Video (P3-ST 2084), HDTV Video (BT.709-BT.1886), NTSC Video (BT.601 SMPTE-C), PAL and SECAM Video (BT.601 EBU), Digital Cinema (P3-DCI) and Digital Cinema (P3-D65), as well as photography, print, design and sRGB modes. Two new Apple XDR Display presets cover P3 at 2000 nits, and P3 plus Adobe RGB at 2000 nits in one preset. There are also two DICOM medical imaging modes, which Apple limits to nondiagnostic review, research and education.

The Apple Pro Display Calibrator lets you calibrate the panel to specific targets. Apple also says that, through a system it calls Apple Color Matching Function 2026, the display gives a consistent image together with the iPhone 18 Pro and the Studio Display XDR. If that works as advertised, reviewing iPhone footage on the laptop and finishing on the external XDR monitor becomes a lot less of a guessing game. We will test this.

Genlock is the feature with the most direct relevance to production, and the one I did not expect on a laptop. The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display can synchronize the refresh rate of a display with the capture of a camera, to reduce ghosting, tearing and other artifacts when the screen is in the shot. Apple names virtual production and on-set work as applications. According to Apple, genlock requires compatible third-party hardware and software, and the press release does not name any (I hope Blackmagic and AJA are reading this). Genlock appears in the tech specs of the PROLED XDR models, but not in those of the Liquid Retina XDR MacBook Pro.

Touch in Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve

The second large change is Touch. The touch sensor is built into the display panel, not added as a separate layer, which Apple says reduces latency. A new hinge design gives the screen more stability when you push on it. macOS 27 translates touches into clicks, so existing apps work at once, and new system gesture APIs let developers build specific touch controls.

In Final Cut Pro, editors can use Touch to mark ranges, drop clips into position and pinch to zoom in on a cut. These changes come with the Apple Creator Studio update in November, which also adds touch controls in Pixelmator Pro and an onscreen polyphonic keyboard with chord and drum pads in Logic Pro. Among third-party apps, Apple lists DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Lightroom for photo and video work, and Blender and Shapr3D for 3D. Apple says these third-party apps will get Touch support later this year, and it does not say what the Resolve implementation will include. I am almost 100% certain Blackmagic will not stop at translating taps into clicks, because the color page with its wheels and curves is an obvious candidate for direct touch, but we will have to wait and see.

The important part for me is that Touch is an addition to the keyboard and trackpad, not a replacement. Nobody will cut a feature film by poking at a vertical screen all day. But marking a range with a finger, zooming into a timeline with a pinch, or nudging a mask point directly on the image while the other hand stays on the keyboard, that is the kind of thing that can make a long edit day a bit faster and a bit less tiring. Whether it does, only hands-on time will tell.

M5 Pro and M5 Max for 8K post

The chip lineup is the same as in the Liquid Retina XDR M5 Pro and M5 Max models, so there are no surprises here. The M5 Pro comes with a 15-core CPU (5 super cores, 10 performance cores) and 16-core GPU, or an 18-core CPU (6 super cores, 12 performance cores) and 20-core GPU, with 307GB/s of memory bandwidth and 24GB, 48GB or 64GB of unified memory. Its Media Engine has one video decode engine, one video encode engine, one ProRes encode and decode engine and AV1 decode. The M5 Max has an 18-core CPU with a 32-core GPU (36GB of memory, 460GB/s) or a 40-core GPU (48GB, 64GB or 128GB, 614GB/s). It doubles the video encode and ProRes engines. Both chips accelerate H.264, HEVC, ProRes and ProRes RAW in hardware and have a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core.

Apple positions the M5 Pro for work such as editing multiple streams of 8K ProRes, and the M5 Max for VFX, 3D animation, film scores and 8K post-production. Storage starts at 1TB on M5 Pro models and 2TB on M5 Max models, and the M5 Max can now be configured with up to 16TB (at Apple’s storage prices, you will want to sit down before you configure that one). According to Apple, a new thermal design keeps the same sustained performance in the lighter chassis and directs warm air away from the display, which makes sense, because heat is the enemy of OLED longevity.

Ports, battery and weight

Connectivity matches the current MacBook Pro: three Thunderbolt 5 ports at up to 120Gb/s, HDMI with multichannel audio output, an SDXC card slot, MagSafe 3 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The M5 Pro drives up to three external displays and the M5 Max up to four, in addition to the built-in screen. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 come from Apple’s N1 chip, and the 12MP Center Stage camera supports Desk View. The six-speaker system gets new woofers with what Apple says is 50 percent deeper bass, and a new tuning for closed-lid use with an external display.

The 14-inch model weighs 1.38kg / 3.0lb with M5 Pro and 1.40kg / 3.1lb with M5 Max, and it measures 31.08 x 21.63 x 1.50cm / 12.24 x 8.52 x 0.59in. The 16-inch model weighs 1.82kg / 4.0lb (M5 Pro) or 1.84kg / 4.1lb (M5 Max) and measures 35.55 x 24.42 x 1.60cm / 14.0 x 9.62 x 0.63in. Apple says the 14-inch model is half a pound lighter and the 16-inch model 0.7lb lighter than before. Anyone who carries a 16-inch model through airports will appreciate that.

Battery life depends on size and chip. The 16-inch model with a 100Wh battery and M5 Pro reaches the headline 24 hours of video streaming (22 hours with M5 Max). The 14-inch model with a 72.6Wh battery is rated at 22 hours with M5 Pro and 20 hours with M5 Max. Apple’s figures are for 1080p streaming in Safari, so they say nothing about a day of editing or grading at full brightness, which is the number I actually want to know. The 14-inch model fast-charges to 50 percent in 30 minutes with a 96W or higher adapter, and the 16-inch model needs 140W or more.

macOS 27 and software support

The new MacBook Pro ships with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which adds the Dynamic Island to the Mac as a place for Spotlight, Live Activities and Siri AI. As with any new Mac, it will not run older macOS versions. In our look at macOS 27 for video editors, Adobe and Apple had confirmed support, while Avid had not yet qualified Media Composer. If you work with Media Composer, or with plugins and I/O drivers that have no Golden Gate statement yet, check with your vendors before you order. For desktop setups with more media engines, see our Mac Studio M5 Ultra launch coverage.

Price and availability

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display starts at $2,899 with M5 Pro (15-core CPU, 24GB, 1TB) and $4,499 with M5 Max. The 16-inch model starts at $3,399 with M5 Pro and $4,799 with M5 Max. Education prices start at $2,749, $4,199, $3,199 and $4,499. In Germany, Apple lists the four base models at €3,299, €5,199, €3,899 and €5,599 including VAT. Nano-texture glass adds $150 in the US. Pre-orders are open in 30 countries and regions, and deliveries and in-store availability start on November 6. For more information, please visit the Apple website or read Apple’s announcement.

Is a tandem OLED screen with genlock and Touch worth $400 over the mini-LED MacBook Pro for your work, or do you grade on an external monitor anyway? And are you thinking about getting one? Let me know what you think in the comments below!