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Apple’s first touchscreen MacBook Pro: price, specs and what to know before you buy
Apple has announced its first touchscreen Mac, a MacBook Pro with an OLED display, from $2,899. Here are the prices, the specs that matter, the ship date and the AI catches to know first.
In this article
Key takeaways
- Apple announced a MacBook Pro with a built-in touchscreen and OLED display on October 28, 2026. Pre-orders are open and it ships Friday, November 6.
- The 14-inch with M5 Pro starts at $2,899. The 16-inch starts at $3,399, and M5 Max models run up to $4,799.
- Apple says the battery lasts up to 24 hours, based on its own testing.
- Some AI features come with limits: Siri AI is in beta and not available in the EU, and some server-side AI features have daily usage limits.
What Apple announced
Apple announced a new MacBook Pro on October 28, 2026 with a touchscreen, the first on a Mac. Apple says the touch sensor is built into the display panel and a redesigned hinge keeps the screen steady when you tap it.
TechCrunch notes this arrives nearly ten years after the Touch Bar debuted in 2016, which Apple later removed. Apple has reversed course on touch-related laptop features before.
The display
The new screen is an OLED panel Apple calls PROLED XDR, in 14.2-inch and 16.3-inch sizes. Apple lists up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a 120Hz refresh rate that can drop to 10Hz to save power. A nano-texture glass option reduces glare.
A Dynamic Island-style cutout replaces the notch, according to TechCrunch.
Prices and dates
- 14-inch, M5 Pro: $2,899.
- 16-inch, M5 Pro: $3,399.
- 14-inch, M5 Max: $4,499.
- 16-inch, M5 Max: $4,799.
- Pre-orders opened October 28, and the laptops arrive Friday, November 6. Education pricing is lower, and Apple lists leasing from $55.99 a month for 36 months in the US.
Specs that matter
Both chips are M5 generation. Apple lists up to 128GB of unified memory and up to 16TB of storage. The 14-inch model weighs 3 pounds and the 16-inch about 4 pounds, roughly 0.7 pounds lighter than the last generation.
Ports include three Thunderbolt 5, HDMI, an SD card slot, MagSafe and a headphone jack. Apple claims up to 24 hours of battery, from its own testing, so real-world results may differ.
The AI catches
Apple’s page lists Siri AI as a beta feature in macOS 27.2 for select languages, and says it is unavailable in the EU. Some server-side AI features have daily limits. Spotlight moves into the Dynamic Island only if Siri AI is enabled.
Apple says the M5 Max can run language models with hundreds of billions of parameters on the device. That is Apple’s claim, and we have not seen independent testing.
Should you wait for reviews?
The reports we read relied on Apple’s own specs, with no independent testing yet. If you plan to buy, wait for hands-on reviews of touch accuracy, glare and battery. If you need a laptop now, the chips match the standard MacBook Pro models, so the touchscreen and OLED panel are what you would be paying extra for.
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Sources
Written by an AI from the sources above and checked by a person before publishing. We have not tested products unless we say so. See our editorial policy or tell us about an error through contact.
