Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) review: was the touchscreen worth the wait? | Daily Reports Online

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At a glance: Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

What is it?

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is Apple’s latest and greatest workstation laptop aimed at professionals. It doesn’t come with the newest M6 chip architecture, and instead sticks with the previous, yet very powerful, M5 Pro and M5 Max generation. The big change this time around, however, is the PROLED XDR Display. Apple has dropped mini LED technology for tandem OLED, and the screen is gorgeously vibrant — and it’s the first time Apple has included a touchscreen on a MacBook.

What does it cost?

The Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display comes in two sizes: 14-inch and 16-inch. The 14-inch model starts at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599 and the 16-inch model starts at $3,399 / £3,399 / AU$5,499. These versions come with 24GB of unified memory and 1TB storage, and are powered by the M5 Pro chip (the 16-inch model’s M5 Pro chip features a more powerful 20-core GPU, compared to the 14-inches’ 18-core GPU). You can configure both models with the more powerful M5 Max chip up to 128GB memory and 16TB of storage, but things get very expensive, very fast.

Alternatives

The launch of the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display comes at a time when there’s a lot of competition in the prosumer laptop market, thanks to the launch of a range of laptops powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. These laptops, such as the Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark and Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, have powerful chips, unified memory and touchscreens (many of them are OLED as well), which pits them squarely against the new MacBook Pro.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display scorecard

How the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display scored in our review

Group 1 Data
Product	Value ()	Design ()	Performance ()	Battery life ()	Overall ()
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	3	4.5	5	5	4.5

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Value for money

Starting at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599 for the 14-inch version, and $3,399 / £3,399 / AU$5,499 for the 16-inch model, and going all the way up to an astonishing $14,549 / £14,549 / AU$22,424 for the fully specced-out model, the question of value isn’t so much about price, but about what this laptop can enable you to do.

Put simply, if you just want a MacBook that will excel at day-to-day tasks you’d be much better off buying a MacBook Air (M5), and even for more ambitious workloads, the recently-announced MacBook Pro (M6), which starts at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,199, will likely more than suffice. Neither of those, of course, feature a touchscreen, but I wouldn’t suggest buying any model of the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display for the touchscreen alone.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) on wooden desk in office — (Image credit: Future)

Thankfully, this version of the MacBook Pro has other features that help to justify the higher price tag, including tandem OLED screen technology, a lighter design, and more powerful components. Despite being older than the M6 chip, both the M5 Pro and M5 Max outperform it, so if you need a seriously powerful laptop, and image quality is of the utmost importance, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display could be a worthy investment, especially if its raw performance means you can complete projects faster, allowing you to take on more work, for example.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Design

PROLED XDR screen is a clear highlight
Slightly lighter than previous models
iPhone-like Dynamic Island replaces the controversial ‘notch’ around the webcam

Given that the MacBook Pro design hasn’t changed in years, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display in both size variants comes with some major tweaks in this department. This isn’t, though, the kind of overhaul we saw when Apple introduced the 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros that replaced the 15-inch and 13-inch models, respectively, around five years ago; instead, this is a more subtle refinement of the design, and pretty much all of the tweaks are a result of the new display, so let’s start there.

Apple calls the new PROLED XDR screen “the best display on a laptop” and, to be fair, it has a good reason to be boastful. Previous screens on the MacBook Pro were already pretty darn good, and now Apple has swapped the mini-LED tech for tandem OLED. This essentially uses two layers of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) on top of each other, rather than just a single layer, so peak brightness can go even higher, while the display can remain power-efficient. The PROLED XDR screen can achieve 2,000 nits of peak brightness, whereas the mini-LED screen of previous MacBook Pros had a peak brightness of 1,600.

Combine that with the usual benefits we’ve come to expect from OLED displays, namely the higher contrast ratios and lack of halo effects (where there’s noticeable bloom surrounding light colors that bleeds into pixels that should be showing darker, or completely black, colors) that come thanks to each OLED pixel being independently controlled (including being able to be turned off completely), rather than relying on an LED backlight, which offers less precise control over the pixels in the display.

The contrast ratio of the PROLED XDR screen is an incredible 10,000,000:1, a pretty huge bump over the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio of the previous model with a Liquid Retina XDR display. Contrast ratio is a way of comparing the brightest white to the darkest black of a display, and the greater the difference, the more vibrant the image quality, so you can forget about washed-out colors and blacks that look more gray, and enjoy rich, deep colors that really pop compared to darker tones, and even the total blackness that OLED technology enables.

While MacBook displays have supported the P3 color gamut, which is particularly important for people working with video who require accurate colors, the PROLED XDR screen also supports the Adobe RGB gamut, which offers wider coverage for green and cyan colors, and is popular with photographers and designers.

The addition of touch functionality has also had implications for the design. The hinges of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display have been tweaked to reduce movement and flex when you touch the screen. I’d have loved it if Apple had taken this opportunity to increase the amount by which the screen can be pushed back, ideally introducing hinges to allow the touchscreen to lie flat on a desk, or even flip behind the keyboard to turn the laptop into an iPad-like device.

This would have made the redesign of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display even more ambitious, and would have likely meant much more work for Apple to ensure the macOS operating system works with a 2-in-1 laptop formfactor, but it would have made using the touchscreen much more comfortable. Instead, we’re still stuck with a traditional clamshell laptop design, so touchscreen gestures require you hovering your arm over the keyboard as you jab horizontally at the screen – not the most natural of feeling ways to interact with a device, and was one of Steve Jobs’ biggest criticisms of touchscreen laptops when, as CEO, he dismissed the idea of Apple making one all those years ago.

The PROLED XDR screen also allows for thinner bezels around the screen, and the once-controversial notch that surrounded the webcam has been replaced by the ‘Dynamic Island’, which gives you quick access via a touch to important controls such as media playback, AirDrop sharing and accessing Spotlight. It’s one of the best examples of Apple tweaking macOS software to better make use of the touchscreen, and by adding these features, I can tell Dynamic Island will be less hated than the notch, which was just dead space that intruded onto the desktop.

The more compact Dynamic Island and thinner bezels means the screen of the 16-inch model is slightly larger (16.3 vs 16.2-inches), with a higher resolution of 3472 x 2266 pixels, rather than 3456 x 2234 pixels.

The OLED screen technology (and new thermal system that’s used to keep the laptop’s components cool) has also helped Apple reduce the weight of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) by half a pound (15% lighter), and around 1mm thinner.

(Image credit: Future)

The MacBook Pro was always a great showcase that proved powerful workstation laptops don’t need to be big and bulky, so Apple making this new model lighter and thinner, is very impressive.

The final design change is a relatively minor one, but will likely prove to be very popular, as Apple has returned to having an illuminated Apple logo on the back of the lid – a bit of a retro nod to its past, while also helping the latest MacBook Pro stand out more compared to the previous models.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026): Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally

	Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch base configuration	Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch max configuration
Processor	Apple M5 Pro (18-core)	Apple M5 Max (18-core)
Graphics	20-core GPU	32-core GPU
Display	16.3‑inch (diagonal) tandem OLED PROLED XDR display (3472 x 2266), Touch, Wide color (P3 + Adobe RGB), True Town, ProMotion up to 120Hz	16.3‑inch (diagonal) tandem OLED PROLED XDR display (3472 x 2266), Touch, Wide color (P3 + Adobe RGB), True Town, ProMotion up to 120Hz
Memory	24GB Unified Memory	36GB Unified Memory
Storage	1TB SSD	2TB SSD
Battery Life	Integrated 100‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery, up to 17 hours web browsing, up to 24 hours video streaming	Integrated 100‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery, up to 16 hours web browsing, up to 22 hours video streaming
Ports	3x USB-C Thunderbolt 5 ports, SDXC card slot, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, MagSafe 3	3x USB-C Thunderbolt 5 ports, SDXC card slot, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, MagSafe 3
Audio & Camera	High-fidelity six‑speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers, 12MP Center Stage camera with support for Desk View	High-fidelity six‑speaker sound system with force-cancelling woofers, 12MP Center Stage camera with support for Desk View
Wireless	Wi-Fi 7; Bluetooth 6.0	Wi-Fi 7; Bluetooth 6.0
Dimensions & Weight	0.63 x 14 x 9.62 inches (1.60 x 35.55 x 24.42 cm), 4lbs (1.82kg)	0.63 x 14 x 9.62 inches (1.60 x 35.55 x 24.42 cm), 4.1lbs (1.84kg)

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Performance

No M6 version with PROLED XDR Display
Touchscreen is responsive, but not an essential addition
Very fast SSD

I’m going to be honest: I think Apple has got itself into a little bit of a pickle with its M-series naming convention and release cadence. For a company that was often lauded for offering an elegant simplicity compared to its overly complex competitors, it’s made a bit of a confusing mess.

Want the very latest M-series architecture, the M6, which is the company’s first-ever 2nm compute chip? Well, if so, you can forget about the PROLED XDR Display, as Apple is only offering it in the 14-inch MacBook Pro with Mini-LED screen. If you want the M6 and don’t care about a touchscreen or OLED, but prefer the larger 16-inch screen size, then sorry, you’re out of luck.

If you want the most powerful chips in a MacBook, then you’re left with the previous generation M5 Pro and Max chips. But, getting an M5 Max-powered MacBook Pro doesn’t guarantee it’s the most powerful chip, as the default M5 Max chip that comes with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch features an 18-core CPU and 32-core GPU, but you can upgrade (for $300 / £300 extra) to a more powerful M5 Max with a 40-core GPU. To be honest, unless you’re working with extremely graphically-intensive projects, the standard M5 Max chip will be more than enough, and even the M5 Pro will handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

As I mentioned, if you want the M6 generation and the improvements it brings, namely with a smaller 2nm process, which should lead to better power efficiency, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine for improved on-device AI performance, then you’ll need to sacrifice the both the PROLED XDR Display and 16-inch screen size.

Benchmarks

How the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) performed in our suite of benchmark tests

020,00040,00060,00080,000

Score

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Write

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Read

03,7507,50011,25015,000

Score

Geekbench 6.7.2: Single-Core

Geekbench 6.7.2: Multi-Core

Geekbench 7.1.0: Single-Core

Geekbench 7.1.0: Multi-Core

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Single Precision Score

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Half Precision Score

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Quantized Score

020,00040,00060,00080,000

Score

Geekbench Data
Product	Geekbench 6.7.2: Single-Core (Score)	Geekbench 6.7.2: Multi-Core (Score)	Geekbench 7.1.0: Single-Core (Score)	Geekbench 7.1.0: Multi-Core (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Single Precision Score (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Half Precision Score (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Quantized Score (Score)
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	4359	30327	3766	35679	6200	47515	64473

PugetBench for Adobe CC (Photoshop)

PugetBench for Adobe CC (Premiere Pro)

050,000100,000150,000200,000

Score

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

1 of 5

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display model Apple sent to me for review comes with the M5 Max chip with 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, 128GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage. That’s a hefty list of specs, and would set you back a rather huge $7,399 / £7,399 / AU$11,699.

I’ve previously tested the M5 and M5 Pro in the 14-inch MacBook Pros launched earlier this year, and late last year, and as expected, the M5 Max in my 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is incredibly powerful, with macOS and its built-in apps all launching quickly and feeling fast and snappy.

When it comes to the touchscreen, macOS again feels fast and responsive, and using a finger to quickly browse up and down a website, selecting options in a dialogue box or menu, and moving windows around the screen all feels natural, especially if you’ve ever used an iPhone or an iPad.

A comparison of the Mini-LED screen of previous MacBooks on the left, with the PROLED XDR Display on the right, both at 100% brightness (Image credit: Future)

Unlike people who have only used Macs and MacBooks from the once touchscreen-phobic Apple, I’ve had extensive experience using Windows laptops and Chromebooks with touchscreens, so using one on the MacBook Pro isn’t as big of a culture shock as it might be to some. While it worked well, and there are some nice touches (forgive the pun), such as pressing down your finger on certain tools in Final Cut Pro to open up a radial menu for more precise touch control, I have to say that Windows 11, Chrome OS, and Google’s new Googlebook OS operating systems are better suited to touch controls.

This might come as little surprise, as this is Apple’s first MacBook to have a touchscreen, while Windows Laptops and Chromebooks have had them for decades, and in the case of Chrome OS and Googlebook OS, Google has used its experience working on Android to influence the operating system. And, for as much grief as a lot of us (myself included) gave Windows 8 when it launched back in 2012, it inspired Microsoft to make a touchscreen-friendly interface, elements of which are still found in Windows 11, primarily with larger, easier to tap, buttons and menus.

Currently, macOS Tahoe still looks and feels like an operating system that’s best used with a traditional mouse and keyboard – because that’s what it is. But that also means that some elements of the user interface, such as menus, feel a bit fiddly to control via touch.

Hopefully this will change if more MacBooks come out with touchscreens. But, because Apple has decided to put its first laptop touchscreen on its most powerful (and expensive) MacBooks, there’s a danger that the company will end up thinking that because the user numbers of touchscreen MacBooks is so small, it’s not worth making big changes to the interface.

Another issue I have with Apple’s decision to put a touchscreen on its highest-end MacBook Pros, rather than a more mainstream MacBook Air or Neo, which I’ve previously written about, is that touchscreen gestures and controls often aren’t the best way to control a laptop when performing complex tasks where precision is key. Sure, you can pull up a virtual piano in Garage Band and tap on the keys on screen, but while this is handy for quick ideas, you don’t want to play or write an entire song using it.

Most professionals will have peripherals, such as physical MIDI keyboards, for precise control. It’s the same with photographers and digital artists – using your fingers to pinch and zoom an image feels fast and natural, as does scribbling some notes or doodles, but for long-term use, professionals will have things such as a drawing tablet. If the MacBook’s PROLED XDR Display was compatible with the Apple Pencil stylus, that would make it a more useful tool for professionals, but in a rather odd omission, it’s not.

One touchscreen-friendly change Apple has made to macOS, and which I’m a big fan of, is adding an iPhone-like Dynamic Island to where the notch around the webcam used to be. Tapping this gives you quick context-relevant tools, such as media controls when watching a video. Spotlight search and Siri AI are now located there as well. This is a great addition that adds value to the MacBook Pro’s touchscreen, and I’d like to see it expanded, and more touch friendly UI elements, to make the touchscreen a must-have, rather than just nice to have, but far from essential, which is what it feels like at the moment.

The tandem OLED tech powering the PROLED XDR Display is a much bigger deal, and likely the reason why most people will consider the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display over the standard model. The previous Mini-LED screen was already one of the best displays you’d find on a laptop, and thanks to tandem OLED, this new screen is even better. Straight out of the box without needing any calibration, the colors are bright and vibrant – so much so that I was surprised to see that the screen was only at 50% brightness.

Placing my14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and Mini-LED screen next to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch really highlighted just how much better the PROLED XDR screen is. The Mini-LED looked dimmer, despite it being at 100% brightness, with the PROLED XDR screen remaining at 50%. Now, as I said, the Mini-LED display of the (slightly) older MacBook Pro is no slouch, so to see such a stark difference in image quality is a big deal, especially for people who want a laptop to work on photos, videos and digital art. The new support for Adobe RGB color gamut is another big plus here, though as usual for Mac devices, you’ll want to turn off the True Tone feature – it tweaks the colors of the screen depending on the ambient light you’re working in, which can make what’s on the screen look better to you in that moment, but could lead to color inaccuracies.

I won’t delve too deep into the performance of the M5 Max, as it’s been in other Apple devices for a while now, but it’s the first time I’ve used it (I have tested both the previous M5 and M5 Pro MacBook Pro models).

According to Apple’s benchmarks, the M5 Max is around nine times faster than the M4 Max when it comes to ‘first token performance’, while AI image generation is apparently around six times faster. If those are the kind of stats that excite you, then enjoy!

(Image credit: Future)

In our benchmark tests, compared to the M5 MacBook Pro with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU unsurprisingly decimated the older MacBook Pro when it came to graphic-intensive tests. In the 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme graphics test, for example, the M5 MacBook Pro scored 73.6fps compared to the M5 Max’s 214.1fps.

With gaming, the M5 MacBook Pro hit 11fps at 1920 x 1200 with Ray Tracing set to Ultra, while the M5 Max model managed a much more playable 38.75fps. This is a good example of the graphical performance gap, but if you want a laptop to game on, you’re still better off buying a dedicated gaming laptop, which is a bit of a shame, as the PROLED XDR Display really makes games look fantastic.

The SSD inside the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) offers up to 14.5GB/s speeds, with Apple claiming it’s twice as fast as the SSD in the previous generation, and in our tests it scored a very good 13,334.7MB/s and 12,782.7MB/s write and read speeds, respectively. A fast SSD like this is incredibly important if you’re working on large files and complex projects.

The SSD in the Surface Laptop Ultra with RTX Spark N1X chip scored a rather paltry 1,921MB/s write speeds in comparison. Check out our benchmark result charts for more comparisons.