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It's a MacBook Pro. and it's the first one ever with a touchscreen. But that's actually missing the point. I don't think it's really about that at all. So yeah, I definitely took some extra time with this review process because. I'm like squarely in the middle of the target demographic for a machine like this. And I'm, I'm considering getting a MacBook Pro. with. ProLED XDR display for myself to edit these videos on and to be my full-time laptop. And what I've noticed is. the more time I've spent with it, the less I've touched the screen. Now,
if you look at all of Apple's marketing and all their imagery and advertising and presentation of this laptop, they've got everybody touching the screen. They've been showing people poking away at Final Cut Pro, they've had people manipulating 3D models, and musicians playing the virtual keyboard in Logic Pro. All kinds of poking and prodding of the display like it's the best new feature. But it isn't. I really think that the fact that you happen to be able to touch this display. is actually down near the bottom of reasons why you might buy this computer.
So reason number one. would be this new tandem OLED display. Turns out. it's the best display I think I've ever seen in any laptop. Yes, there are other laptops with great displays, yes, there are other tandem OLED displays in ultra high-end laptops. This just happens to be the best-looking one I've ever seen. The numbers on paper are already great, of course, 1,000 nits sustained full-screen brightness, up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness.
You can take it outside in broad daylight and have no worries, it gets plenty bright enough. But what's more noticeable. is the 10 million to 1 contrast ratio. And OLEDs, you know, have always looked very impressive with any sort of contrasty content, especially when there's pitch blacks involved. That's why all those OLED video tests you see on YouTube, whenever there's a new OLED TV, they play one of those with a super high-contrast scenes. Sometimes, though, they get a little bit too saturated and overdramatic, but this one is tuned extremely well and is incredibly color-accurate.
It has complete coverage of Adobe RGB and P3 in a single mode. And OLED has all sorts of other little benefits, too. Like, I remember talking about the mini-LEDs about how they'd minimized blooming by having so many backlight zones. Well, OLED. literally doesn't bloom at all, since the pixels are individually lit themselves, no backlight needed. And it also has a much faster pixel response time. So not that this is a gaming laptop or anything, but faster-moving stuff. actually feels way quicker. on this OLED. Off-axis viewing angles are also improved versus a mini-LED. And they've done other little things like extending the display a little closer towards the bottom of the frame, so the screen's a little bigger,
the bezels are a little thinner, it also has rounded corners at the bottom now, too, so it feels more symmetrical. And there's a Dynamic Island at the top instead of a notch, which. actually does kind of feel like meaningfully extra screen real estate for those of us with a lot of menu bar items. Look, the mini-LEDs are already really good, but these are just. that much better. Like, if you, if you work with color a lot, if you, if you're photography, if you're videography, if you depend on having an excellent display, then that by itself is worth the $400 price delta between the mini-LEDs and this laptop.
Now, the nano-texture question is actually a little more interesting. Like, typically, you just kind of know if you want it or not. I happen to be a nano-texture person. I already know I'm editing on a plane, in a hotel lobby, and all sorts of random places with different lighting. I'm in the corner of the tech event. Like, lighting's always different for me, I always check the box. I remember being in the event for this laptop, though, in this weird mixed lighting environment, and.
I literally could not tell the difference between nano-texture and glossy. right next to each other, which was really weird. This review unit I've been testing. does not have nano-texture, it's glossy. And it turns out it still does a pretty great job of tuning down, like, ambient light reflections in general. Now, if there's a point light or a light source directly behind you, okay, it can't really do much about that, that's where nano-texture is still king. But the thing we've also noticed about nano-texture is it does slightly reduce contrast and sharpness,
just ever so slightly. Just slightly, right? And that's usually fine, but. this is also the OLED that we're talking about, which is specifically known and built for its slightly contrastier look and the inky blacks. So now it's not such an easy choice with, like, trading that for the nano-texture. Also, just another wrench to throw into this: having used them both, the nano-texture is actually easier to swipe across with your finger on the touchscreen. And I'll eventually talk more about touch in this video, but yeah, it has this sort of soft-touch finish, which is really smooth, where the glossy one can kind of drag a little bit more in comparison. But, the nano-texture is also slightly harder to clean
because the oils from your finger literally get trapped in that nano-texture. So I would just, I would be really sure that you definitely want the nano-texture before checking that box. So anyway, if reason number one to get this new laptop is the new display, which it is, then I think reason number two should be. the new, lighter, thinner. chassis. Now, this was very much glossed over at the event cuz they spent so much time and all these visuals talking about touch. But the first time I picked up the 16-inch ProLED XDR laptop, I was genuinely surprised. It is a big difference. It's half a pound on the 14-inch. and 0.7 pounds lighter. on the 16-inch. So, some of this comes from the OLED not having a backlight and
just generally being lighter. Some of that also comes from a redesigned cooling system. And I was curious about this. cuz frankly, you know, we've gotten used to this MacBook Pro for the last couple years being a little bit chunky. And that was okay, cuz it was worth it, cuz it had this amazing performance and awesome battery life and all these ports. But this new one is actually noticeably thinner and noticeably lighter in both 16-inch and 14-inch configurations. But also typically, a thinner and lighter version of the same laptop means what? You already see where this is going: worse. thermal performance. So the first thing I did was a ton of side-by-side benchmarking between two. identical machines:
my 16-inch M5 Max and this ProLED M5 Max, same chip, same 128 gigs of RAM. So, in short workloads for bursty stuff, they're essentially identical, no surprise. But then something interesting happens when you extend the benchmarks and start to simulate and go through longer workloads like video editing and 3D rendering. These laptops, after 10, 20, and 30 minutes, stayed basically neck and neck, like within margin of error of each other in performance, but the ProLED, I noticed. was spinning the fans harder. So, our theory holds true: a thinner and lighter version of the same laptop does mean technically less thermal performance, but they've managed to achieve essentially identical thermal performance between the two laptops.
and the two cooling systems by just spinning up the fans of the ProLED higher. There have been some interesting tests showing that most of what they're doing with the redesigned thermal system on the ProLED is redirecting hot air out the back and side of the laptop now instead of up past the display at the front like before. Overall, though, I'm, I'm generally actually very happy that the thermal performance is not worse on this new laptop, even though it's lighter and thinner. My own personal dilemma now is just really, I'm constantly torn between the 14-inch and the 16-inch version of the same laptop, which sounds like such a small thing, but the 14 is. is basically, it's like the perfect size.
It's small, compact, light, take it everywhere, do everything with it. I love that. But then the like seven or eight or nine times a year that I have to edit a video on my laptop, like on the plane or at a hotel or something at an event, it's just, it's a little cramped, the screen is a little too small, and I wish I had the 16-inch version of the laptop. And actually, I've tried living with the 16. The 16's great, but it's. a little heavy and a little too much to just be carrying around everywhere, all that extra laptop with you.
It barely fits in some backpacks. And so then I find myself wanting the 14 again. So anyway, this lighter, thinner 16-inch. I think is pushing me a little bit more into 16-inch laptop territory. It's still a big laptop, don't get me wrong, but it's more than half a pound lighter and is just so much easier to take everywhere. But also the 14-inch now is even more awesome. It. weighs. less than the 15-inch MacBook Air does. So display quality is number one, great. Size and weight, number two, also great.
Number three reason you might get this laptop: it's the little things. Like, there's been a lot of nostalgic cheer around Apple bringing back the backlit Apple logo on the back of the laptop. It's a little thing, but you should see the comments online, like it's one of the best choices Apple's made in years because people are eating it up. And it's interesting, when it's off, it kind of looks just like the last few years of laptops, kind of metallic. But then when the display turns on, it lights up. For the first half of display brightness, it's kind of the same, and then it gets brighter when the display gets even brighter. So it seems to, by default,
just be tied in step with the brightness of the display but you can also just turn it off with a single line in the terminal command. The speakers are also definitely a bit different. They're tuned to have more bass, which was a little surprising because the MacBook Pro speakers have been class of the industry for so long. I think they're good, though. There's also dedicated tuning for closed-lid use, so if you're the type of person who. docks their MacBook Pro in clamshell mode, but still uses the laptop speakers for some reason, these can do a better job at that.
Uh, there's a new $7,000 16-terabyte SSD option. And then also battery life, you know, it's rated to be identical to the mini-LEDs, but technically, the battery life can be slightly better in dark mode because it's an OLED, so that's nice. And then the webcam has more stabilization. because you could be poking the display during a video call. Because, oh, yeah, I almost forgot, uh, it happens to be a touchscreen. So they said they wouldn't do it for a really long time, and now they've finally done it. So naturally, we're making a big deal out of it. Lots of people have talked about this, all their marketing is about this, but the truth is, it really feels like it's just a box checked.
Like, this isn't some whole new idea for a laptop or a new line like MacBook Ultra or something crazy like that. Like, it's quite literally just an option at the top of the lineup that you can check. They gave you the ability to touch the screen, and it didn't make the laptop worse, and that's about it. They didn't make the hinge push further back to make the laptop, like, flip down into an easel or anything that would have made touch input easier on a flat surface. Matter of fact, it doesn't even push back quite as far as the previous generation. They also didn't give us Apple Pencil support.
The hinge. is just. slightly stiffer to wobble a little bit less, and they barely even changed macOS at all to adapt to touch. Like, they made the stoplights in the corner of every window two taps, so one tap makes them bigger, and then one more to actually select one, since they're kind of small. I still don't know why you'd ever reach out to do this, though. And they also moved Spotlight search and Siri up to the top of the display instead of the middle. So you can swipe down from the top of the screen, but then you have to go right back to the keyboard to type, so I also don't know why you'd do this too much. Then you can grab a window and flick it to either side for some
half-and-half window management. I guess that's nice. And I think the menu bar at the top here has a little bit of extra padding, even though the Dynamic Island is smaller than the notch. The menu buttons are big, I guess to make them easier to tap with one finger. That's about it. Me personally, just like almost every other modern laptop I've tested in the past few years with a touchscreen, I almost never. feel compelled to touch the screen at all and fingerprint it up. Now, I am reviewing it, so I am giving it a chance. I'm using it as much as I can remember to, giving it a shot. And I will definitely admit, this, I feel like, is the most responsive touchscreen I've ever used.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised since it's powered by M5 Max. But yeah, this. plus the OLED, plus the touch silicon in the display just makes it, like, ridiculously one-to-one responsive with my finger. And so if you're an iOS developer, maybe that's nice, you know, you can test your apps with actual touch input. And it makes iPhone Mirroring more intuitive than ever. Gestures work, and if you don't mind the tired shoulders and the wobbling hinge and the fingerprints on your laptop screen, you can use your phone on the screen. But otherwise, yeah, you can just ignore it.
It comes with the package, and you can literally turn it off if you don't want it on. In summary, it is a lighter MacBook Pro with a really nice screen that you happen to be able to touch, if you want to. All right, one more unhinged analogy. Uh, I was just thinking about the Tesla Roadster and how it has a lot in common with Apple silicon. Hear me out. So the Tesla Roadster gets announced in, what, 2017, forever ago? And it's crazy, we all pay attention to it 'cause it's this thing we've never seen before. But then they spend. eight, nine years. developing it to the point where it's like other cars are coming out, and now we kind of don't care about the Roadster anymore?
Like, oh, well, it's just another faster electric car. All the other EVs are already really fast. So Tesla goes, you know, we gotta try something, we gotta try something different. They throw some rocket thrusters on the back of it, and they're like, oh, now you care? Now it's interesting? You might not ever use that stuff, but at least it's not just another faster one. Apple silicon has a hilarious problem right now, where it's not that the M1s were too good, but they were really, really good. And people have those M1, M2, M3 laptops, and there's no reason for them to care about the M4 or the M5 that much.
What, it's another faster computer?. Those are already doing really solid. So Apple goes, well, what if we add some other stuff?. A glowing Apple logo, a Dynamic Island, a touchscreen? Now you care, right? It's not just a faster computer. They're trying to get people with older laptops. to finally take the leap. Will I be taking the leap? Maybe. Probably. I think it's worth the 400 bucks. And you know, I'm probably going to dbrand the back of mine. like I always do. Now, my personal go-to skin has been the Area 51 skin that you've seen on the
back of my laptop on the Waveform Podcast for a while now. But, you know, this being a new MacBook with the glowing logo, I think people are gonna wanna cut out the logo. So dbrand will also let you do that. And I'm gonna go with the Sketch 2D skin, the same one I had on my Fold 7 a while ago. I think it looks pretty awesome. One underrated thing about skinning a laptop when you get it brand new. is that when you take it off, the MacBook Pro underneath will look perfectly brand new instead of scuffed up from the daily wear and tear of. putting it into and taking it out of a backpack or a laptop sleeve. And that's big because when you finally decide to sell it after five, six, seven, eight years, they do hold value really well.
So you might as well take the skin off and have it be pristine underneath. That's worth the 30 bucks. They've already got like 40 different designs for the new ProLED MacBooks ready to go. So I'll leave a link down below in the description if you want to check it out. Anyway, thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.
