On 27 October Apple introduced an updated 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M6 chip. It is the entry model of the lineup: it has a regular Liquid Retina XDR display rather than the OLED panel of the new touchscreen MacBook Pro. All data below comes from the company’s official release.

What is new

  • Processor. A 12-core CPU, two more cores than before.
  • Graphics. A 12-core GPU with a Neural Accelerator in each core. Apple claims up to 30% faster graphics than M5.
  • AI. A dual 16-core Neural Engine, up to 1.9x faster than M5. On-device processing of language-model prompts is up to 25% faster, according to the company.
  • Memory. 16 GB of unified memory, configurable up to 32 GB, with bandwidth of up to 170 GB/s.

Battery, display and ports

Apple quotes up to 24 hours of battery life and calls it the longest in a Mac. Fast charging reaches 50% in 30 minutes with a higher-wattage USB-C adapter, such as the 96W one.

The Liquid Retina XDR display reaches up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and is available with a nano-texture finish. Ports: three Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC slot and a headphone jack. Up to two external displays are supported.

Price and dates

The US price starts at $1,999, or $1,899 for education. Colors: space black and silver. Pre-orders opened on 28 October in 35 countries and regions, and the on-sale date is announced as 6 November.

What we do not know

  • The base storage capacity and prices for higher configurations: Apple does not state them in the release.
  • Whether the laptop will be sold in Ukraine and at what price.
  • Independent test results: the comparisons with M1 and M5 that Apple cites use its own methodology.

Source: Apple Newsroom.