Macworld

The new MacBook Pro has arrived, but if you don’t have access to a benchmarking app, you’d be hard-pressed to know you were using one. As expected, Apple rolled out the M6 update to its entry-level MacBook Pro, but there isn’t anything obviously new. The colors are the same (silver and space black). The memory and storage options are the same. The display is the same. And thankfully, the price is the same.

The M6 MacBook Pro is, quite literally, a chip-and-ship update. The new M6 chip, which Apple already unveiled in the Mac mini in late August, is a relatively minor refresh of the M5, which delivered a nice graphics boost. Sure it’s faster, but you’ll need to see benchmark numbers to see the difference. Here are the specs:

M6 chip

  • 12-core CPU (2 super, 4 performance, and 6 efficiency) 
  • 12-core GPU
  • Neural Accelerators
  • Hardware-accelerated ray tracing
  • Dual 16-core Neural Engine 
  • Up to 170GB/s memory bandwidth

Media engine

  • Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, ProRes, and ProRes RAW
  • Video decode engine
  • Video encode engine
  • ProRes encode and decode engine
  • AV1 decode

That’s identical to the chip we got in the Mac mini, so no surprises there. The M5 MacBook Pro was the last of Apple’s laptops to still run Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, so it also got an upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 with the N1 chip. But if you don’t have a Wi-Fi 7 router and a very fast network, you’re not going to notice that either.

From what we’re hearing, this MacBook Pro will be the last of its kind. Apple is expected to release a touchscreen MacBook Pro with a new design this week. That new design will reportedly make its way to the non-touchscreen models with next year’s M7 update, so if you have an M4 or M5, you can probably sit this one out.

The M6 MacBook Pro is part of a week of “exciting” releases that has also included the A20 Pro iPad mini and M6 iMac. But the main event will be Wednesday, when Apple releases its first-ever touchscreen MacBook Pro. You can pre-order the M6 MacBook Pro tomorrow starting at 10:10 a.m. PT for delivery next Friday, November 6. It starts at the same $1,999 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is a small victory in this age of price hikes.