The M6 MacBook Pro is probably the last of its kind

On November 6th, Apple will release an all-new MacBook Pro. It’s thinner and lighter and has a beautiful OLED touchscreen. It is very likely what every new MacBook Pro will look like in a couple of years.

The M6 MacBook Pro is probably the last of its kind

The design is starting to show its age next to the lighter, brighter PROLED model, but the entry-level MacBook Pro is still great.

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The M6 MacBook Pro, which is also out on the 6th, is not that laptop. Instead, it’s a straightforward chip bump of Apple’s entry-level MacBook Pro, in basically the same chassis Apple’s been using since 2021. Everything that was great about the M5 MacBook Pro last year, and the M4 the year before, still applies. The M6 MacBook Pro is still a great all-around computer, and a nice step up from the MacBook Air. Processor, screen, speakers, ports, power, battery life: They’re all a little better than the Air’s. The keyboard and webcam are still solid; the trackpad is still best in class. Inside the laptop, only the processor — which bumps up from a 10-core M5 to a 12-core M6 — and the N1 networking chip are new.

There are just two things complicating what would otherwise be the easiest MacBook review of the year. The first is the starting price: $1,999 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage — the same price as the base M5 MacBook Pro since September, but up $200 since its launch a year ago. The other is the actually new MacBook Pro: the one with the OLED touchscreen.

Yes, the OLED model is great. Not that someone who’s considering the base MacBook Pro should spend $900 more to get that screen today. But that design is likely to come to the entry MacBook Pro next year. The question is: Should you wait?

The Good

- Hardware still excellent all around

- 12-core CPU and GPU in base model

- Great battery life

The Bad

- More expensive, like everything else

- Upgrading RAM puts you close to M5 Pro model

- Likely the last pre-redesign MacBook Pro

The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro has only existed in its current form for two years. After the 2023 M3 model finally ditched the touchbar and butterfly keys, the M4 model brought it up to par with the “real” Pros, most notably by adding a third Thunderbolt port and bumping the minimum RAM from an embarrassing 8GB to a decent 16GB. The M5 version had a faster chip and double the storage speed, and that was enough to keep it among our favorite laptops. The M6 is yet another chip bump, and it adds Apple’s N1 networking chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 (and also Thread, for what that’s worth.)

Component report card

- Screen: A

- Webcam: A

- Mic: B

- Keyboard: B

- Touchpad: A

- Port selection: B

- Speakers: A

- Number of ugly stickers to remove: 0

The rest of the hardware is the same as it’s been for two years, which is to say it’s still great. The 14.2-inch miniLED display is bright, beautiful, and color-accurate, with 3092 x 1964 resolution and up to 1,000 nits of brightness in standard mode. The 120Hz adaptive refresh rate (which Apple calls ProMotion) really makes a difference in gaming or even just moving the cursor around. It’s the sort of thing you don’t notice when all your screens are 60Hz, but once you go higher, it’s awfully hard to go back.

Of course, it’s also hard to go back from an OLED screen, like the one on the other new MacBook Pro, once you’ve used one. So it’s a good thing I haven’t used that laptop yet.

The large haptic trackpad remains the best on any laptop, and the keyboard is… still fine. I have never loved Apple’s laptop keyboards, but the keys are large and well-spaced and tolerable for typing on. I’ve used worse. The speakers, on either side of the keyboard deck, are excellent. The “studio-quality three-mic array” is genuinely superb, and noise-canceling is good enough that when I was on a video call using the MacBook’s speakers and mic, my coworker thought I was wearing headphones. That does not happen on my M1 Air.

It still comes in silver and space black. It still has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone jack, an SD card slot, and the MagSafe charging port. Again, coming from an Air, that’s just nice. I love not having to find a card reader to import photos. I love having ports on the right side of the laptop. And I’ll never be mad at a headphone jack.

The webcam is the 12MP Center Stage one Apple’s been using for the past few years, and it’s good enough. If I move around too much during a call, it can take a minute to recenter, but the resolution is good. It’s a huge step up from the one in my M1 MacBook Air.

Battery life is still exceptional. The first day I had the MacBook Pro, I kept it plugged in because I was setting it up and running benchmarks. The second day, I unplugged it at 9:30AM and didn’t plug it back in until noon the next day. That’s over 12 hours of screen-on use, including about three hours of video calls and the usual multitasking. Hard to complain about that!

The M6 chip found in the MacBook Pro is the same 12-core chip in the M6 Mac Mini and iMac, with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. It’s more than enough power for regular use, up to and including photo editing, the occasional video editing, and light gaming.

All three M6 machines had very similar performance in nearly all our benchmarks. The exceptions were Premiere Pro, Photoshop, and DaVinci Resolve benchmarks, where the 24GB of memory in our Mini review unit gave it a 5 to 10 percent edge over the iMac and this MacBook Pro, both of which have 16GB of memory.

Apple Silicon remains capable as hell. The MacBook Pro handled everything I threw at it, and I rarely heard the fan except during video-rendering benchmarks and while playing Cyberpunk 2077. Even then, it’s a faint white noise-y whoosh rather than the irritating whine of many laptop fans.

Cyberpunk has recently been updated for Mac, with better MetalFX support and frame interpolation. Gaming on a MacBook keyboard is not really my idea of a good time, but I’ve played a lot of Cyberpunk on my desktop, so I’m familiar with the game. With upscaling and fake frames it’s tolerable on the MacBook in a pinch, but the game really wants more powerful hardware. I also ran into a few graphical glitches, including one that turned everyone’s skin bright green. That was fun.

Last year, we said the base M5 MacBook Pro, with 16GB memory and 512GB storage, was enough for most people. But that laptop cost $1,599 at the time; the M6 MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 with 16GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage. I’m not going to complain too much about the price increase because it’s happening everywhere; that’s just the weather these days. Can’t do anything about it.

It does put the base model MacBook Pro in a tight spot, however. MacBooks last a long time. Apple Silicon in particular holds up very well; every time we review a MacBook, we hear from people who are still perfectly happy with their M1 Pros or M1 MacBook Airs. My work machine is an M1 MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM. It’s getting a little long in the tooth — especially compared with the M6 I’m typing this on — but it’s hanging in there.

Apple Silicon ages so gracefully that if you’re considering this particular MacBook Pro, you’re probably either coming from a very old Intel MacBook, or you’ve outgrown an older Air and you want more ports, a bigger screen, and better everything (or you’re switching over from Windows). If you’re considering spending upward of $2,000 on a new computer, you’re probably going to keep it for a while. And if that’s the case, you should get more than 16GB of memory. You’ll feel the lack of RAM before you feel the processor age.

Now, if you’re running local AI models, doing high-res video encoding or 3D rendering, you should go straight for an M5 Pro or Max model with as much RAM as you can afford. You also don’t need me to tell you that. But if you’re considering the M6 MacBook Pro — this laptop — you should still get more RAM. Even if you don’t need it today, in five years you’ll wish you had it.

But jumping from 16GB to 24GB of RAM without upgrading the storage or the screen puts you at $2,199; going to 36GB costs $2,399. And here’s where you hit the upsell. That’s only $100 less than the M5 Pro model with 24GB of RAM and a more powerful CPU and GPU. And at that point, you’re only $400 away from the one with the OLED.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the best time to buy a laptop is next year.

The M6 MacBook Pro is a fantastic laptop at a good price — RAM and storage shortage taken into account. But it’s also likely the last of its kind, and if you’re considering buying one but it’s not an emergency, you might be exactly the person who should wait for next year.

Mark Gurman reports that next year’s entry M7 MacBook Pro will use the redesigned hardware of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. That chassis is a little bit thinner but nearly half a pound lighter, which makes a difference when you’re carrying around all the time. As my colleague David Pierce points out, the touchscreen part is whatever, but the OLED screen really is good. If you’re considering the M5 Pro or Max model, it’s worth spending extra for the redesigned model.

If you buy the M6 MacBook Pro today, you’re still getting a great all-rounder laptop that’ll last you the better part of a decade. Everything about it is good to great. You can’t go wrong. But if your current laptop still works and you think you’ll want the thinner, lighter OLED model, you might consider holding out just a little longer. Apple has shown us it can make an even better MacBook Pro; I can’t wait to see what next year’s looks like.

Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge

Apple MacBook Pro 14 M6 specs (as reviewed)

- Display: 14.2-inch (3024 x 1964) 120Hz Mini-LED

- Processor: Apple M6 (12 CPU cores, 12 GPU cores)

- Memory: 16GB unified memory

- Storage: 1TB SSD

- Webcam: 12-megapixel Center Stage camera with Desk View

- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6

- Ports: 3x USB-C / Thunderbolt 4, SDXC card slot, HDMI 2.1, headphone / mic combo

- Weight: 3.4 pounds

- Dimensions: 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches

- Battery: 72.4Wh

- Price: $1,999