Apple has launched the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, starting at $1,999 in the US. The release date is Friday, November 6 in silver and black, and pre-orders open on October 28.
The laptop has a 12-core CPU, a 12-core GPU and battery life rated at up to 24 hours. It is the first 14-inch MacBook Pro to run the M6, which adds two CPU cores and two GPU cores over the M5.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 only reaches 170GB/s of memory bandwidth with 24GB or 32GB
Memory starts at 16GB and goes up to 32GB, and the 16GB model runs at 153GB/s. The 24GB and 32GB models get the full 170GB/s, and storage options are 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. Anyone who needs more memory has to step up to the M5 Pro and M5 Max models.
That makes 24GB the smallest option with the full bandwidth, and I would start there for local AI work. The 12-core GPU is rated at up to 30 percent faster graphics and up to 25 percent faster AI workloads than the M5, and the Dual 16-core Neural Engine is up to 1.9x faster.
Apple’s own tests put the new laptop ahead of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5, and far ahead of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1:
- Blender ray-tracing renders are up to 1.3x faster than the M5 and up to 11.7x faster than the M1.
- Xcode project builds are up to 1.3x faster than the M5 and up to 2.5x faster than the M1.
- Affinity image processing is up to 1.2x faster than the M5 and up to 3.3x faster than the M1.
- LLM prompt processing is up to 1.3x faster than the M5 and up to 13x faster than the M1.
These figures come from September testing, so I would wait for independent benchmarks before treating them as final.
Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 are new while the display and ports carry over
The Apple N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread, up from Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 on the M5 model. The display, ports, camera and speakers carry over from that model.
The display is a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR panel at 3024 by 1964 with up to 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness and a nano-texture option. The ports are three Thunderbolt 4, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC card slot and a headphone jack, and two external displays run at up to 6K and 60Hz or 4K and 165Hz.
The 72.4Wh battery is rated for up to 24 hours of video streaming and up to 16 hours of wireless web browsing. Fast charging reaches 50 percent in 30 minutes with the 96W Power Adapter or another compatible higher-wattage USB-C adapter.
Pricing starts at $1,999 and some Siri AI features have daily limits
Education pricing starts at $1,899, and pre-orders run through apple.com and the Apple Store app in 35 countries and regions, including the US.
Apple Upgrade leases the laptop from $38.99 a month for 36 months, or $53.99 a month for 24 months, before taxes and any trade-in credit. Apple Card Monthly Installments are available at 0 percent APR in the US, with 3 percent Daily Cash back on the purchase.
The laptop runs macOS 27 Golden Gate, which includes Siri AI and the Apple Intelligence tools in Safari, Shortcuts and Photos. Siri AI is in beta on macOS Golden Gate 27.2 in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish, and it is not available to users under 13.
Apple Intelligence features that use server-side models, including Siri AI and the intelligent photo editing tools, have daily usage limits. Apple says expanded access will be available for a fee in the future.
Our Take
Anyone on an Intel Mac or the M1 gets the biggest jump here. Intel upgraders get up to 14 more hours of battery life and M1 owners get up to four more, plus an extra Thunderbolt port and 16GB of starting memory. If you already own the M5 model, the gain is a few cores and a faster Neural Engine, and I would not upgrade for that alone.
The touchscreen MacBook Pro is expected on Wednesday, so I would hold off on the pre-order until Apple shows what that model costs.
