With all the fuss about Apple finally releasing a touchscreen MacBook Pro, you may have forgotten about the new model’s other key display technology: OLED, or what Apple calls PROLED XDR. It’s typical of Apple to change a standard tech term to a cringy marketing-focused name, but in this case, the “PRO” designation appears to be justified.
The new MacBook Pros are squarely aimed at photographers, artists and video editors who can justify the high price for a high-quality touch display. To appeal to those folks, Apple didn’t just integrate a touch feature and OLED display and call it a day. Rather, it built what looks like one of the best pro laptop displays ever, with high brightness and contrast, excellent color accuracy and even a display engine that adapts to a pixel’s age.
For the new models, Apple used tandem OLED technology (first employed on the M4 iPad Pro) that stacks multiple organic layers into a single display panel. Judging by an Apple graphic in its press release, it appears to use a triangular pixel arrangement and not a striped RGB OLED system that can offer sharper text (we’ve reached out to the company for clarification on that).
There are several key benefits to tandem OLED tech, namely high peak HDR brightness, a lower burn-in risk and a longer panel lifespan. It’s also brighter and more color-accurate when viewed from an angle. At the same time, it retains and even improves the primary benefit of OLED displays: extremely high contrast.
Apple says that the new MacBook Pros with PROLED XDR deliver up to 2,000 nits peak HDR, compared to 1,600 nits peak HDR for current models with Mini LED tech. That’s very high for an OLED display and at least as bright or brighter than any other OLED laptop on the market (if accurate). Apple also touts an “industry-leading” 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, much higher than current MacBook Pro models.
The PROLED XDR screens also offer high color accuracy. Apple says the new models now cover both the P3 (HDR) and Adobe RGB color gamuts “with notably wider coverage in green and cyan ranges.” They cover 80 percent of the Rec.2020 gamut for HDR video editing and color grading, an impressive figure for a laptop display.
Apple
The company also touts “cutting-edge factory calibration” to ensure luminance, white point and color gamut align with standard targets, making it useful for “filmmaking, design and even medical imaging,” Apple claims. Its advanced display engine also controls each pixel’s color and luminance “at the sub-millisecond level” to compensate for content, temperature and environment. That tech also addresses a key problem with OLED (organic pixel degradation over time), by adapting each pixel’s age and usage.
The new laptops use Apple’s 120Hz ProMotion display for reasonably high refresh rates when gaming or creating content. And if you work outside at times or in a bright environment, you can get the new models with Apple’s nano-texture option that’s “now precisely etched into the cover glass,” Apple says, to further reduce glare.
The new MacBook Pros with PROLED XDR touch displays probably aren’t worth the higher $400 base price for most people. With all the tech it’s crammed into the displays, though, the models will be awfully tempting for users who make their money by creating content.
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