Apple MacBook Pro M6 just unveiled with 30% faster graphics, 25% faster AI and up to 24 hours of battery life
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Jeff is U.K. Editor-in-Chief for Tom’s Guide looking after the day-to-day output of the site’s British contingent. Rising early and heading straight for the coffee machine, Jeff loves nothing more than dialling into the zeitgeist of the day’s tech news. A journalist for over a decade, he's travelled around the world testing and reviewing any gadget he can get his hands on. Before joining the team at Tom’s Guide, Jeff covered technology and science for two of the U.K.’s biggest national news sites: Metro.co.uk and the Daily Mirror. Memorable moments include getting lost in Vienna in an electric Audi, touring Lockheed Martin’s mile-long jet factory in Fort Worth and filming a Netflix documentary about Elon Musk in West London. When not plugged into the current news agenda, editing or commissioning a series of articles or debating the merits of Apple vs Android, Jeff can usually be found out for a run trying to shave precious seconds off his PB. Or lifting weights in a vain attempt to offset the ageing process.
Apple has unveiled an October refresh of its 14-inch MacBook Pro complete with the M6 processor that brings the laptop in line with the Mac mini and today's also-announced M6 iMac.
As part of Apple's "Pro and tell" announcements this week , we now have a brand new MacBook Pro to compliment the iMac and yesterday's iPad mini 8 reveal . If the rumors are true, then we may be in line for one more MacBook-related reveal this week: the highly-anticipated touchscreen MacBook Pro OLED.
But let's return to this device which, sadly, doesn't come with a touchscreen or much in the way of a new design. Reportedly, Apple is saving its MacBook Pro redesign for the M7 version of the machine next year . But then again, criticizing the MacBook Pro for its design seems churlish — the thin and light aluminum unibody enclosure conceals a vast amount of power and is just as good to look at now as it's always been.
As with the new iMac, the M6 MacBook Pro will ship with macOS 27 Golden Gate, which includes the next version of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI .
Here's everything we know about the new M6 MacBook Pro.
The new M6 MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 or $38.99 per month for 12 months. That gets you the default configuration of an M6 chip, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
In the U.K., the pricing starts at £1,999 and pre-orders in both regions begin on Wednesday, October 28. Shipping will begin on November 6.
In line with just about every other consumer electronics release this year, that's a price increase over the $1,599 starting cost of last year's 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro. Of course, since then Apple put the pricing up by $300 in June which makes this technically not a price hike... but still — it's a higher cost in my book thanks to ongoing component and memory shortages driven by AI demand.
The biggest single reason for picking up the M6 MacBook Pro is in the name: Apple's M6 chip follows the A20 Pro inside the iPhone Duo and moves to a 2-nanometer architecture that'll deliver a notable power and efficiency gain over previous models.
We've seen the M6 chip only in one Mac product so far; the latest Mac mini and in our review we noted its performance "really shone" and "didn't miss a beat" even when we put it under extreme multitasking.
Here's a breakdown of how the chip inside the Mac mini held up against the same benchmarking tests as the M5 and M5 Pro chips inside last year's MacBook Pro.
Mac mini M6
MacBook Pro M5
MacBook Pro M5 Pro
Geekbench 6.7 single-core
4708
3613
3701
Geekbench 6.7 multi-core
21405
17505
29411
Handbrake (Mins:Secs)
2:45
3:31
1:45
Specific performance will, of course, be slightly different for this machine but the above results should give you an indication of how much more powerful it's likely to be over last year's MacBook Pro. It likely won't be enough to convince M5 owners to jump, but anyone still using an M1 or M2 MacBook Pro will find the M6 is the upgrade they've been waiting for.
The M5 chip consisted of a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU while the M6 improves that by two additional cores in both the CPU and the GPU. In addition, it's got a Dual 16-core Neural Engine for AI and machine learning that could take the fight to Nvidia's RTX Spark machines that are specifically targeting on-device AI workloads.
Apple says the 12-core GPU delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics and up to 25 percent faster AI workloads when compared to M5.
The Neural Engine is also supported by Neural Accelerators in each GPU core that should mean the M6 MacBook Pro is streets ahead when it comes to using AI-powered creative tools.
We could have seen this one coming a mile away, but Apple hasn't changed up the outward design of the MacBook Pro for the 2026 iteration. In fact, it's largely the same as the design we've had since 2021: a solid slab of machined aluminium that's both sturdy and light given the amount of power under the hood.
The M6 MacBook Pro retains the same 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inch dimensions and 3.4 pound weight as the previous generation and the color options remain a choice between Silver and Space Black.
Apple has kept the 14.2-inch Mini-LED display running at 120Hz ProMotion for the M6 MacBook Pro refresh. We still have the notch cutout at the top, squashing the rumor Apple would switch it up for an iPhone-style Dynamic Island this time around. And, as mentioned up top, there's no touchscreen here for interacting with macOS 27 Golden Gate.
When it comes to ports, the M6 MacBook Pro keeps the current physical I/O layout: you get three Thunderbolt 4/USB4 ports, an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and MagSafe 3 charging.
Alongside the performance from the new M6 chip, the MacBook Pro also benefits from receiving Apple's N1 chip and a boost to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 .
The current model still uses Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 so the M6 refresh will give users lower networking latency and higher throughput. Bluetooth 6 leads to better distance tracking and more power efficiency for wireless accessories like game controllers or a pair of headphones.
Apple says the M6 MacBook Pro's battery life gets up to 14 additional hours for Intel-based upgraders and up to four more hours for users coming from M1, delivering up to 24 hours overall, so users can get more done on a single charge.
The MacBook Pro refresh is pretty customary once October rolls around and Apple has delivered more or less what we expected here: no big design changes but whole host of extra power and battery life efficiency.
We'll reserve judgement until we've got the new M6 MacBook Pro into the Tom's Guide lab for benchmarking but it's safe to say the new chip is going to deliver in some pretty clear-cut ways.
Anyone upgrading from an M1, M2 or older Intel MacBook Pro will see a dramatic leap in performance and read/write speeds. Creative professionals and anyone working with local AI will benefit from the additional power of Apple's new chip.
However, for those already using an M4 or M5 machine, there may be less of a reason to upgrade. Especially since the potential reveal of a MacBook Pro OLED tomorrow could easily eclipse today's news for many MacBook fans.