Apple updated the 14-inch MacBook Pro this morning, and the change is almost entirely on the inside. The M6 chip replaces M5, battery life climbs to 24 hours, and Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 finally arrive. The design, the display and the ports are the same as last year's model.

It starts at $1,999 with 16GB of memory and a 1TB SSD, in space black or silver. Pre-orders open tomorrow, October 28, and it arrives in customers' hands and Apple Stores on Friday, November 6.

Apple's pitch leans on value, which is a funny word at $1,999. A year ago the M5 version started at $1,599 with 512GB. Then came June, when Apple raised prices across the Mac lineup and blamed memory costs. The M6 model holds that higher price. It does start at 1TB, twice the storage of last fall's base model, but it still costs $400 more to get in the door.

The Liquid Retina XDR display on the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 keeps its Liquid Retina XDR display. Image: Apple

The M6 Chip

M6 is the same chip Apple introduced in the Mac mini in August, and it's a bigger step than the name suggests. The CPU goes from 10 cores to 12 (two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores), and the GPU also gains two cores to reach 12, each with its own Neural Accelerator. The Neural Engine is now a dual 16 core design, and Apple says it's up to 1.9 times faster than M5's.

The Apple M6 chip
M6 adds two CPU cores and two GPU cores over M5. Image: Apple

Apple's own comparisons against the M5 model come in between 20 and 30 percent faster:

  • Up to 30 percent faster graphics
  • Up to 1.3 times faster Xcode builds and Blender renders with ray tracing
  • Up to 1.3 times faster time to first token for local LLM prompts
  • Up to 1.2 times faster image processing in Affinity

Those are meaningful gains for a one year update, and the numbers against an M1 MacBook Pro are much larger (up to 11.7 times faster ray traced rendering and up to 13 times faster LLM prompt processing). If you own an M5 model, none of this is a reason to sell it. If you're still on M1 or an Intel Mac, this is the year the gap gets hard to ignore.

Code compiling in Xcode on the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
Apple says Xcode builds are up to 1.3 times faster than on M5. Image: Apple

Read the Memory Fine Print

Apple's press release says M6 has memory bandwidth "up to 170GB/s." The specs page shows that number only applies to the 24GB and 32GB configurations. The $1,999 model with 16GB runs at 153GB/s.

It's a smaller cut than the one we found on the new iPad mini yesterday, where only the 512GB model gets the full Neural Engine, and most people won't feel it in Safari or Office. It does matter for the work Apple is selling this laptop on. Running language models locally is limited by memory bandwidth as much as anything, and Apple ran its M5 comparisons against a 32GB machine. If local AI is why you're buying, 24GB is the configuration that matches the marketing, and 32GB is the ceiling. There's no 48GB or 64GB option on M6; that still means stepping up to M5 Pro.

24 Hours of Battery Life

Apple rates the M6 model for up to 24 hours of video streaming and 16 hours of wireless web browsing from the same 72.4 watt hour battery, and calls it the longest battery life ever in a Mac. That's two hours more video playback than the M5 Pro version, which Apple still sells alongside it. Fast charging to 50 percent in 30 minutes needs a 96W or higher USB-C adapter.

Two people working outdoors on the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
Up to 24 hours of video playback on a charge. Image: Apple

Same Display, Same Ports, Faster Wireless

The 14.2 inch Liquid Retina XDR display carries over unchanged: 3024 by 1964, 1,000 nits sustained, 1,600 nits peak for HDR, with nano-texture glass as an option. So do the ports. You get three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC card slot and a headphone jack, plus support for two external displays.

The wireless side is the real upgrade. Apple's N1 chip brings Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread. The 12MP Center Stage camera with Desk View, the six speaker system and the three mic array are the same. It weighs 3.4 pounds and measures 0.61 inch thick, also unchanged.

Both sides of the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 showing its ports
Three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, MagSafe 3, SDXC and a headphone jack. Image: Apple

macOS 27 and Siri AI

The new MacBook Pro ships with macOS 27 Golden Gate. Siri AI, still labeled beta, requires macOS 27.2 and works in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. On the Mac it's built into Spotlight and the system context menus, and a keyboard shortcut lets you ask Siri about what's on your screen. Apple's fine print also notes that Siri AI and other server based Apple Intelligence features have daily usage limits, and that expanded access will cost money in the future. That's worth knowing before you buy a laptop on the strength of its AI features.

Price and Availability

The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999, or $1,899 with education pricing, with 16GB of memory and 1TB of storage. Memory goes to 24GB or 32GB and storage to 2TB or 4TB. The M5 Pro and M5 Max 14-inch and 16-inch models stay on sale unchanged.

Pre-orders open Wednesday, October 28 at apple.com and in the Apple Store app in 35 countries and regions, including the US. It arrives and hits Apple Stores on Friday, November 6.

For anyone on an M1 or Intel MacBook, this is a strong update with a battery number nobody else in the Mac lineup can match. For anyone on M5, it's the kind of spec bump Apple will happily sell you, and you can happily skip. Either way, if the plan is running AI models locally, skip the 16GB model and spend the extra on memory.