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MacBook Pro Likely to Get OLED Display and Thinner Design in 2026
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Some reduction in thickness and weight would be good. Definitely not as far as the 2016-2019 MBPs which were a complete cluster****, but the current utilitarian design, which a nice change and big improvement over the previous generation, is a bit too much.
Wrong. Apple is very involved in the design of the displays.
Incorrect: The Tandem OLED display is designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung and LG.
i really hope they keep an option for LCD if this is the case 😭
switching to OLED would make it thinner by maybe 1mm, with a weight savings measured in grams, these don’t matter in a device that’s on your desk or lap
also the deep blacks of OLED mostly matter for use in pitch black darkness, like before bed and stuff. again that’s more the realm of iphone and ipad. i’ve never thought the blacks weren’t deep enough on my MBP or even my MBA
i’m usually all for thin and light when it comes to iPhone, but there’s no significant benefit here, only potential issues with burn-in. i don’t want to have to hide my dock and menu bar all the time, i enjoy looking at them, they’re part of why i like macOS. i will never, ever buy an OLED macbook, Apple
switching to OLED would make it thinner by maybe 1mm, with a weight savings measured in grams, these don’t matter in a device that’s on your desk or lap
also the deep blacks of OLED mostly matter for use in pitch black darkness, like before bed and stuff. again that’s more the realm of iphone and ipad. i’ve never thought the blacks weren’t deep enough on my MBP or even my MBA
i’m usually all for thin and light when it comes to iPhone, but there’s no significant benefit here, only potential issues with burn-in. i don’t want to have to hide my dock and menu bar all the time, i enjoy looking at them, they’re part of why i like macOS. i will never, ever buy an OLED macbook, Apple
What about people who can’t use OLED screens on phones, will they face similar issues on MacBook? They won’t be able to work on OLED Macs?
i’ve totally noticed this lol, idk if it’s an apple specific thing though, my android phone kinda feels the same way. when charged to 100% those first few percent seem like they go so far!
Cool story, but what does that have to do with me actually getting great battery life out of my machine?
I’m not repeating marketing copy back to you. I can go nearly all day working normally on my M1 Pro and I run a lot of software. Some things I do would have chewed through my 2018 Intel MBP battery in an hour.
Interesting. Are you referring to the previous generation mini-LED iPad Pro or the latest Tandem-OLED M4 iPad Pros? If the latter, maybe you did get a lemon. Have you had Apple look at it? I’m asking because my M4 iPad Pro screen is flawless and I’ve not seen many complaints.
Do you not understand that happens with technology? Look at televisions, computers, phones, etc. Everything shrinks eventually despite getting much more powerful.
Incredibly deceptive. Apple “designed” it by listing high-level specs like the size and shape and resolution. They didn’t design the technology. Samsung and LG invented the underlying tech and the fabrication process. Apple just selected specs based off what Samsung/LG’s fab tech can produce at an acceptable yield.
Anyone can go to Samsung and say "Give me your best M14 OLED at a 12" size at AAAAxYYYYp resolution at 1600 nits." Apple shouldn't be applauded for doing something an 8-year-old can do.
Great battery life is subjective. It's mediocre, IMO. Windows has better battery life based on my usage patterns (IE. Not just watching videos 24/7).
I'm sure you actually do believe you're getting 12 hours SoT on these macbooks, but what you believe and reality are 2 separate things.
Agree with the first part, for the second part… some people like more solid feeling objects, even computers, and are willing to pay more for that. See Leica, luxury car brands, good furniture, etc. The feeling of luxury is one of Apple’s key strengths, they need to keep that in mind.
The previous gen unibody MBP and MBA with tapered edges felt more solid, and it’s not like they weren’t already thin/light. These get used on a desk or on your lap, saving those last few grams doesn’t matter enough if it affects the structural integrity or makes them feel cheaper (or in the case of OLED, risks burn in) 🙅🏼♀️
I’m all for thin and light where it provides an improved experience, eg iPhone/iPad, where you’re holding them. Nobody’s going to notice that their MBP is 30g lighter, but they’ll notice the burn-in from the dock if they don’t hide it
Agreed. I get why many are averse to any priority of thinness after the bad experience of the 2016 redesign, but isn’t now the time when the laptops could be made thinner and lighter without sacrificing performance? One of the major issues with the thin “Touch Bar” MacBooks was the heat constraints of Intel chips. We don’t have that issue anymore with the M-series. I feel like the late 2019 16” MBP, after the butterfly keyboard had been done away with, was the sweet spot for design. Yet Intel chips and their inefficiency held it back even then. But if the M3 Air can run without a fan then surely the design of the Pro can be made thinner for an M5 or M6 without returning to the days of the blazing hot Intel laptops.
In my usage, Android phones do something similar, but it's not nearly as deceptive as Apple's. Android's battery % drops seem to follow some linear function while Apple's seems to be something like (1 - t)^(1/8).
And the timing works out: M6 will likely launch late 2026 and use the N2 node from TSMC which will start having volume production in late 2025. N2 is going to be another big step in power efficiency over N3 nodes.
So no doubt a slightly thinner/smaller design can still be cooled effectively and support similar battery life as today’s machines with smaller batteries. That combined with OLED for less screen power draw makes it all the more likely that the 2026 MBP is the redesigned one.
This must be sarcasm. By this logic Apple Silicon is also not designed by Apple since an 8-year old can go to TSMC and say “give me a system on a chip using that delivers world-leading efficiency and performance per watt.”
Apple’s efforts involve much more than merely providing “specs” and the collaboration between Apple, LG and Samsung to implement Apple’s design has clearly advanced the technology — leading to development of panels with enhanced brightness, power efficiency, and durability compared to traditional OLED displays.
Trivializing Apple‘s involvement as “listing high-level specs like the size and shape and resolution” is itself deceptive, misleading and cynical.
lol… you can’t just design your own features in a display and expect it to be compatible with the manufacturer’s process. You would tank yields because you have no knowledge of how the display is produced (Read the article where Samsung refused to tell Apple how the displays are made. How can you design the tech if you don’t even know how it’s made???) and have no idea if what you designed is compatible with the other processes. High-level manufacturing is very strict and allows very little room (If at all) to diverge from a manufacturer’s design rules. The only things Apple can change are features that don’t impact the underlying tech and process (High-level specs like size and resolution).
You seem to have a very naive and incorrect view of the tech component industry. Yes, Apple just lists high-level specs and plays no role in the actual tech design of their displays. Apple provides manufacturers sales volume and budget to use high-end tech. They don’t provide any technological insight. If this weren’t true, Apple would go with lower-cost Chinese suppliers. They can’t, because Chinese suppliers have worse tech and Apple doesn’t do the actual engineering so there’s nothing Apple can do about it.
Btw, the Apple Silicon efficiency is mostly thanks to TSMC. Chip design is child’s play and mostly a marketing gimmick. You see how the new snapdragon chip matches the PPW of the A18 pro? That’s because it uses the same fab.
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Too add, when you’re designing a display feature like edge-to-edge displays by rounding the glass and display substrate, every process is fine-tuned to have maximum yield. Samsung raises the temp in a clean room to a certain point for a certain amount of time to make it flexible without ruining the substrate. All of these methods are trade secrets. Apple can’t just go in and touch things and mess up the process. The tolerance is very tight at each step, so you can’t change the underlying tech or add features.
It also makes no sense business-wise for Apple to make any tech designs when the manufacturer is improving the quality every year. Why accept ramp-up risk by crashing yields for no benefit? It makes more sense to just have Samsung/LG make the tech designs improvements and just rebrand their displays to retina xdr or whatever. As long as the supplier isn’t anti-competitive and is willing to sell their best panels, there is no reason to think Apple designed the tech unless you’re an unreasonable Apple fanatic.
For tandem OLED, Apple sent a request for a display at a certain high nits. Samsung and LG assumed that tandem OLED is a viable candidate and worked on an engineering process. Apple didn’t do anything except request a certain high-level spec and seeing if Samsung/LG could deliver. This is why Dell also has tandem OLED (But at a lower brightness since Dell has a lower COGS budget than Apple). If Dell wanted, they could have easily asked Samsung and LG for the same display as Apple’s. It was simply a cost issue for them, not a technical issue.
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Give me a 13" MacBook as light as my 12" Retina Macbook and I'll buy it instanstly (and add cellular while at it...)
Prior to the Apple Tandem-OLED no LG or Samsung panel achieved the brightness, color accuracy, efficiency and durability specs demanded by Apple. Based on your own words above Apple should have waited for the manufacturer to produce the desired panel. Thank goodness Apple’s professionals decided not to follow that advice and instead chose to design the panel they wanted and collaborate with manufacturers to produce it.
This post was created on an Apple M4 iPad Pro with Apple-designed Tandem-OLED display — with brightness, color accuracy, and efficiency that is unmatched by any other panel supplied by Samsung or LG.
As long its a design change count me in. I cannot understand how the 2021 Macbook Pro deviated from Apples Philosophy of thin products.
Although i love the current gen squared off design, i really hope they re use it in the 2026 refresh.
Moreover I welcome a more thinner macbook pro, to this day i am still tempted to buy an air for its form factor and portability.
Finally I also love OLED displays, but i hate the issues that are associated with them. Eitherway i am happy with my 2021 m1 max until than.
Although i love the current gen squared off design, i really hope they re use it in the 2026 refresh.
Moreover I welcome a more thinner macbook pro, to this day i am still tempted to buy an air for its form factor and portability.
Finally I also love OLED displays, but i hate the issues that are associated with them. Eitherway i am happy with my 2021 m1 max until than.
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Actually that would be an amazing follow up to the 12" design. My 12" MacBook still works, yes it's slow compared to the M series, but I am surprised it has been so good for so long.
