If you have been waiting to buy a MacBook Pro M5 Pro, Apple just made the decision harder. Since 28 October you can pre-order the same M5 Pro chip in two different bodies: the mini-LED model that has been on sale since March, or the new OLED MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and a Dynamic Island, which reaches customers on 6 November.
Same chip, same memory options, same storage tiers. The difference is the screen, the weight, and £400. I have spent the last two days working out what that £400 actually buys you in the UK, where it quietly turns into £749, and which of the two I would put my own money on.
I also owe you a correction, so let us start there.
I guessed the UK price wrong
Back in August I wrote that the touchscreen MacBook was worth waiting until December for, and I put my working estimate for the 14-inch at £2,399 to £2,599. I labelled it as a guess at the time. It was too low.
The 14-inch OLED model starts at £2,899. That is £300 above the top of my range. Two things moved under me: Apple raised the price of the mini-LED MacBook Pro again after I wrote that post, and the OLED model then landed £400 above the new, higher baseline rather than replacing it.
The other half of that August post held up. The machine shipped in the window I suggested, on M5 Pro and M5 Max rather than M6, and the advice to buy now if your Mac had died still stands. But if you budgeted off my number, you are £300 short, and I would rather say so plainly than leave the old figure sitting there unchallenged.
MacBook Pro M5 Pro UK prices, OLED vs mini-LED
Here is the full UK line-up at Apple's own prices, as listed on 30 October. Both versions are on sale side by side, so this is a genuine choice rather than an old-versus-new clearance.
- 14-inch M5 Pro: £2,499 mini-LED, £2,899 OLED
- 16-inch M5 Pro: £2,999 mini-LED, £3,399 OLED
- 14-inch M5 Max: £4,099 mini-LED, £4,499 OLED
- 16-inch M5 Max: £4,399 mini-LED, £4,799 OLED
Apple charges a flat £400 for the OLED screen on every model. That sounds tidy, but a flat fee lands very differently depending on where you sit. My own arithmetic: it is a 16.0% premium on the 14-inch M5 Pro, 13.3% on the 16-inch M5 Pro, 9.8% on the 14-inch M5 Max and 9.1% on the 16-inch M5 Max.
In other words, the cheaper the machine you were planning to buy, the more the OLED upgrade hurts in proportion. If you were already spending over £4,000 on an M5 Max, £400 is a rounding error on a machine you will keep for five years. If you were stretching to the entry 14-inch, it is the price of a decent monitor.
Where the £400 gap becomes £749
Apple's prices are not the only ones that matter, and this is the part the launch coverage skips. The mini-LED model has been out since March, so UK retailers are discounting it. The OLED model is brand new and nobody is.
On 30 October, PriceSpy listed the base 16-inch M5 Pro mini-LED at £2,649.97 at Amazon and £2,650 at ao.com and Boots, against Apple's £2,999. Put that next to the £3,399 OLED 16-inch and the real gap is £749, or 28.3% more for the OLED. That is nearly double the gap Apple advertises.
The 14-inch is a different story right now. Argos, Very and EE were all at the full £2,499 when I checked, so on the smaller size the honest gap is still Apple's £400. Amazon had the 14-inch M5 Pro at £2,249.97 during its October sale, so it is worth watching for that to come back, but I would not plan around a sale that has already ended.
Retail prices move daily, so treat those as a snapshot rather than a promise. The pattern is the useful bit: the bigger and older the mini-LED model, the more a retailer will knock off it, and the stronger the case for skipping the OLED.
What the OLED MacBook Pro actually gets you
Strip out the marketing and there are five real differences, all of which line up with MacRumors' side-by-side spec guide. None of them is the chip, which is identical, and the battery is effectively the same size too: 72.6Wh in the 14-inch OLED against 72.4Wh in the mini-LED.
A better screen, mostly in the dark and in HDR
The OLED panel is a tandem OLED with per-pixel lighting, a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and up to 2,000 nits peak brightness for both HDR and SDR. The mini-LED panel tops out at 1,600 nits for HDR and 1,000 nits for SDR, with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.
Both panels are 120Hz ProMotion and both sustain 1,000 nits full-screen. So for spreadsheets, email and browsing in a normally lit room, you will struggle to tell them apart. The OLED earns its keep on HDR video, dark scenes with bright highlights, and photo work where blooming around bright objects on a mini-LED backlight bothers you.
There is one specialist extra: the OLED covers Adobe RGB as well as P3. If you print or deliver in Adobe RGB, that matters. If you have never had to think about it, it does not.
It is properly lighter
This is the upgrade I think people will notice most, and it is the one nobody is leading with. The 14-inch M5 Pro drops from 1.60kg to 1.38kg, a 220g saving. The 16-inch M5 Pro drops from 2.14kg to 1.82kg, which is 320g.
If you carry a 16-inch MacBook Pro every day, losing nearly a third of a kilo is a bigger change to your life than the contrast ratio. Put crudely, on the 16-inch you are paying £1.25 per gram saved at Apple's prices. On the 14-inch it is £1.82 per gram.
Touch, and how much it really does today
Apple's own description is careful. Touch works alongside the keyboard and trackpad, and existing apps respond because macOS turns a tap into a click. You can swipe to scroll, pinch to zoom, drag things about and flick windows to fill or tile the screen.
What it is not, yet, is a reason on its own. Apple says the third-party apps getting proper touch support arrive later this year, and there is no mention of Apple Pencil anywhere. On day one you are buying a screen you can occasionally reach up and tap, plus a bet that developers make that more useful over the next couple of years.
The Dynamic Island and the smaller notch
The notch is replaced by a Dynamic Island that handles Live Activities, AirDrop prompts and music controls. Apple's footnote says Spotlight only moves into it when Siri AI is available and switched on, which it is for UK English, but it is worth knowing that one headline trick depends on a setting.
The pro extras most people will never touch
The OLED model drives external displays at up to 165Hz rather than 144Hz, adds genlock for syncing with cameras, and on M5 Max goes up to 16TB of storage instead of 8TB. The 16-inch M5 Max also wants a 94W charger at minimum, up from 70W.
These are real, and if you work in video or colour they might decide it for you. For everyone else they are spec-sheet filler.
Which MacBook Pro M5 Pro should you buy?
Here is how I would split it, based on how you use a laptop rather than how much you want the new one.
Buy the OLED if you carry it and grade on it
If you edit HDR video, do colour-critical photo work, or carry a 16-inch every single day, the OLED is the better MacBook Pro and the £400 is easy to justify. On the M5 Max models, where the premium is under 10%, I would not think twice.
Buy the mini-LED if it lives on a desk
If your MacBook Pro spends most of its life plugged into an external monitor, you will barely see the screen you paid extra for. Take the mini-LED, and if you want the 16-inch, buy it from a retailer at around £2,650 rather than from Apple. That £749 gap pays for a very good monitor.
The same goes if you were stretching to afford the entry 14-inch in the first place. A 16% premium for a screen and some weight is a lot to swallow when the chip doing the work is the same one.
Consider the M6 if you were never going to need M5 Pro
There is a third option that the OLED launch has rather buried. Apple also refreshed the entry 14-inch MacBook Pro this week, now with the M6 chip, from £1,999. The 14-inch OLED costs £900 more than that, a 45% jump.
If your work is writing, coding, light photo editing and the odd 4K edit, the M6 model is plenty, and I went through whether the M6 MacBook Pro is worth buying or worth skipping for M7 in more detail. If you are in that camp and price is the driver, also have a look at the MacBook Air M5 at UK prices before you commit to a Pro at all.
Wait if your current MacBook Pro is fine
If you already own an M3, M4 or M5 MacBook Pro that is doing its job, I would sit this generation out. The chips are unchanged, and reporting points to M7 Pro and M7 Max models in late 2027. That is still a rumour, but it is the generation where the new design and a faster chip finally arrive together.
Whichever you buy, factor in cover. At these prices a cracked OLED panel is an expensive afternoon, and I have done the sums on whether AppleCare One is worth it in the UK if you are weighing it up.
MacBook Pro M5 Pro FAQ
Is the mini-LED MacBook Pro M5 Pro being discontinued?
No. Apple is selling both versions side by side, with the mini-LED model as the cheaper, non-touch option at £2,499 for the 14-inch. Apple has not said how long that will last, so treat any end date you read as a guess.
Is the OLED MacBook Pro faster than the mini-LED one?
No. Both use the same M5 Pro and M5 Max chips with the same memory options. Apple says the redesigned cooling maintains sustained performance, so you are not trading speed for thinness, but you are not gaining any either.
When can I get the OLED MacBook Pro in the UK?
Pre-orders opened on 28 October, and the first deliveries and in-store stock start on Friday 6 November. Pricing starts at £2,899 for the 14-inch M5 Pro and £3,399 for the 16-inch M5 Pro.
My take
The OLED MacBook Pro is the better laptop, and I do not think that is close. But at the entry 14-inch it is a 16% premium for a nicer screen, a lighter bag and a touchscreen that does not do much yet, on a chip you could have bought in March.
If I were buying today, I would take the OLED only at 16-inch or on M5 Max, where the weight saving is biggest and the premium is smallest in proportion. At 14-inch M5 Pro I would buy the mini-LED, keep the £400, and spend it on a monitor.
Source: Apple unveils groundbreaking MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, Apple Newsroom
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