M6 MacBook Pro and iMac: Apple's new Macs start at $1,999 and $1,499
Apple announced the 14-inch MacBook Pro and the 24-inch iMac with its new M6 chip on Tuesday, October 27, at $1,999 and $1,499 in the US. Pre-orders open Wednesday, October 28, and both Macs arrive Friday, November 6, with more CPU and GPU cores, Wi-Fi 7 and macOS 27 with Siri AI.
What's inside the M6 chip
In the 14-inch MacBook Pro, M6 has a 12-core CPU with 2 super cores, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores, plus a 12-core GPU. Both the CPU and GPU have 2 more cores than before. Each GPU core has its own Neural Accelerator, and the chip adds what Apple calls a Dual 16-core Neural Engine.
Apple says the 12-core GPU is up to 30 percent faster for graphics than M5 and up to 25 percent faster for on-device AI work such as LLM prompt processing. It says the Neural Engine is up to 1.9x faster than M5's. Those are Apple's own figures, measured against the M5 model. Memory bandwidth reaches up to 170GB/s on 24GB and 32GB configurations, and 153GB/s on the base 16GB model.
14-inch MacBook Pro with M6
The base model comes with 16GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD. Memory goes up to 32GB and storage up to 4TB. The 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display reaches 1,600 nits peak in HDR, runs at up to 120Hz and is available with a nano-texture option.
Apple rates battery life at up to 24 hours of video streaming and 16 hours of wireless web use, and says it's the longest ever in a Mac. With a 96W or higher USB-C adapter, the MacBook Pro can charge up to 50 percent in 30 minutes.
It has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC card slot and a headphone jack. It supports up to 2 external displays and adds Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. It comes in space black or silver.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999, or $1,899 with education pricing. The M5 Pro and M5 Max versions remain on sale alongside it.
iMac with M6
The iMac keeps its 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, 500 nits of brightness and its 7 colors: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver. The changes are inside.
- $1,499: M6 with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory (up to 24GB), a 256GB SSD, 2 Thunderbolt ports and support for 1 external display.
- $1,699: M6 with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, 16GB of memory (up to 32GB), a 256GB SSD, 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2.5Gb Ethernet and support for up to 2 external displays.
Education pricing is $1,449 and $1,599. Apple says the new iMac is up to 2x faster in graphics than the M4 model and up to 5x faster at on-device AI prompt processing in LM Studio. It also says the SSD is up to 2x faster. Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 are standard on both models.
When you can buy them
Both Macs can be pre-ordered from Wednesday, October 28, on Apple's online store and in the Apple Store app in 35 countries and regions, including the US. Deliveries and in-store availability start Friday, November 6. Both ship with macOS 27. Apple notes that Siri AI is in beta in macOS 27.2.
What it means for you
If you own an M5 MacBook Pro, Apple's own figures put the M6 model up to 30 percent ahead in graphics and up to 1.3x faster in tasks like Xcode builds. That's a smaller step than the jump from older machines.
The bigger jump is for people on M1 or Intel Macs. Apple says people moving from an Intel-based iMac will see up to 18x faster performance, and the MacBook Pro up to 13x faster than the M1 model at LLM prompt processing. For those buyers, the M6 models bring a much faster chip, at least 16GB of memory and current wireless standards.
Watch the storage on the iMac. Both models start with 256GB, which a large photo library can fill. Only the $1,699 model includes 4 Thunderbolt ports, Ethernet as standard and support for a second display. The MacBook Pro starts with 1TB.