Mac Buying Guide: Winter 2026 Edition

Mac Buying Guide, Winter 2026 Edition

In September–October 2026, Apple, having gone through a CEO transition, was notably busy. On the Mac side, the main updates were:

• The launch of a Mac mini equipped with the M6 chip. The M6 chip is Apple's first Apple silicon chip built on TSMC's 2nm process; the standard version has a 12-core CPU1, a 12-core GPU, and dual 16-core neural engines, with memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s. After the update, the Mac mini also comes standard with a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port. A Mac mini with the M5 Pro chip, better suited to professionals, was also released at the same time.

• A Mac Studio equipped with M5 Max and M5 Ultra chips. The M5 Ultra chip is based on the M5 series chips, with up to a 36-core CPU2, an 80-core GPU, dual 16-core neural engines, support for up to 512GB of unified memory, and 1.2TB/s of memory bandwidth—likely the most absurdly powerful Mac computer currently available.

• A MacBook Pro equipped with a PROLED XDR display. This is a redesigned MacBook Pro, switching to an OLED touchscreen (also the first time the MacBook series has used a touchscreen), adding Dynamic Island, while reducing both weight and thickness, but without shrinking battery life. The glowing logo, which disappeared from the MacBook series more than 10 years ago, also returns on this MacBook Pro.

• MacBook Pro and iMac equipped with the M6 chip. As routine upgrades, these are mainly generational updates to Apple silicon. The iMac, meanwhile, gives us a "cut-down" version of the M6 chip, with only 10 CPU3 and GPU cores each.

• On the accessories side, Apple launched new 70W and 140W USB-C chargers, along with a new power extension cable and a global travel kit.

[Reading note] If you already know something about the Mac product line and just want to catch up on recent Mac product line updates and make a purchase decision, or have some common questions, you can read only the "Details worth noting before you buy" section. If you know nothing at all about the Mac product line, you can start from the "Performance and portability: the four-way Mac split" section, assess your personal needs from there, and then jump directly to the relevant product section.

In September–October 2026, Apple, having gone through a CEO transition, was notably busy.

On the eve of the new iPhone launch, Apple first unveiled the first M6 chip manufactured on the 2nm process, with further improved energy efficiency, as well as the M5 Ultra chip, the giant of the M5 family, and upgraded two desktop Macs, the Mac mini and Mac Studio; then, at the end of October just past, it released an all-new MacBook Pro, adding a touchscreen to the MacBook series for the first time, as well as a routinely upgraded 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac equipped with the M6 chip.

With the releases at the end of October, the Mac product line has never been as complex as it is now: from the MacBook Neo, priced around 5,000 yuan and using an iPhone chip, to the Mac Studio, priced around 230,000 yuan and equipped with 512GB of unified memory. This article will start from the actual state of the current Mac product line and combine the two major factors of "budget" and "needs," in the hope of helping an ordinary person who wants to buy a Mac make the choice that suits them best.

Details worth noting before you buy

Ways to save money in the era of big price increases

When the Mac mini was released in September, affected by the global flash memory supply crunch, the Mac product line underwent a broad price adjustment: while overall base prices rose, configure-to-order pricing also increased further.

For example, the MacBook Neo's starting price was adjusted from 4,499 yuan to 5,499 yuan, an increase of a full 1,000 yuan; the MacBook Air was even more affected, rising 2,000 yuan from a starting price of 7,999 yuan to 9,999 yuan. Storage capacity upgrades also became more expensive: upgrading the MacBook Air from 512GB to 1TB rose from 1,500 yuan to 2,250 yuan.

If you absolutely must buy a MacBook at this point in time, it may be more worthwhile to be a bit more careful with your budgeting and look for better prices across various platforms, including but not limited to:

• National subsidy. The 2026 policy subsidizes eligible computers at 15% of the final sale price, up to 1,500 yuan per item. The specific participating models, stores, and eligibility rules are subject to local implementation details and the platform checkout page; before ordering, also confirm whether unboxing and activation upon delivery are required, whether eligibility can be used only once, and other restrictions.

• Official refurbished. Although officially refurbished machines are not necessarily cheaper than prices after the national subsidy, you can use the official website's 24-month interest-free installment plan, making payment more flexible. The specific models on sale and prices are subject to the refurbished store page.

• Buying overseas (such as in Hong Kong). In October 2026, the Hong Kong dollar was about 1:0.86 against the renminbi, and the list prices of Apple products in Hong Kong are usually lower than mainland prices, sometimes even cheaper than after the national subsidy. However, the cost of a trip to Hong Kong is worth considering; also note the 12,000 yuan personal-use duty-free allowance to avoid being taxed at customs. For details, see the current customs regulations.

• Education discount. The official education discount is currently far less generous than the national subsidy; a more cost-effective approach is to ask nearby authorized stores whether the education discount and the national subsidy can be combined. Generally, you need to be a currently enrolled university student (verified via CHSI) or a registered faculty member (verified via the "China Teacher" mini program); you can look up stores via the "Apple in Your Neighborhood" mini program and then inquire, or check JD.com's self-operated verification method.

What's new about the MacBook Pro equipped with the PROLED XDR display?

Apple's newly created PROLED XDR display is the first time the MacBook Pro family has used a display based on OLED technology. This MacBook Pro, the biggest update since 2021, is new in what specific ways?

PROLED XDR display

Apple's thunderous naming approach puts PRO on everything—even OLED gets the treatment. This time, the overall specs of the PROLED XDR display are a full tier higher than the previous Liquid Retina XDR display, as shown in the table below:

• Touchscreen. The MacBook now has a touchscreen. I find it quite remarkable—at least macOS is not yet fully "ready" for a touchscreen. Current information explains this from several angles: first, a change in the user base—it is said that the post-00s (Gen Z) prefer to use electronic devices by touch, since they grew up in the iPad era after 2010; second, based on the supply chain—the supply chain seems more accustomed to producing components that already integrate touch into the screen itself. In any case, everyone's comments on this are still "forgetting their roots" and "betraying the ancestral teachings."

• Tandem OLED. Similar to the "Ultra Retina XDR display" on the iPad Pro (M4), the PROLED XDR display uses a tandem OLED panel, which can reduce power consumption, improve control precision, and even extend the service life of the OLED display—I think this is especially important on a MacBook that is often used for more than 5 years. According to information Apple has made public, the display engine in the M5 Pro and M5 Max performs differentiated adjustment for each pixel in this OLED panel, including display quality uniformity compensation, dynamic signal compensation, pixel-level color and brightness calibration, and mitigation of the effects of OLED burn-in.

• Reference mode support. PROLED XDR also published a "white (b)ook," where you can read the technical details of this screen. Among them, like the Studio Display XDR, the PROLED XDR display also supports "reference mode," which can keep parameters consistent across different screens when performing professional workflows.

• Dynamic Island on the Mac. The new screen is no longer a "notch screen," but instead uses a hole-punch cutout at the top center like recent iPhones; at the same time, it introduces Dynamic Island on the Mac for the first time.

Other differences brought by the new chassis

In addition to the new display, the new MacBook Pro is lighter: the 14-inch is 220g lighter than the regular M5 Pro model, and the 16-inch is 320g lighter—almost the weight of an iPhone. The new MacBook Pro is also about half a millimeter thinner, with some millimeter-level changes in dimensions, so previous cases may not fit quite as well.

Fortunately, the battery capacity itself did not shrink as the overall weight decreased: the 14-inch model is 72.6Wh, slightly increased by 0.2Wh compared with before; the 16-inch model remains 100Wh.

At the same time, to control the temperature of the touchscreen, the new chassis also adjusted cooling; the official description is that, without affecting the sustained performance of the M5 Pro and M5 Max, hot air is directed away from the screen.

Finally, perhaps the most "nostalgic" point is that the Apple logo on the back of the MacBook Pro lights up again. It is unknown whether this change will later spread to other MacBook models; the iconic glowing logo may once again take over coffee shops.

MacBook Neo vs. MacBook Air?

The newly launched MacBook product line, MacBook Neo, may have set many "firsts" in the history of Mac laptops. Compared with the previously lowest-priced MacBook Air in the MacBook product line, what are the main differences of the MacBook Neo? This was the question I cared about most after seeing the Neo. Therefore, we also summarized the differences between the MacBook Neo and the latest MacBook Air (M5), as well as the original MacBook Air (M1, 2020).

Judging from the paper specs, the M1 MacBook Air released in 2020 seems more "high-end" than the MacBook Neo, including in multi-core performance, screen color gamut, memory options, external display support, keyboard and trackpad, battery, and other aspects. Therefore, the M1 MacBook Air looks more worth choosing...? Not necessarily.

First, the A18 Pro chip used in the MacBook Neo improves single-core performance by about 50% compared with the M1. This means that in common light scenarios such as web browsing, word processing, and video calls, the MacBook Neo may be faster in interface interaction smoothness, web page rendering speed, and responsiveness in light-load productivity.

Second, the M1 MacBook Air was released in November 2020, more than five and a half years ago, and brand-new units are almost impossible to find on the market. When choosing second-hand devices, you need to consider battery and SSD wear. Admittedly, the advantages of the M1 MacBook Air are mainly concentrated in the GPU. Although the MacBook Neo can achieve results close to the M1 MacBook Air in short-duration graphics tests such as Geekbench Metal, similar benchmark scores do not mean the experience is completely equivalent.

The A18 Pro is essentially still a GPU evolved from an iPhone SoC; its advantages are a newer architecture, higher performance per unit, and the addition of hardware ray tracing; while the M1 was designed for the Mac from the start and usually has more generous sustained power headroom, making it better suited to maintaining graphics loads for long periods. Therefore, in tasks such as sustained rendering, long exports, and complex 3D scenes, the M1 is often more stable. But the problem is: users who truly need sustained GPU performance are probably not going to stop at an 8GB M1 MacBook Air.

Ultimately, at this price point and with the 8GB memory limitation, the MacBook Neo, as a brand-new device, is instead the more suitable choice for daily use thanks to stronger single-core performance and more reliable hardware condition.

If you really care about peripheral hardware specs, you can consider a MacBook Air with an M2 version or newer and at least 16GB of memory, except that such products may not have as much of a price advantage. Currently, in Apple's official refurbished store, 13-inch MacBook Airs from M2 to M4 generations commonly cost about 5,000 to 6,000 yuan; specific models and prices are subject to stock at the time. If you want to see a more detailed needs analysis, you can continue reading the relevant sections below.

15-inch MacBook Air or 14-inch MacBook Pro

The launch of the 14-inch MacBook Pro has somewhat disrupted the "laptop" product category for "ordinary consumers" originally framed by the four quadrants, bringing the price down into the area "reachable" by the MacBook Air while offering many competitive features. If you are torn between the 15-inch MacBook Air and the 14-inch MacBook Pro (base model), our advice is that whichever product you buy, as long as it solves your needs, it is the right choice.

Here we will explain the main differences between the two as a reference.

Performance and cooling

In terms of performance, the difference between the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro is particularly reflected in the different cooling system designs. The MacBook Air has no fan and can only cool passively; therefore, the MacBook Air cannot run the SoC at high frequency continuously, and if it performs some heavier tasks, the SoC may overheat and throttle. Previous tests have shown that the 15-inch MacBook Air can last about 10 minutes if running at peak for a long time.

Therefore, if your workflow involves video and graphics rendering, compiling large projects, or other projects that require the chip to run at high frequency for long periods, buying a MacBook Pro can give you better sustained chip performance.

Size, specs, and appearance

In terms of size, the most intuitive difference between the two is screen size. The 15-inch MacBook Air's screen is about 15% larger than the 14-inch MacBook Pro's. Although in terms of screen resolution, the 15-inch MacBook Air (2880 x 1664) does not even match the 14-inch MacBook Pro (3024 x 1964), because Retina displays usually use scaled resolutions, the difference in usable space between the two may not be particularly large, and the 15-inch MacBook Air can display the same content in larger fonts.

The 15-inch MacBook Air is 1.15 cm thick, a full 4 mm thinner than the 14-inch MacBook Pro's 1.55 cm, so it looks visually thinner and lighter. In terms of weight, the difference between the two is not obvious. The MacBook Pro is 1.55 kg, only 40 g heavier than the MacBook Air's 1.51 kg. Because the 15-inch MacBook Air has a larger screen, its overall impression is instead thinner and lighter than the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Although the differences in thickness and weight are small, some difference can still be felt in daily use.

In terms of appearance, the MacBook Pro is now available in Space Black, a color the MacBook Air does not have. In addition, the MacBook Pro's Apple logo is black (even on the silver version); the MacBook Air's Apple logo is different—each body color has its corresponding color. The MacBook Air also adds a Sky Blue color; it seems Apple is not very willing to use highly saturated colors on Pro-series products.

Hardware configuration

In addition to sustained performance, the hardware configuration differences between these two products are mainly in the screen, speakers, I/O ports, and battery life.

The screen of the 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) is mini-LED backlit, supports Extreme Dynamic Range, and can display HDR content. The M6 MacBook Pro's maximum brightness in SDR is 1,000 nits, while the 15-inch MacBook Air's is 500 nits. Under high dynamic range, the MacBook Pro can display 1,000 nits of sustained full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits of peak brightness. Finally, the MacBook Pro's screen also supports ProMotion adaptive refresh rate, up to 120Hz. In terms of specs, the MacBook Pro's screen is obviously better, but if you do not absolutely need to work with HDR content, the MacBook Air's screen is actually already sufficiently fine. In addition, long-term use at high brightness will also affect the MacBook's battery life to some extent.

The high-fidelity six-speaker system used in the MacBook Pro produces sound from both sides of the keyboard; because the overall chassis space is larger, it can produce broader bass performance than the MacBook Air, and the difference can be heard immediately. Combined with the MacBook Pro's better screen, this provides a better experience when editing and processing HDR content (for example, HDR videos shot on iPhone) and enjoying movies.

In addition, the MacBook Pro also has more I/O options, so it will not feel too tight