Apple's M6 MacBook Pro starts at $1,999. The biggest gains are for older Macs

The 14-inch M6 model starts at $1,999 with 1TB, $200 above the 1TB M5's launch price. Apple claims up to 25% faster on-device AI than M5.

Apple has launched the M6 MacBook Pro and iMac, with pre-orders from 28 October and delivery on 6 November. The 14 inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999 with 1TB. That is $200 more than the 1TB M5 cost at launch a year ago.

Apple is selling M6 at the starting price it set in June, with more modest chip improvements. The big multiples in the launch material are against M1 and Intel machines.

The clearest case for replacement is among 2020 to 2021 machines. It must be bought at prices Apple raised by $200 to $300 in June.

How the starting price reached $1,999

Apple launched the 14 inch M5 MacBook Pro in October 2025 at $1,599 with 512GB. Its store page that month listed the 1TB version at $1,799.

In March Apple dropped the 512GB tier, made 1TB standard and charged $1,699, according to MacRumors. A rise in June took it to $1,999, and the M6 replaces that model at the same price.

Like for like, the 1TB machine now costs $200, or 11 percent, more than at launch. Against the March price the gap is $300, or 18 percent. The M6 launch itself adds no new increase, because the $1,999 was already in place.

What M6 adds over M5

Apple's own gain claims are smaller than the price rise suggests. Apple's MacBook Pro release puts the gain over M5 at up to 30 percent on graphics and 25 percent on AI workloads. LLM prompt processing, measured as time to first token, is up to 1.3x faster.

Apple's footnote for the 30 percent graphics and 25 percent AI line compares against an M5 with 32GB and 4TB, a higher specification than the base machine.

The price rose faster than the claimed gain. Against the $1,799 launch price, an 11 percent rise buys up to 25 percent more AI speed. Against March's $1,699, an 18 percent rise buys the same up to 25 percent.

M6 adds more cores and a faster Neural Engine. Apple's tech specs list a 12 core CPU and 12 core GPU with Neural Accelerators. That is two more cores of each than M5. M5 already had a Neural Accelerator in every GPU core.

The new part is a Dual 16 core Neural Engine, which Apple says is up to 1.9 times faster than M5's. Memory bandwidth rises to 170GB/s at 24GB or 32GB.

The June rise covered the whole range. On 25 June the iMac went from $1,299 to $1,499, and the 256GB Mac mini from $599 to $799, a third more.

Tim Cook said in June that price increases were unavoidable, citing the soaring cost of memory and storage chips. The M6 iMac starts at $1,499. The M6 Mac mini opened for orders on 25 August at $899 and launched on 22 September.

The largest claimed performance gains are against older machines. Apple claims up to 13x faster first token processing than the 13 inch MacBook Pro with M1.

LM Studio is an app that runs AI models locally. For the iMac, Apple claims up to 12x faster prompt processing in it than on the M1 model. It also claims up to 18x faster general performance than the most popular Intel iMac.

Owners of M5 machines have no case to upgrade, because Apple's large MacBook Pro claims are against M1 and Intel Macs. Only the iMac release adds a claim against M4, up to 5x faster AI and 2x the ray tracing gaming performance. Buyers now pay $1,499 for an entry iMac or $1,999 for the laptop.

The iMac comes in two tiers. The 10 core model costs $1,499, or $1,449 with education savings. The 12 core model costs $1,699, or $1,599 for education, and adds 2.5Gb Ethernet and up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The MacBook Pro costs $1,899 with education savings, or from $38.99 a month on a 36 month lease. Apple takes pre-orders for both in 35 countries and regions.

Mac sales face a weaker PC market

PC demand is already weak. IDC reported that worldwide PC shipments fell 20.1 percent in the third quarter to 62.7 million, the second straight decline.

Apple shipped 5.9 million Macs against 6.7 million a year earlier, down 11.3 percent. Lenovo fell 22.6 percent, Dell 25.0 percent and HP 30.9 percent.

Apple's 11.3 percent fall was the second smallest of the five leaders, lifting its share to 9.5 percent from 8.5 percent. IDC blames the market drop on a pull-in of purchases earlier in the year.

IDC also cites supply limits and higher prices from the AI data centre build out. It expects pricing to stay "well above year-ago levels".

What independent testing found

Notebookcheck tested the M6 in the Mac mini with 24GB, not in the MacBook Pro. It found single core performance about 10 percent above M5 and 25 percent above M4.

Multi core was 21 percent above M5, a rating of 68.7 against 56.7. Single core speed was also more than 30 percent above the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme.

Qualcomm still leads on multi core. Its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme scores 78.3 on that rating. On Cinebench single core efficiency, the Mac mini delivers 15.2 points per watt against 5.83 for a Qualcomm laptop.

What replacement buyers get

A 2020 or 2021 MacBook Pro now costs about $2,000 to replace, against about $1,700 in spring. Apple says the new laptop lasts up to 24 hours on a charge, the longest ever in a Mac. Users coming from Intel and M1 systems also get 16GB of starting memory and an extra Thunderbolt port.

The entry specification is now 16GB and 1TB at $1,999. The 24GB and 32GB options carry the 170GB/s bandwidth that local model work uses. The memory tier therefore decides how many seats can run models on the device.

Apple reports fiscal fourth quarter results on 2 November. That July to September quarter is the one in which IDC counted Mac shipments down 11.3 percent to 5.9 million.

Mac revenue will show whether June's $200 to $300 rises held up revenue per unit. The M6 MacBook Pro and iMac reach customers on 6 November, so their first sales count comes with the December quarter results.