Memory and storage make up $9,000 of the $14,549 price.
Apple announced the redesigned MacBook Pro, which has an OLED touchscreen, on October 28 with a release shortly after. And if you want a fully loaded 16-inch MacBook Pro with the new PROLED XDR Display, you’d better be prepared to fork out almost $15,000 for it.
It’s listed at $14,549 on Apple’s online store, but very little of that money is paying for the new touchscreen. Instead, a massive 16TB SSD accounts for $7,000 of the total and moving from 48GB to 128GB of unified memory adds another $2,000, so storage and memory make up roughly 62 percent of the price.
Configured to match the top spec of the non-touch 16-inch MacBook Pro (which remains for sale), the OLED model costs $10,549 — just $400 more than that model’s $10,149 price tag.
Where your money goes with this MacBook
The top config is built on the 16-inch model’s M5 Max chip with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, which starts with 48GB of memory and a 2TB SSD. Subtract the storage, RAM and screen upgrades, and that $14,549 machine instead works out to $5,399 — already $2,000 more than the $3,399 entry-level 16-inch model with an M5 Pro.
From there, Apple charges an additional $1,000 to go from 2TB to 4TB, $3,000 to reach 8TB and $7,000 for 16TB. That works out at $500 more per terabyte, with no discount for buying “in bulk.”
16TB of storage is a first for the MacBook Pro, since the M5 Max models Apple released in March top out at 8TB. Memory has its own restrictions: only the 40-core M5 Max can be configured with 128GB of RAM, while the 32-core version is fixed at 36GB and the M5 Pro stops at 64GB. Anyone who wants to maximize memory has to buy the most expensive chip first.
Nano-texture glass, which Apple now etches directly into the cover glass to cut glare, is the cheapest upgrade on the list at $150. The 14-inch model tops out slightly lower at $14,249, and the cheapest way to get 16TB of storage is a 14-inch M5 Max with 36GB of memory for $11,499.
Why memory and storage costs are so high
It feels like barely a day goes by when we’re not talking about insane, AI-induced memory pricing. In March 2026, a maxed-out 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Max, 40-core GPU, 128GB of memory, 8TB of storage and nano-texture glass cost $7,349.
In late June, Apple raised prices across its Mac and iPad lineups, blaming the rapid expansion of AI data centers for creating an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage. By the end of June, the same config cost $10,149 — a $2,800 increase for a laptop with hardware that hadn’t changed one iota. Meanwhile, the base 14-inch MacBook Pro went from $1,699 to $1,999.
Analyst firm Counterpoint found that smartphone DRAM prices rose 50 percent and NAND flash storage prices rose more than 90 percent quarter-over-quarter in the first three months of 2026. Apple told customers that it had never seen a component price increase that much, that quickly, remarking that it had absorbed the rising costs for as long as it could.
Comparing it against the $10,149 top price of the non-touch model, the redesign accounts for $400 of the new model’s price, while the increase from 8TB to 16TB adds a further $4,000. Almost all that extra cash is going toward NAND flash, a component that has seen the fastest price rises according to Counterpoint’s figures.
A Pro laptop at a pro price point
Apple’s PROLED XDR Display on the larger model is a 16.3-inch tandem OLED panel that the company says sustains 1,000 nits and reaches a peak of 2,000 nits. It also covers the P3 and Adobe RGB color gamuts, can refresh at up to 120Hz, responds to touch and features a Dynamic Island at the top. In our hands-on, we remarked how Apple’s first touchscreen model felt familiar yet improved, keeping the same keyboard, trackpad and ports as before. Our review found the touchscreen the least interesting part about it.
The M5 Max chip pairs an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU with 614GB/s of memory bandwidth. That, according to Apple, is enough to run LLMs locally on the laptop and is where 128GB of RAM is worth the extra cash, since a local model has to fit in memory and Apple’s GPU draws from the same pool as the CPU. In terms of weight, the 16-inch M5 Max model comes in at 4.1 pounds and is a modest 0.63 inches thick, and you’ll get up to 22 hours of streaming with its 100Wh battery.
It’s pretty obvious that Apple is targeting this $15,000 behemoth at professionals like filmmakers, 3D artists, photographers and developers. But since every extra terabyte piles an additional $500 on the price tag, most of these workloads will be served better by a 2TB or 4TB model and an external Thunderbolt 5 drive. It’s a different story for anyone running local LLMs: they’ll find it easier to justify the cost of the 128GB memory option, but the 16TB SSD still accounts for nearly half the price of the config.
