Apple introduced a new MacBook Pro with a display it calls PROLED XDR, built on what the company described as breakthrough tandem OLED technology.
The key term is "tandem." A tandem OLED panel stacks two organic light-emitting layers instead of one, so each pixel produces its own light without a backlight. "Breakthrough" is Apple's word, but the underlying approach is not new to the company's lineup. Apple brought tandem OLED to the iPad Pro in 2024, and the MacBook Pro now gets the same class of panel.
That is a real change for the laptop. Since 2021, the MacBook Pro has used mini-LED screens, which light the image with thousands of tiny LEDs behind an LCD layer, under the Liquid Retina XDR name. The new name keeps the XDR label but drops the Liquid Retina branding, which suggests Apple wants buyers to treat this as a different panel rather than a refresh of the old one.
The move also tidies up Apple's product line. The iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro, its most expensive laptop, now share a display type, and the Mac is no longer the odd one out among Apple's premium screens. For a laptop sold mainly to photographers, video editors and developers, the display is one of the main reasons to choose it over a cheaper MacBook Air.