Apple M6 MacBook Pro 14-inch $1,999 and iMac $1,499: specs, claims, 6 Nov
Apple's M6 brings 12 CPU and GPU cores to the iMac and 14-inch MacBook Pro, with pre-orders on 28 October and availability on 6 November.
· 6 min read
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Apple announced an M6 version of the 24-inch iMac and the 14-inch MacBook Pro on 27 October 2026, with pre-orders from 28 October and delivery and in-store availability from Friday 6 November. In the US the iMac starts at $1,499 and the MacBook Pro at $1,999. Macworld calls it a minor update: a chip swap with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, in unchanged designs.
Key points
- The M6 iMac starts at $1,499 (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU) or $1,699 (12-core CPU, 12-core GPU); the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 starts at $1,999, per Apple's press releases.
- M6 has a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, two more cores of each than the M5 in the MacBook Pro, according to Apple, with Neural Accelerators in every GPU core and a dual 16-core Neural Engine.
- Apple says on-device AI workloads such as LLM prompt processing are up to 25% faster than M5 on the MacBook Pro, and graphics up to 30% faster; these are Apple's own figures.
- Pre-orders open 28 October in 35 countries and regions; availability is 6 November.
- Both machines add Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and ship with macOS 27.
What happened
Apple announced both machines in separate press releases on 27 October, a day after the iPad mini with A20 Pro (our report). Both go on sale on the same date as that iPad mini, 6 November.
14-inch MacBook Pro. The M6 chip has a 12-core CPU and a 12-core GPU, which Apple says is two more cores of each than before. Memory is 16GB as standard and configurable to 32GB, with up to 170GB/s of memory bandwidth. The display is Liquid Retina XDR with up to 1,600 nits peak HDR brightness and an optional nano-texture finish. It has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI, MagSafe 3, an SDXC slot and a headphone jack, supports up to two external displays, and comes in space black and silver. Apple quotes battery life of up to 24 hours, which it calls the longest in a Mac, and says charging to 50% takes 30 minutes with a compatible higher-wattage USB-C adapter such as the 96W one. The starting price is $1,999 ($1,899 with education pricing).
24-inch iMac. The M6 comes in two tiers: 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU at $1,499 ($1,449 education), and 12-core and 12-core at $1,699 ($1,599 education). The 4.5K Retina display is 24 inches (23.5 inches viewable), at 500 nits with P3 colour; a nano-texture option is available on the 12-core models. The iMac has up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports (all four on the 12-core models), supports two 6K external displays, and adds Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. 2.5Gb Ethernet is limited to the 12-core models, and Touch ID is standard there and optional on the 10-core. It comes in seven colours: blue, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange and silver.
Apple's releases don't state the M6 storage capacities or the iMac's memory options, and we have not been able to confirm them from another source. The only storage and memory figures in the releases describe the comparison systems used in the performance footnotes, so treat any configuration you see before the store pages go live as unconfirmed.
Background
The 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 started at $1,999, according to MacRumors' roundup page, which also lists that M5 model with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. That makes the M6's $1,999 price unchanged. Macworld likewise reports unchanged starting prices of $1,499 and $1,999. One outlet, The Shortcut, says the machines cost more than before, but gives no dollar figures or comparison, and we could not square that with the prices above; we leave the claim aside.
Macworld says the MacBook Pro is otherwise identical to the M5 model and calls the update very minor, mainly a chip swap; both it and The Shortcut report unchanged designs and the iMac's seven colours. Higher-end 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with an OLED touch display were rumoured for a separate announcement, but they were not announced at the time of writing and we treat that as rumour.
The numbers
Apple's performance claims are measured against specific baselines. For the MacBook Pro, the comparison is the 14-inch M5 with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 32GB of memory and a 4TB SSD. Apple's own numbers for M6 versus M5:
On top of those, Apple claims up to 25% faster on-device AI prompt processing and up to 30% faster graphics than M5. The company's longer-range claims compare against old hardware: against the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 it claims up to 13x faster AI performance, up to 11x faster graphics and up to 2.5x faster Xcode builds. For the iMac, Apple claims up to 2x faster graphics and up to 5x faster on-device AI than the M4 iMac, up to 1.5x faster Excel than M4, and up to 18x faster than the most popular Intel iMac. It also says M6 delivers the "world's fastest single-threaded CPU performance", based on testing against shipping competitive systems. Apple lists testing dates in September and October 2026 in its footnotes. No independent benchmark of these machines has been published yet in the sources we read.
How the claims read
The speed-ups that headline the release are mostly AI-related: the Neural Accelerators in each GPU core and the 16-core Neural Engine are where Apple says the gains are biggest. That matches Apple's focus on running models locally. Larger percentage figures such as "up to 13x" are against 2020 M1 machines, so they say more about the upgrade case than about M6's progress. The general-purpose gains over the previous generation are smaller: about a fifth faster in image processing and about a third faster in Xcode and Blender, according to Apple.
Software ships with macOS 27, which Apple calls "Golden Gate". Siri AI is in beta in macOS 27.2 and, per the release, is available in English, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. It is unavailable in the EU on iOS, iPadOS and watchOS, and some server-based Apple Intelligence features have daily usage limits, with Apple saying expanded access will be available for a fee in future. We covered that rollout in our iOS 27.2 report.
What it means
For buyers on M5 hardware, the case for upgrading is thin: the form factor, display and ports are the same, and the claimed gains are mainly in AI and graphics. For people still on Intel iMacs or M1 machines, the case is stronger, particularly on battery life and AI workloads, and Apple's own upgrade comparisons are aimed at exactly them. Developers who run local models get a faster Neural Engine and higher memory bandwidth, but the 16GB base memory and 32GB ceiling on the MacBook Pro configuration Apple describes limit how large a model fits, a point to check against the configurator when it opens.
Unchanged starting prices, if confirmed on store pages, mean the effective price per unit of performance falls. Education pricing is $100 lower on the MacBook Pro, $50 lower on the entry iMac and $100 lower on the higher iMac.
What we don't know yet
- Storage and memory options. Apple's releases do not list M6 storage capacities, or the iMac's memory options.
- Independent benchmarks and battery tests. Every performance figure here is Apple's.
- The previous iMac's price. We did not confirm the previous iMac starting price, so we do not say whether the iMac's $1,499 is unchanged. Macworld says it is.
- Conflicting price reports. The Shortcut says prices rose; Apple and Macworld give unchanged starting prices for the MacBook Pro.
- Higher-end MacBook Pro models. Anything beyond the base 14-inch is rumour until Apple announces it.
What to watch next
- Pre-orders on 28 October and the store configurator, which will show real memory and storage options.
- First independent reviews and benchmarks ahead of the 6 November availability.
- Whether Apple announces higher-end MacBook Pro models this week.
- Siri AI's expansion in macOS 27.2 and its status in the EU.
Sources
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