- Apple has revealed M6 upgrades for the iMac and MacBook Pro
- The iMac's pricing starts at $1,499, the same as its predecessor
- Pricing for the MacBook Pro M6 also starts at the same level as its M5 predecessor, which is $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,199
Apple has given its iMac and entry-level MacBook Pro models a minor refresh with new M6 versions for both.
The M6 is Apple's first 2nm chip, although it has already debuted in the Mac mini from earlier this year. As ever, Apple promises it'll be a beefy upgrade for the new Macs, with what should be a notable boost for local AI processing in particular thanks to the M6's dual 16-core Neural Engine (for a total of 32-cores).
The iMac M6 has the same colorful designs as its M4 predecessor, with that chip upgrade being the main change. With the M6 inside, Apple claims the new iMac is up to 5x faster for on-device AI tasks than the previous-gen all-in-one with the M4 chip, which is a big speed boost.
The GPU can be specced with up to 12-cores, and has Neural Accelerators in each core. Apple says it's up to 2x faster for graphics performance in tasks like photo editing.
On top of that, we're told that the storage on board the iMac M6 is up to 2x faster compared to its predecessor, and you get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support.
You can pre-order the new iMac from tomorrow (October 28), with configuration options starting from a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. The base pricing is also the same as before, starting at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399.
MacBook Pro with M6 goodness
It's a similar story with the refreshed entry-level MacBook Pro 14-inch with M6. The main change is that chip upgrade, and again Apple provides some illustrative performance boosts across various workloads.
Apple claims that the 12-core GPU in the M6 offers 30% faster graphics performance compared to the M5 in the previous base MacBook Pro. It also ushers in a 25% performance boost for on-device AI processing versus the M5.
On top of that, the dual 16-core Neural Engine offers up to 1.9x swifter performance than the M5, working with the GPU to pep up AI tasks like creating images or upscaling for boosting game frame rates.
Apple talks up the power-efficiency of the M6 chip, and mentions that it has "industry-leading performance per watt", offering up to 24 hours of battery life for the new MacBook Pro.
As with the new iMac, you get Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, and again, you'll be pleased to hear that Apple hasn't hiked the pricing here.
You can pre-order the MacBook Pro 14-inch with M6 from tomorrow (October 28) with shipping expected to start on November 6, and pricing starts at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,199 for the model with 16GB RAM.
