Apple’s new top-of-the-line MacBook Pro costs a whopping $7,200

Apple debuted new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBooks Pro at its ‘Scary fast’ event yesterday, and the cheapest models start at $1,599. However, if you want the highest-end MacBook Pro you can buy, it’ll cost you a staggering $7,200. This 16-inch model features the best spec of the M3 Max chip, 128GB of unified memory, and 8TB of SSD storage. Notably, the top-of-the-line M3 Max MacBook Pro is significantly more expensive than last year’s highest-priced model, which was listed at $6,500. Since the M3 Max chip can now support up to 128GB of unified memory, whereas the M2 Max was limited to 96GB, memory upgrades make this year’s MacBook Pro more expensive.

What you get for $7,200 in a MacBook Pro

If you look past the exorbitant price tag, the highest-end MacBook Pro is an extremely powerful machine, and it’s clearly one of the best Macs. The biggest part of this configuration is the M3 Max chip, which is upgraded to include a 16-core CPU with 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. Just upgrading the MacBook Pro’s system-on-a-chip to this version of the M3 Max will raise the starting price to $4,000. With this upgrade, there’s also a 40-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine, and support for up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth. That gives the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro the most performance cores we’ve ever seen on an M-series laptop chip, as you can see in the breakdown below.

The real costs come from memory and storage upgrades

This highest-end configuration of the 16-inch MacBook Pro features 128GB of unified memory and 8TB of SSD storage, which is what drives up the price to $7,200. The memory upgrade to 128GB costs $1,000 all by itself, bringing the cost of this M3 Max configuration to $5,000. Then, the upgrade to 8TB of SSD storage costs a stunning $2,200, and this is how we get to that $7,200 sticker price. Although it might seem ridiculous to need this much memory and storage, since these parts are not upgradeable, people with demanding workflows might need to make this leap for future-proofing.

If you’re looking for these specifications in a 14-inch MacBook Pro, you’ll only have to pay $6,900. You can pre-order the new MacBook Pro now, with availability starting Nov. 7. Some configurations of the MacBook Pro are made-to-order, so you could see delivery dates later in November for custom configurations.

MacBook Pro (M3, 2023)

The new MacBook Pro offers Apple’s M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips in 14 and 16-inch designs. It features a 20% brighter display and an all-new Space Black finish option.