After using Nvidia RTX Spark for a week, Apple’s new MacBook ‘PROLED’ has my attention

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I’ve used a fair few high-end laptops in the last few months – it’s been a busy time in the PC laptop market, and now Apple has added to things by launching its most significant MacBook Pro revision in a while.

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display and Touch is quite the name, but in fairness to Apple, it does describe exactly what’s new about the laptop. It’s the MacBook Pro, but with some telling upgrades, in the form of a gorgeous new OLED display, Dynamic Island and a touch screen for the first time on any Mac.

Crucially, it also starts from £2,899 or $2,899, making it the sort of laptop that most people probably can’t really countenance picking up. That pricing isn’t really a surprise, given the weeks of leaks and rumours, but it makes for an interesting comparison to the PC market right now.

Apple has always had the advantage of clarity compared to Windows laptops, where there are dozens of big brands making laptops, all of them with one of dozens of different chips from Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and now Nvidia. The RTX Spark just launched, bringing a new wave of expensive laptops that run Nvidia’s first laptop chip, muddying the waters even further.

I spent a week using the gorgeous Asus ProArt P14 with the RTX Spark powering it, and while I came away with the impression that Nvidia’s new hardware is a serious factor for the laptop market…