Apple announced the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, promising an update in both design and performance. The new models are available in silver and space gray next week, with a starting price of $ 2499.

The new 16-inch MacBook Pro is configurable with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, the company’s new 10-core processors with 8 high-performance cores and 2 high-efficiency cores.

The M1 Max has twice the M1 Pro GPU cores (32 for the M1 Max to 16 for the M1 Pro) and double the memory bandwidth, plus 64GB of unified memory (the M1 Pro has 32GB).

The chassis also received a recent redesign. The device weighs 2.1 kg with a thickness of 16.8 mm, and its screen is 16.2 inches.

The Touch Bar has been replaced with physical switches, and there’s an HDMI port on the right side as well as a Thunderbolt 4 port and SD slot, with a headphone jack and two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left.

The first 16-inch MacBook Pro debuted in November 2019. It had a very similar design to its 15-inch MacBook Pro predecessors and was powered by 9th generation Intel processors (now two generations old).

Reviewers praised the outstanding keyboard and sound, as well as its strength. But they complained about limited connectivity, and there were only two Thunderbolt ports on each side.

Supporting a new six-speaker audio system with spatial speakers, the Liquid Retina XDR display delivers up to 1,600 nits of peak brightness.

And the M1 Pro and M1 Max have a niche to fill. The M1 chip that the company announced last November (which now powers the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, iPad Pro, and 2021 iMac) beats the competition when it comes to processing power, efficiency, and integrated graphics.

But customers were waiting for the company to release flagship devices powered by these processors, including the 16-inch MacBook Pro and a possible successor to the 27-inch iMac. That’s to see if the M1 Max takes laptops to another level as its predecessor did.