The most expensive MacBook Pro (2021) costs over $6,000

Apple just held its Unleashed event, and with it came two massive MacBook Pro announcements. The new MacBook Pro models bring back classic ports like HDMI and MagSafe charging, but most notably, they come with the new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors. As Apple highlighted during the event, the new MacBook Pro models are beastly machines, but with a starting price of $1,999, they certainly have a cost to match. But just how expensive can they get? Let’s take a look at the price much you can expect to pay if you want to max out all the specs in your model.

The base model of the MacBook Pro 14-inch starts at $1,999.99, and the MacBook Pro 16-inch starts at $2,499. But you can upgrade the processor, storage, and RAM much further than the base configurations, which naturally increases the price.

Processor

The base model of the MacBook Pro 14-inch includes an Apple M1 Pro processor, which has 8 CPU cores and 14 GPU cores. Meanwhile, the 16-inch version also starts with an M1 Pro processor, but now with 10 CPU cores and 16 GPU cores. However, you can upgrade both of these to the same spec – an Apple M1 Max with 10 CPU cores and 32 GPU cores. If you do, the base price jumps to $3,099 on the MacBook Pro 14-inch, and $3,299 on the 16-inch model. This is also because the amount of unified memory is upgraded automatically to 32GB, however.

Unified memory (RAM)

The base configurations of either size of the MacBook Pro include 16GB of unified memory. However, you can upgrade to 32GB for $400 (which is done automatically if you choose the M1 Max), or send another $400 for 64GB of memory. That takes the total price to $3,499 on the MacBook Pro 14-inch and $3,699 on the 16-inch variant.

Storage

Finally, the two models start with 512GB of storage, a decent base level configuration. If you want more, though, you can upgrade to 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, or a massive 8TB of storage. That might be more than you’ll ever need, but if you do, you have that option. That upgrade costs a massive $2,400, however, making the final price $5,899 for the MacBook Pro 14-inch and $6,099 for the 16-inch version.

This is all without taking into account optional services or software licenses you can add, of course. Apple Care+, Final Cut Pro, and so on will add more to the cost.

Comparing that to other powerful professional laptops in the Windows space – say, the Dell XPS 15 – that costs just over $5,000 with the same amount of RAM and storage, as well as an Intel Core i9 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics, and a 4K display. Even if you take the Dell XPS 17 and you max that out with an Intel Core i9-11980HK and GeForce RTX 3060, you’re still looking at around $5,400.

Granted, Apple touted some impressive performance numbers during its presentation, including up to 4 times the GPU performance of an AMD Radeon Pro 5600M using the M1 Max chipset. But some of the difference is also in the RAM and storage upgrades. For example, going from 1TB to 8TB of storage on the Dell XPS 17 costs $1,800, but on Apple’s MacBook Pro models, you pay $2,2000 for that upgrade, a $400 difference. Similarly, a RAM upgrade from 32GB to 64GB costs $300 on Dell’s laptop, versus $400 on the MacBook Pro.

No matter how you slice it, the new MacBook Pro models aren’t cheap, especially if you want the max configurations. This is no different from previous models, though, so it’s not like Apple has jacked up the prices at the high end. If you’re interested in buying it, you can configure the laptop below.