Apple has launched its new laptop lineup with prices exceeding 6 million won for top-end models. The company could not escape "chipflation"—the phenomenon of surging product prices driven by soaring memory costs.
Apple unveiled its new MacBook series on the 4th, pricing the flagship M5 Max MacBook Pro 16 at 6.29 million won. That represents a 1.1 million won increase from its predecessor, the M4 Max MacBook Pro 16. Even the entry-level M5 MacBook Air 13 launches at 1.79 million won, with all configurations rising 200,000 to 1.1 million won compared to previous models.
South Korean consumers face particularly steep increases, as domestic price hikes exceed those in overseas markets, where prices rose by $100 to $400 (150,000 to 590,000 won). The increases are sharper than those seen in recent 3-million-won-range laptop releases from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, which were already priced hundreds of thousands of won higher than their predecessors.
The new products launch on the 11th. Apple highlighted the new M5 chip series as the key feature. The company says the M5 Max—the top-tier chip—delivers more than four times the AI-dedicated GPU computing performance of the previous generation.
The M5 Pro achieves similar performance gains over its predecessor. Both chips feature a 16-core Neural Engine supporting on-device AI and Apple Intelligence functions. The Neural Engine is Apple's proprietary neural processing unit (NPU) built into its chips.