For a long time, the entry-level MacBook Pro felt like a weird middle-of-the-road product, with a MacBook Air’s processor, a MacBook Pro’s chassis, and a few features stripped away to put it right in the middle.
Last year’s 14-inch MacBook Pro Finally a step in the right direction Remove Touch Bar and upgrade the machine to be closer to other professionals. But it still follows the same formula: its processor is worse, its base RAM is lower, and it has one fewer port. This is a good machine, much better than the previous one M2 and M1 model, but it still doesn’t feel like an all-out Pro.
With the M4, Apple finally has a basic MacBook Pro that’s less of a parts-bin compromise and more of a true Pro machine. This is a laptop you can buy without feeling like you’re stuck.
The M4 MacBook Pro addresses nearly every complaint we had about the M3 version. It starts at $1,599 with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD—the same starting price as the M3 model, but with two more CPU cores, twice the RAM, and a third Thunderbolt port . The port is on the right, just like the “real” port Pro model, so you can finally charge or connect to external monitors on either side of the laptop. Pro also benefits from Apple Memory increased to 16GB across the board. Apple Intelligence is mostly boring and useless now, but I’m grateful for the extra RAM it provides.
These are already significant upgrades in what might otherwise be just a chip-bump year, but Apple is also giving all three MacBook Pros a new 12-megapixel webcam with Center Stage and its Desk View software feature, as well as adding anti-glare nanotechnology options. The M4 Pro now also supports two external displays with the lid open, one more than the M3.
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For anyone dabbling in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, or similar creative applications, these upgrades go a long way in making the M4 MacBook Pro a more meaningful upgrade than the MacBook Air. I edit many high-res raw files in Lightroom Classic on my M1 MacBook Air at work – which I do whenever I take photos edge —I know firsthand what that little machine is capable of. But I often run into limitations in port selection and the performance ceiling of aging passively cooled processors. That’s why my personal computer is a Mac Mini with the M2 Pro, Apple’s best value product in years.
The M4 MacBook Pro felt more vivid than my M2 Pro Mac Mini when editing the images you see here, and it was surprising how quickly it displayed and processed the full-resolution 33-megapixel raw data. I know it’s not as bogged down as the Mini, having had it for almost two years, and my personal apps are terrible, but even when working on my usual, bloated Lightroom catalog (which I copied from the Mac Mini) , it also feels faster and stores images on the same external SSD I’ve been using. I did all of this without being plugged in all day. The laptop ran for a little over 12 hours with moderate to heavy use, and remained quiet and cool to the touch throughout.
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As for editing on a nano-textured display, I know that glossy screens have a slightly darker contrast, but I like not having to worry about glare. I don’t edit exclusively in a darkroom with a hooded reference monitor, and I like the flexibility of working in places with less-than-ideal lighting conditions. The convenience of nanotexture far outweighs any minor technical advantages of a mirrored display. At $150, it’s a worthwhile upgrade for visual professionals.
If you spend more money for the M4 Pro or more money for the M4 Max, you won’t see the same performance in heavy workloads, but the standard M4 has some notable improvements over the M3. On Cinebench’s standard multi-core test, the M4 performed about 64 percent better than the M3, and its delta stayed around 41 percent when running a longer, 30-minute loop of the same benchmark. It has two more cores than the M3 we tested, so it makes sense that the M4 would outperform here, but its single-core scores in Cinebench and Geekbench were also over 20 percent higher. The machine is also 25% faster on GPU benchmarks with the same number of GPU cores.
Apple has a shipping history Disappointing webcameven though the price is $1,599 Studio display The price is as high as the M4 MacBook Pro and the just-released MacBook Pro iPad mini. But the MacBook Pro’s new 12MP camera has good contrast even with window backlighting, and its Center Stage software does a great job of keeping you in the frame without overly aggressive reframing. I can’t give similar praise to Desktop View, which uses some heavy cropping and software fixes to show a top-down view of the desktop. It’s distorted and low-resolution, and there are countless better ways to show and tell in a video call – including using your iPhone and Apple’s own iPhone continuity camera feature.
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The cheapest M4 MacBook Pro sells for $1,599, which is $100 more expensive than the 15-inch MacBook Air with an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and equivalent memory and storage. (Airs still start at 256GB; upgrading to 512GB costs $200.) For the price, you get significantly better performance, more and faster Thunderbolt ports, better quality, higher resolution, refresh rates Up to 120Hz screen, two more speakers, and a better webcam. All of these upgrades and quality-of-life improvements really add up – and for many, they’re worth every penny.
Of course, if you want an anti-glare screen and 1TB of storage like our test unit, you’re on the hook for $1,949, and you can get an upgraded MacBook Pro with a faster, faster M4 Pro processor for just $50 more storage, more cores, 24GB of RAM, and a Thunderbolt 5 port—if you want to upgrade again to a nanotexture screen, it’ll cost you $200. Then you’re completely caught up in the tornado of Apple’s pricing funnel, and it’s easy to talk yourself into spending a few hundred dollars more on each incremental upgrade until you’ve fully reached the next model, and then the process repeats.
The biggest difference this time is that the entry-level MacBook Pro doesn’t feel like a compromise. The base configuration has enough memory and storage to actually be worth considering, and it has all the ports and creature comforts of a high-end professional. Even the upgrade to the nano-textured screen feels worthwhile. For the first time in a long time, it actually feels like a pro.
Photography: Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge
Updated on November 8th: Added more benchmark scores to the comparison table, including Premiere Pro’s PugetBench and M4 Pro’s 4K export tests.
