Apple introduces new MacBook Pros with M4 chips, brighter screen
Apple’s week of Mac reveals rolls on with Wednesday’s announcement of the M4 MacBook Pro line. In some ways this is the smallest update of the week, but I’d wager that Apple sells far more MacBook Pros than iMacs and Mac minis put together. So in some ways, this is the biggest announcement yet.
The new 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro base model now starts at 16GB of RAM—the days of base 8GB of RAM in Macs seem to be at an end—but retains the same base price of $1599. Unlike last year, where only more expensive configurations gained access to the Space Black shade, this year all MacBook Pro models come in just Silver and Space Black, even the base M4 model.
The M4 model sports three Thunderbolt 4 ports, one more than in the M3 model. And, yes, this means that the base-model MacBook Pro now has Thunderbolt ports on both sides.
The MacBook Pro’s best feature is its gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, which gets a boost in the M4 generation by getting quite a bit brighter, with a maximum of 1000 nits (up from 600) in standard-dynamic-range mode. (The max peak brightness in HDR mode remains unchanged at 1600 nits.) There’s also now a nano-texture display option, for laptop users who really need to get screen glare out of their eyes.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro also comes in higher-end chip configurations, and the 16-inch model only comes with the more powerful chips. The M4 Pro, which technically debuted Tuesday with the Mac mini, is of course also available on these models. It sure seems like the M4 Pro is the chip to gain the most between generations, with 75% more memory bandwidth and performance. Apple claims the M4 Pro is 30 percent faster than the M3 Pro, and three times as fast as the M1 Pro. The M4 Pro maxes out at 14 cores, 10 for performance and four for efficiency, can have as many as 20 GPU cores, and starts at 24GB of RAM with configurations up to 48GB. M4 Pro models start at $1999 (14-inch) and $2499 (16-inch).
But of course, there’s more—the M4 Max chip is making its debut in these systems. The M4 Max just offers more of everything, from its 16 CPU cores (12 performance, four efficiency) to up to 40-core GPU, to support for up to 128GB of memory.
Both higher-end chips support Thunderbolt 5, with doesn’t just support much faster data transfers, but also twice as much power delivery (200 watts, up from 100 watts in Thunderbolt 4), which is probably more relevant to a laptop than it would be to a Mac mini.
All three chip levels get a major webcam upgrade to the 12MP Center stage camera, which is the first Mac laptop webcam upgrade in quite a while. And Apple is claiming that all models can get up to 24 hours of battery life, which seems like a bit of a major milestone, even though (as always) battery life is not a simple thing to measure, and can vary widely based on how you use the computer in question.
Apple is taking pre-orders now, and the new MacBook Pro models will arrive in customers’ hands on Nov. 8.
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