Transcription
If you were looking to buy a MacBook Pro in the past few years, you have probably stumbled across Apple's base level model. While these versions got better over the years, they always felt like afterthoughts to the main upgrades that you had to spend at least a minimum of $2,000 to enjoy.
However, this year Apple has, in a major way, shaken up the entire Mac strategy, and the base level M4 MacBook Pro is the model that received the biggest upgrade this year. However, is it good enough to recommend over the M4 Pro version, and what are you giving up by going for a lower price point?
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Let's talk about these two MacBooks because design-wise they have never been more similar. That's because the M4 model now has an additional port on the right-hand side, matching the ports on the M4 Pro and M4 Max MacBook Pro for a total of three Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and the MagSafe charging port.
Now there is one notable difference. Despite the M4 version gaining an additional Thunderbolt port, the new M4 Pro and Max version get a faster Thunderbolt 5 version of those ports, which can reach max speeds of 120 Gbps, nearly three times the speed of Thunderbolt 4. This is the biggest difference between these models, but it's also one of the hardest to measure right now due to the lack of readily available Thunderbolt 5 accessories.
In theory, Thunderbolt 5 would mean that you can plug in faster external drives at double the speed of Thunderbolt 4 drives, and it could also mean the capability to drive higher resolution and faster refresh rate displays. Think of this port upgrade mainly as a way to future-proof yourself right now for high-end accessories, but be warned: for most people, Thunderbolt 5 accessories, at least for the foreseeable future, will be more expensive, and for most people, the speeds and capabilities offered by Thunderbolt 4 will be fast enough considering it's still faster than all of the regular USB-C connections you might use on a daily basis.
Other than this key difference, both MacBook Pros now come with a brighter 1,000 nit display, which gets extremely bright and is great for using in bright environments or outdoors. There’s even an extra nanotexture display option available on both models for $150 more. Now, I don't have this nanotexture on my MacBook Pro display, but I did get the same coating on my 24-inch iMac, and I have to say, if you hate glares or reflections on your display or you use your MacBook Pro outside a lot, it is well worth that $150 upgrade.
Both MacBook Pros also get a new 12-megapixel Center Stage webcam that thankfully I was wrong about because it looks a lot better than I was expecting and way better than the version they shipped on the Studio Display a few years ago. Not only do you get a better image with more detail, but this webcam can also track you and follow you around for a really cool tracking shot effect. Its ultra-wide angle easily lets you fit more people into a video call. The field of view is so wide you can even use what Apple calls Desk Mode and have it record directly in front of the MacBook Pro, although this mode isn't that high quality and is very distorted, so I'm not really sure how useful it's going to end up being, but it is a cool party trick nonetheless.
Then there's external display support, and I'm happy to say that yes, the M4 MacBook Pro is the first base model M-series MacBook that can finally connect up to two external displays at the same time, even with its lid open, taking away a huge advantage that used to be exclusive to the Pro-level chip. So now the M4 and the M4 Pro MacBook Pros can now connect to two external displays. What a magical world we live in!
Guys, so besides the speed of those Thunderbolt ports—and I guess if you want to be a technical stickler I should mention this because someone in the comments is bound to bring it up—Greg, you didn't mention that the M4 version weighs .1 lb less than the M4 Pro version. Well fine, you're happy, Steve, I mentioned it. Okay, now let's get back to the important things, because besides the incredibly small weight difference and the port speed difference, these MacBooks are the same except, of course, for what's inside of them—the chips powering them.
Now, the base model MacBook Pro is powered by a regular M4 chip, but it comes with 512 GB of storage and 16 GB of memory for $1,600. The higher-end version comes with an M4 Pro chip with that same 512 GB of storage but an additional 8 GB of memory for 24 GB of memory in total. Now you can do simple math; there is a $400 price difference between these two MacBooks. So just how much of a performance difference is there, and is there anything else you lose out on for spending less?
Well, besides performance, there is one notable thing to mention. The read and write speed on the SSD are higher on the M4 Pro version, hitting around 4,000 or 5,000 read and write speeds, whereas on the regular M4 version, the SSD is hitting about 2,500 to 3,000 read and write speeds. So you should get slightly faster loading times and data transfer on the M4 Pro variant.
Then you have the chip itself. Now obviously, if you spend more money, you're going to get more performance. The good news is that the M4 and M4 Pro both have the same single-core performance, so for most everyday tasks that don't require multi-threaded CPU workloads—like opening apps or running more basic applications like word processing, Excel, listening to music, or watching video web browsing—those are going to run at the same speed on both machines, and both machines are equally snappy in their performance.
The real difference here is with multi-threaded CPU performance because you gain around a 36% bump in multi-core workloads on the M4 Pro. Another advantage going for the M4 Pro is its better GPU. It has more graphic cores than the regular M4 chip, and even on the base M4 Pro chip, you are seeing some pretty impressive results with around double the average frame rate in Shadow of the Tomb Raider and around a 55% improvement in Geekbench Metal GPU benchmarks. That could mean the difference between playing games at 60 frames per second at 4K on the M4 Pro or having to lower that resolution down to 1080, and it also means a better computer for more GPU-intensive tasks like 3D modeling and stuff like that, right?
And you know, sometimes these tasks don't make that much of a difference. Like I did a Final Cut export, and it was about 20 seconds saved on the M4 Pro over the regular M4.
Now yeah, we could continue to go over benchmark after benchmark to show the differences between these laptops in terms of performance, but I'm not sure if that's all too helpful. I mean, we all know the M4 Pro is going to be more powerful than the M4 chip, but what is helpful though is to realize that the performance of the M4 chip and its CPU performance is actually about the same as last year's M3 Pro chip, which means that for argument's sake, the M4 is kind of worthy of being called a pro-level CPU. The value it provides over last year's M3 Pro MacBook Pro is even more because of that and even better over the regular M3 because of the increase in base memory.
And while yes, the M4 Pro is more powerful, the M4 is not without its own unique advantages. It's an energy-efficient chip, which means a full 24 hours of battery life. That’s 2 more hours than the official rating on the M4 Pro, and the chip runs cooler when you're pushing it to the absolute limit, which means a quieter laptop in some bleeding-edge circumstances. For $1,600, the M4 MacBook Pro is more than most people need, and it's a great starting point for people that want to do pro-level tasks.
That means yes, video editing, music production, development, and so on. And yeah, you can even play a few games with 1080p settings. The M4 can actually handle that pretty well. I think the real pitfall for the base level M4 machine is if you want to do a little more. Because if you start spending money on those upgrades, like upgrading the memory—let's say you upgrade it to 32 GB—well, it doesn't make much sense because that brings it up to the same starting price point as the M4 Pro.
And while yeah, you'll lose out on 8 gigabytes of memory for that same spec, I would take that configuration with all the benefits it provides over the M4 version. That's why my buying advice would be, if you have a budget of around $1,600 to $1,800, I would say just get the base level M4 and maybe upgrade the storage to 1 TB, depending on your storage needs.
On the other hand, if you're planning to spend around $2,000, that $400 jump to the M4 Pro will absolutely be worth it for users that need an increase in CPU and GPU performance. That would be the type of user that is working on more complex projects or users that are already making money on their craft or have a job in a professional field and need that extra speed to finish projects faster.
The only question you need to ask yourself is: do you—yes, you—really need all that power? Because at this point, for most people, the M4 is more than enough. And I have to say, during this whole week of reviewing these Macs, that when I'm using an M4 or the M4 Pro version, I can't tell the difference when I'm using them. The speed feels exactly the same, and the only time when I do notice a difference is when I go to export a video and notice that it's slightly faster or if I load up a game.
Yeah, I can run those games at higher frame rates or higher resolution on the Pro. I think what I have to say this year, out of all the years I've been reviewing the base level Apple silicon MacBook Pro, this is the year where it feels like you're not losing out by picking the base level option. If you pay more, yeah, you'll get more power, but that's the way it should work; that's the way it should be.
For the past few years, that wasn't always the case. You didn't just get more power; you got more benefits going for that higher-end MacBook Pro. This time, the only compromise you're really making is that it's slightly weaker. And that's a good thing, and it means both of these options are great.
All right, I hope you found this video helpful deciding between the M4 and the M4 Pro MacBook Pro. If you did, please leave a like, subscribe to help me hit that 400,000 subscriber goal, and thank you so much for watching! I'll catch you in the next one!