14-inch MacBook Pro (M4) review: From ‘meh’ to marvelous

Best Prices Today: Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4)

Apple’s approach to its most affordable MacBook Pro has been a little perplexing during the early part of the Apple silicon era. There were the M1 and M2 13-inch MacBook Pro, good laptops but with dated designs that seemed odd compared to the pricier and prettier 14—and 16-inch MacBook Pro. Then Apple dropped it when the M3 came, but its 14-inch replacement had glaring compromises.

It seemed like Apple had a different idea than customers of the role of the most affordable MacBook Pro in the laptop lineup. Apple seemed to think of the entry-level MacBook Pro as a tweener machine, a bridge from the MacBook Air. Customers, however, see that it’s a “MacBook Pro” and expect a pro-level laptop with few (or no) glaring compromises.

That brings us to the M4 14-inch MacBook Pro. With it, Apple has released a laptop that addresses the issues with the confounding 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro, and updated its chip, as well. The result is not just that the M4 MacBook Pro has a clear identity, but it also represents a tremendous value.

This review is structured based on how the major updates will influence your buying decision. Here, the M4 chip is the primary factor, so we cover it first. Then we cover the ports, then the screen and camera, and then other factors. Use the Table of Contents links at the top of this article to skip around. Before all of that, here are the details on our review unit.

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Our model’s specifications

This review looks at the M4 14-inch MacBook Pro, which is Apple’s most affordable model in the MacBook Pro lineup. Our review unit has the same CPU, GPU, and RAM as the base standard configuration, but the SSD is a 1TB upgrade, which is an additional $200/£200, and it has the Nano-texture glass ($150/£150). Here are the specifications of the laptop in this review:

• CPU: M4 with 10 cores (4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores), 16-core Neural Engine
• GPU: 10 cores
• Memory: 16GB unified memory (120GBps memory bandwidth)
• Storage: 1TB SSD
• Display: 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR; 3024-by-1964 native resolution at 254 pixels per inch; 1000 nits sustained XDR brightness, 1600 nits peak (HDR content only); 1000 nits SDR brightness; 1 billion colors; P3 color gamut; True Tone; Nano-texture glass
• Ports: 3 Thunderbolt 4/USB-C; MagSafe 3; SDXC Card slot; HDMI; 3.5mm audio
• Networking: Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax); Bluetooth 5.3
• Input devices: Magic Keyboard with Touch ID; Magic Trackpad
• Weight: 3.4 pounds (1.55 kg)
• Dimensions: 0.61 x 12.31 x 8.71 inches (1.55 x 31.26 x 22.12 cm)
• Price (as tested): $1,949/£1,949

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Performance

The major problem with the M3 MacBook Pro was that its unified memory started at 8GB. That’s usable but for a “Pro” laptop it’s not enough for high-end tasks, and an upgrade to 16GB costs a pricey $200/£200. Last year, Apple defended its stance against customer outcry and it seemed like the company wasn’t going to budge. But at some point (perhaps tied to Apple Intelligence?) the company made the right decision to set 16GB as the new RAM baseline in all Macs–what makes the change even sweeter is prices weren’t affected at all.

What 16GB means is that the M4 MacBook Pro runs more efficiently. While you’re not going to see dramatic boosts, it’ll feel a lot smoother when you’re using an app that’s not optimized properly, have a lot of apps open at the same time, and/or have a dozen browser tabs of Macworld.com open at the same time.

Besides having more base RAM than the M3, the M4 has a 10-core CPU (4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores) and a 10-core GPU. Learn more about the M4. Overall, the M4 offers the typical boost we’ve seen from the old chip series to the new one, but since Apple didn’t increase the price with the RAM boost, the overall value is much better.

Geekbench 6.3 gauges overall performance, and the M4 was 23 percent faster than the M3 in the Multi-Core test. The boost over the M2 and M1 is more significant at 53 percent and 79 percent, respectively. The M1 and M2 laptops also have the old design with fewer ports so you’ll get a combination of a modern look and a performance upgrade.

The M4’s 8 percent GPU boost in Cinebench 2024 isn’t much faster than the M3. Curiously, the M4 iMac that we reviewed with the same M4 chip tallied a GPU score that was 10 percent faster than the M4 MacBook Pro. Perhaps the MacBook Pro’s M4 needs to do some throttling to maintain a proper temperature in its much tighter quarters than the iMac, though the fans were not noticeable during the GPU test.

The fans did kick in loudly during the CPU tests, though. The laptop didn’t get noticeably hot to the touch, but I don’t recall triggering the fans in any other M-series laptop review.

More incremental improvements from the M3 to the M4 when converting the 4K Tears of Steel video to a 1080p H.265 file. The improvement of the M4 over the M2 and M1 is much more impressive.

Over time, Apple has improved the video encoders that are built into the M-series chips, and it shows in our iMovie results when exporting a 4K ProRes video file.  For example, the M4 offers an improvement that’s over 200 percent over the M1.

The SSD performance has been flat over the past couple of generations. I’ve had a few readers ask me if the issues with the SSD performance are still present. First, those problems involved the 256GB SSD and the MacBook Pro starts at 512GB. Second, the issue was with the M1 and M2; with the M3, Apple addressed the issue so it’s unlikely it’ll be a problem with the M4.

However, there’s a noticeable difference between the M4 and M4 Pro SSDs. Our results show that the M4 Pro SSD is about twice as fast as the M4 SSD. Historically, the M Pro SSD has been much faster than the base M chip’s SSD and that still holds up here. You can read our review of the 16-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro to learn more.

Here’s another incremental boost, this time in the Geekbench 6 Compute benchmark. This test gauges GPU performance. We tend to lend more credence to the Metal benchmark since that’s Apple’s API, but a lot of games use OpenCL.

We added Borderlands 3 and Total War: Warhammer III benchmarks, but since they’re new additions, our data set is only for the M4 and M3 chips. Rise of the Tomb Raider and Civilization VI are older games written for Intel and not optimized for Apple’s Metal graphics API. But it is impressive that the M4 performance has doubled that of the M1 in many instances.

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Ports and connectivity

Another major change is that the M4 MacBook Pro now has three Thunderbolt/USB 4 ports, one more than the M3 MacBook Pro. Having only two of these ports on a MacBook Pro–the same as the MacBook Air–along with 8GB of RAM felt like a way to force shoppers into buying a more expensive model. But the base MacBook Pro is now set up like its pricier brethren–at least on the surface.

Underneath, the M4 MacBook Pro’s Thunderbolt is the version 4 variety, but the M4 Pro and M4 Max models have Thunderbolt 5, which is the latest version. Version 5 offers 80Gbps bandwidth, twice that of Thunderbolt 4, and at least 140 watts of power with a max of 240 watts (version 4 is 100/140). Thunderbolt 5 also supports more external displays.

Speaking of external displays, the M4 MacBook Pro supports (while the built-in display is running, no clamshell mode going on here):

• Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt, or
• One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI, or
• One external display at 8K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI, or
• One external display at 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI.

The other ports are a MagSafe 3 port, HDMI, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an SDXC Card slot. Wireless connectivity is done with Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5.3.

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Display and camera

Apple did not change the MacBook Pro’s display, which is fine, but the company now offers a Nano-texture glass option for $150. It provides a matte finish that does a very good job of cutting down reflections and glare. The compromise that comes with the Nano-texture glass is that colors are less vibrant, and blacks aren’t as deep are they are with a glossy screen. If you find glossy screens bothersome, then the option is for you.

Sitting atop it is a new 12-megapixel Center Stage camera. The 1080p FaceTime camera it replaced was another one of those things that didn’t seem befitting for a pro laptop, and it’s finally gone. Center Stage keeps you in the center of the frame, and the Desk View feature provides a perspective of your workspace. In all, the new camera is a better tool for video conferencing.

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Battery life

The battery in the M4 MacBook Pro is bigger at 72.4-watt hours; the M3 MacBook Pro had a 70-watt-hour battery. The M3 model had “Up to 22 hours Apple TV app movie playback” and “Up to 15 hours wireless web” while the M4 model is stated as 24 and 16 hours respectively.

Our battery test involves playing a video saved to the SSD in a continuous loop until the battery runs out, with the display set to 150 nits (a smidge more than halfway past the brightness indicator). Apple’s laptop battery life has been exceptional ever since the M1 and it’s just more of the same here. The M4 MacBook Pro lasted about 20 hours in our test, but more importantly, I used the laptop without plugging it in to do my daily work (image editing, some easy video and podcast editing, and lots and lots of writing) and I could go a day without worrying about needing to plug in.

14-inch M4 MacBook Pro: Apple Intelligence

A review of the M4 MacBook Pro wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Apple Intelligence, the AI-based features being rolled out starting with macOS Sequoia 15.1. However, the first batch of M4 Macs coming off the line won’t have Sequoia 15.1, so if you’re among the early customers you may need to update macOS by running System Update in System Settings.

The Apple Intelligence features are spread out over time. The first set is in 15.1 and a second set is coming in 15.2, probably in December. Apple will develop more features as time goes by.

Geekbench AI measures the performance of the chip’s Neural Engine. It’s a new benchmark so our dataset for comparison is limited. Be sure to check out our impressions on the first set of Apple Intelligence features in iOS 18.1–the insights in that article carry over to macOS Sequoia 15.1.

Should you buy the M4 MacBook Pro?

The changes that Apple made to the $1,599/£1,599 M4 MacBook Pro not only made it a clear pro laptop (finally), but it also created a package bursting with value. It no longer feels like a compromised laptop, and you get a lot of performance and features for the price. If you consider yourself a pro user–but not really a pro’s pro, per se–the M4 MacBook Pro has a lot to offer.

Best Prices Today: Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M4)