Ars Technica: Apple’s M4 Pro MacBook Pro is the most impressive
14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro (M4 Pro and M4 Max)
Apple’s new MacBook Pro, powered by the M4 family of chips — M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max — delivers much faster performance and enhanced capabilities. The new MacBook Pro is built for Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system that transforms how users work, communicate, and express themselves, while protecting their privacy. Now available in space black and silver finishes, the 14-inch MacBook Pro includes the blazing-fast performance of M4 and three Thunderbolt 4 ports, starting with 16GB of memory, all at just $1,599. The 14- and 16-inch models with M4 Pro and M4 Max offer Thunderbolt 5 for faster transfer speeds and advanced connectivity. All models include a Liquid Retina XDR display that gets even better with an all-new nano-texture display option and up to 1000 nits of brightness for SDR content, an advanced 12MP Center Stage camera, along with up to 24 hours of battery life, the longest ever in a Mac
Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica:
Boosted RAM capacities, across the entire lineup but most crucially in the entry-level $1,599 M4 MacBook Pro, make the new laptops a shade cheaper and more versatile than they used to be. The new nano-texture display option, a $150 upgrade on all models, is a lovely matte-textured coating that completely eliminates reflections. There’s a third Thunderbolt port on the baseline M4 model (the M3 model had two), and it can drive up to three displays simultaneously (two external, plus the built-in screen). There’s a new webcam. It looks a little nicer and has a wide-angle lens that can show what’s on your desk instead of your face if you want it to. And there are new chips…
[T]he M4 is a solid generational upgrade over the M3, thanks to its two extra efficiency cores on the CPU side. Comparatively, the M4 Pro is a much larger leap over the M3 Pro, mostly because the M3 Pro was such a mild update compared to the M2 Pro.
Honestly, the computer that benefits the most is probably the $1,599 entry-level MacBook Pro, which thanks to the 16GB RAM upgrade and improved multi-monitor support is a fairly capable professional computer. Of all the places where Apple’s previous 8GB RAM floor felt inappropriate, it was in the M3 MacBook Pro. With the extra ports, high-refresh-rate screen, and nano-texture coating option, it’s a bit easier to articulate the kind of user who that laptop is actually for, separating it a bit from the 15-inch MacBook Air.
The M4 Pro version also deserves a shout-out for its particularly big performance jump compared to the M2 Pro and M3 Pro generations. It’s a little odd to have a MacBook Pro generation where the middle chip is the most impressive of the three, and that’s not to discount how fast the M4 Max is — it’s just the reality of the situation given Apple’s focus on efficiency rather than performance for the M3 Pro.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s not the fastest, of course (the M4 Max get that title), but the M4 Pro is the biggest leap over its successor, the M3 Pro. Tons more, including benchmarks, in the full article here.
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