M4 MacBook Pro adds M4 Max power and promises 24 hours of battery life

Ready to redefine Pro

News By Lance Ulanoff published 30 October 2024

Your MacBook Pro is finally getting the CPU it deserves. Sure, Apple's powerful portable almost always has the best and brightest in the Apple Silicon lineup, but after the iPad Pro was blessed with the M4 while the MacBook Pro line was still stuck in M3 territory, something seemed out of sync.

That ends today with the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, both of which not only get new 3-nanometer M4 CPUs but also a pair of new and even more performant flavors: the brand-new M4 Pro and M4 Max.

As is usually the case, only the 14-inch MacBook Pro will support the now-entry-level M4 CPU. Both the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models will be offered in configurations featuring the more powerful M4 Pro and M4 Max.

The M4 Max pushes the limits on performance possibilities with an up to 16-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU, and support for up to 128GB of unified memory. The MacBook Pro M4 gains an extra Thunderbolt 4 port, bringing the total to three.

Both the MacBook Pro M4 Pro and the new MacBook Pro M4 Max support Thunderbolt 5 for 120gbps throughput. And like the Mac mini M4 and the new iMac M4, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M4 starts with 16GB of RAM, and the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 will start with 24GB of RAM.

Familiar looks

Outside of that tantalizing performance, there are only a handful of important feature changes. No, not the design, as these MacBook Pros appear almost identical to their predecessors. However, they now have the new 12MP Centerstage camera, which uses framed portions of an ultra-wide lens feed to follow you around so you are never out of frame during a video call.

Both laptops still have a Liquid Retina XDR display, but Apple now offers a nano-texture display covering (also found on the new M4 iMac) that helps diffuse direct light and makes the MacBook Pro M4 a better partner for outdoor work. The new ability to push 1,000 nits with SDR content might also give you a boost in direct sunlight. You can still get up to 1,600 nits with HDR content, and these can also connect to two high-resolution displays at once.

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