Apple MacBook Pro M4 review: faster, better and cheaper | Apple

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Apple MacBook Pro M4 review: faster, better and cheaper | Apple

Apple’s upgraded MacBook Pro for 2024 gets a significant power boost with the M4 chip, double the memory as standard, even longer battery life and a price cut, ending the year on a high.

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The longstanding laptop line now starts at £1,599 (€1,899/$1,599/A$2,499), making it £100 or so cheaper than last year’s M3 models. Though still an expensive, premium laptop, it comes with at least 16GB of RAM rather than 8GB, which was an upgrade worth paying extra for on previous models.

The outside hasn’t changed from its predecessor. The body is still a solid, premium-feeling aluminium shell that looks great in either grey or ******. It isn’t a super-thin machine but the 14.2in size is easy to fit into a bag without feeling too cramped for work on the go.

The laptop looks, feels and handles as premium as you should expect for the price, available in ****** or grey aluminium. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The screen is still the star of the show: a super bright and crisp mini LED display with a 120Hz refresh rate to keep things smooth. It is noticeably brighter than many rivals for general work and really shines with HDR content. Apple now sells a special nano-texture display option for £150 more that significantly reduces glare for working in bright light or outdoors if needed.

The webcam above the screen has seen a very welcome upgrade to a 12MP Stage Centre camera, similar to those used in most iPads since 2021. It automatically pans and scans to keep you in the frame, which is a ******* feature for anyone who lives on video calls for their work. It has a novel “

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” option that uses the ultrawide-angle lens to show the space directly in front of the laptop for demonstrating things remotely. It isn’t the clearest of views with the integrated camera, but it is easier trying to use use an iPhone as a secondary camera with various accessories.

The camera still doesn’t support Apple’s Face ID system from the iPhone and iPad, which is a shame even though the Touch ID fingerprint sensor in the power button works great.

Specifications

• Screen: 14.2in mini LED (3024×1964; 254 ppi) ProMotion (120Hz)

• Processor: Apple M4, Pro or Max

• RAM: 16, 24, 32 or up to 128GB

• Storage: 512GB, 1, 2, 4 or 8TB SSD

• Operating system: macOS 15.1 Sequoia

• Camera: 12MP Centre Stage

• Connectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 3x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4, HDMI 2.1, SD card, headphones

• Dimensions: 221.2 x 312.6 x 15.5mm

• Weight: 1.55kg

Rapid M4 power with very long battery life

All models of the 14in MacBook Pro now come with three USB-C ports and can connect to two external monitors at once. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Inside, the big upgrade is the addition of Apple’s latest M4 series of chips, first seen in the iPad Pro M4 from earlier in the year. The base-model 14in MacBook Pro now starts with a 10-core version of the M4 chip and 16GB of RAM – double that of its predecessor – which is a welcome upgrade.

The M4 chip is up to 25% faster across the board than the outgoing M3 chip and up to 1.8 times as fast as the original M1 chip, making it very fast indeed. In day-to-day usage it felt extremely rapid, with launching apps and crunching data noticeably faster than on a MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip from 2021.

The laptop has class-leading battery life, lasting about 21 hours of light browsing and regularly managing about 18 hours of work with lots of tabs open in Chrome, a word processor, plus various small utilities, note-taking and messaging apps, and some light photo editing in

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. It also has excellent standby battery life, losing only about 1% overnight while closed.

For many use cases the M4 chip will be more than enough. But for those looking to render 3D objects, crunch numbers or author code, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips are available that add more high-performance processing and graphics cores plus

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connectivity.

The base-model M4 laptop gains an additional Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 port compared with its predecessor and is capable of driving two external monitors and the laptop display at once.

Sustainability

The space ****** colour looks just as good as it did on higher-end versions of the machine’s predecessor, but is now available for all models of the MacBook Pro M4. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The MacBook Pro is made of 35% recycled materials, including aluminium, copper, gold, plastic, rare earth elements, steel and tin. Apple breaks down the computer’s environmental impact in its report.

The laptop is

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and Apple makes

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. The battery should last in

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and can be

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. The company offers trade-in and free recycling schemes, including for non-Apple products.

MacOS Sequoia and the first of Apple Intelligence

MacOS 15.1 enabled iPhone Mirroring (bottom right), type to Siri (top right), AI Clean Up in Photos (bottom left) and a few other Apple Intelligence features. Composite: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The MacBook Pro runs the latest version of macOS Sequoia 15.1, which ships with a variety of new messages and other features in line with iOS 18.1. It has a very useful new window tiling system, which snaps windows to the sides or full screen when you drag them to the edges of the display, similar to the feature on Windows 11.

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, which allows you to wirelessly see a virtual representation of your iPhone on your Mac and control it with your mouse and keyboard, including using apps. Your choice of notifications from your phone show up in the Mac’s notification centre, which is handy for certain services that only have phone apps.

But it is the first handful of features of Apple Intelligence that are the highest-profile new additions. These include the same AI writing tools capable of proofing, rewriting and summarising your text as seen on an iPhone or iPad. Because they’re built straight into the operating system, they are easier and faster to use than third-party options, but I only found them useful a handful of times.

You can now type to talk to the new Siri, which works very well on a Mac. Double tap the Command button to bring up a text box to ask your query rather than via voice, which is far more socially acceptable in an office or coffee shop. Siri is still far behind rivals such as

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’s Gemini in capability, however.

Other small AI tools are dotted around various apps. The Photos app now has natural language search and a new AI Clean Up tool for deleting unwanted objects. The Mail and Messages apps have AI smart replies and summaries of conversations, while notifications from all apps can be stacked and summarised for quick parsing.

None of these tools feel like a ******* feature on the Mac, but some of them can be useful in a pinch and generally don’t get in the way if not.

Price

The 14in MacBook Pro M4 starts at £1,599 (€1,899/$1,599/A$2,499). M4 Pro models start at £1,999 (€2,399/$1,999/A$3,299) and M4 Max at £3,199 (€3,799/$3,199/A$4,999).

For comparison, the MacBook Air M3 costs from £1,099, the iPad Pro M4 costs £999, the equivalent Dell XPS 14 costs about £1,400, the Razer Blade 14 costs £2,150 and

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’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 costs from

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.

Verdict

The MacBook Pro M4 shows that small improvements across the board do slowly add up to much ******* things. It may not look all that different to last year’s M3 model, but it delivers a meaningful upgrade to speed and battery life and when compared with only a three-year-old machine it makes a huge difference in day-to-day operation.

The 14in laptop is still the sweet spot for screen size and portability, aided by Apple’s best-in-class keyboard, trackpad and fantastic display.

Finally bringing the excellent Centre Stage camera to the MacBook Pro is a very welcome upgrade, even if it doesn’t bring with it Face ID. The extra USB-C port, double the starting memory and the sheer speed of the M4 chip make the starting model much more appealing, too.

It is still an expensive laptop, but as a premium workstation that can be used at full speed away from a power socket and lasts a very long time on battery, nothing really comes close unless you specifically need Windows 11.

*****: M4 chip is rapid with choice for more power available, 16GB RAM minimum, very long battery life, fantastic miniLED ProMotion screen, great Centre Stage camera, plenty of ports and SD card slot, brilliant speakers, Touch ID, great keyboard and trackpad.

*****: no Face ID, no USB-A, RAM or SSD cannot be upgraded after purchase, expensive, not a big upgrade on M3 model.

Touch ID in the power button works great, but it is Apple’s best-in-class keyboard and trackpad that make working on the MacBook Pro a joy. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

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