Day three of Apple’s “week of Mac” brought the most anticipated new additions – the M4 MacBook Pros. They come in the same 14-inch and 16-inch sizes and arrive with three chipset options – the M4, M4 Pro, which made its debut with the new Mac mini, and an all-new M4 Max for the users that push their workflow to the absolute brink.
Apple’s new MacBook Pros feature the same Liquid Retina XDR display with 3,024 x 1,964 px resolution on the 14-inch model and 3,456 x 2,234 px on the 16-incher. Both are 120Hz ProMotion panels with True Tone and cover the P3 color gamut.
Apple is adding a new optional nano-texture option (like on the 2024 iPad Pros) which allows the panels to peak at 1,000 nits of SDR brightness and up to 1,600 nits in HDR.
There’s a new 12MP selfie cam with Center Stage that keeps you in the frame even if you move around while also offering improved video quality.
Apple claims its M4 Pro and M4 Max feature faster GPU cores, with 2x faster ray-tracing engine and a 2x faster neural engine compared to the M3 series.
For users that push their workflow to the limit, Apple’s new M4 Max chip offers up to 16 CPU cores and up to 40 GPU cores paired with up to 128GB of unified memory. Apple claims M4 Max offers 3.5x the performance of the M1 Max.
The I/O situation is largely the same but you now get a third Thunderbolt 4 UBS-C port on the baseline 14-inch Pro. The right side carries the same MagSafe charging port, 2x Thunderbolt 4 (Thunderbolt 5 on the M4 Pro and Max models) and a headphone jack. The opposite side offers 1x HDMI, a third Thunderbolt 4/5 port and a SDXC card slot. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.
The 14-inch MacBook Pros come with 72.4Wh batteries and 70W (M4) or 96W (M4 Pro/Max) power adapters. The 16-inch model gets a 100Wh cell and 140W USB-C power adapter. Apple claims its baseline M4 model offers up to 24 hours of battery life, while the 16-inch M4 Max variant can go for 18 hours on a charge.
All of the new MacBook Pros come in Space Black and Silver colors.
The baseline M4 MacBook Pro 14 starts at $1,599 and comes with 16GB RAM. The M4 Pro upgrade is an extra $400, while the M4 Max model starts at $3,199.
The M4 Pro MacBook Pro 16 starts at $2,499, while the M4 Max is $3,499.
Apple’s new M4 MacBook Pros are on pre-order from Apple. Shipments start on November 8.
Apple also announced that its MacBook Air models (both the 13” and 15”) will now get 16GB RAM as standard. This is a welcome update as both previously shipped with 8GB RAM while the upgrade to 16GB cost $200.
