Apple’s new Macbook Pro M4 has launched, now available to pre order
posted Friday, November 1, 2024 at 6:22 AM EDT
Apple has had a busy week, introducing a slew of products from the tiny Mac Mini M4 to the all-new iMac. One product that stands out for photographers and videographers is the new Macbook Pro powered by the Apple silicone M4.
The Macbook Pro gets a massively powerful new chip in the M4 line of processors, including the M4 Pro which is also available for the Mac Mini. The M4 models also get a significant upgrade in RAM and performance.
The basic Macbook Pro has a 14-inch screen and the base M4 chip with its 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. The M4 chip is divided into four performance cores and six efficiency cores. The base model 14-inch Macbook Pro starts with 16GB of RAM instead of the 8GB in the previous model and will support a maximum of 32GB of RAM. Apple claims that the M4 Macbook is 1.8x faster than the M1-powered model in editing high-resolution images. Base storage on the M4 variant is a 512GB SSD which can be upgraded to 2TB.
The high-end 14 and 16-inch Macbook Pro with M4 Pro sports a 14-core CPU and up to 20-core GPU and is claimed to be twice as fast as the base model M4 laptop. The CPU uses 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores for a massive leap in processing power. The M4 Pro-powered laptop will have a base RAM of 24GB and a maximum of 128 GB. It will have the same base storage as the M4 laptop but with an upgrade ceiling of 4TB.
Apple's new M4 chip comes to the Macbook
The top-end Macbook is equipped with the M4 Max chip that has a 16-core CPU and up to 40-core GPU. The chip has 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores and is reportedly 2.2x faster than the M1 Max CPU. Having a 40-core GPU sounds crazy but it will surely boost productivity in editing those 8K video files. The M4 Max supports a maximum of 128GB of RAM, which is a lot for a laptop. Storage on the M4 Max is a whopping 8TB.
All variants of the Macbook Pro will use a new mini-LED backlit display with Liquid Retina XDR. The screen will have 1000 nits sustained and 1600 nits peak brightness for ultra-crisp images. The LED displays have ProMotion technology for adaptive refresh rates of up to 120Hz.
The base model 14-inch laptop gets an extra USB-C / Thunderbolt 4 port while the M4 Pro and M4 Max variants use Thunderbolt5 ports. The Macbook Pro will have an HDMI port, SDXC card slot, and a 3.5mm audio jack.