Apple’s week of product announcements continued with the company announcing M4 and M4 Max-based versions of its 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro notebooks, alongside a new entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M4 chip.
As had been previously leaked, the M4 and M4 Max notebooks arrive with a minimum of 24GB of Unified Memory, up from 18GB of the M3 MacBook Pro models. The new computers feature three Thunderbolt 5 ports, the newest specification of Thunderbolt that offers speeds of up to 120 Gb/s with Bandwidth Boost, which is triple the maximum bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4. The updated Thunderbolt standard also offers native support for DisplayPort 2.1 output over USB-C. The Thunderbolt 5 standard is fully compatible with USB4 and also supports protocols such as PCIe 4.0, which offers faster data access speeds for external storage devices and peripherals.
The M4 Pro chip offers a 14-core CPU with 10 performance cores as well as four efficiency cores and features up to a 20-core GPU that Apple claims is twice as powerful as the M4. The company has cited that the M4 Pro offers a 75 percent increase in memory bandwidth over the prior generation. The new MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is also up to 3x faster than models with M1 Pro, says Apple. The M4 Max model features up to a 16-core CPU, up to a 40-core GPU, over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth, and a Neural Engine that is over 3x faster than M1 Max. With M4 Max, the MacBook Pro delivers up to 3.5x the performance of M1 Max, according to Apple. The M4 Max also supports up to 128GB of unified memory.
Each of the new MacBook Pro models includes an improved Liquid Retina XDR display with an updated nano-texture display option that offers up to 1000 nits of brightness for SDR content.
Other new features include a 12MP Center Stage camera, which Apple states offers enhanced video quality in challenging lighting conditions. The update camera offers a Desk View option, which can show both your face and the desk immediately below. The 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro model is cited as offering 22 hours of battery life, while the M4 Max model offers up to 18 hours. For the 16-inch MacBook Pro, users opting for the M4 Pro can get up to 24 hours of battery life, while the M4 Max offers up to 21 hours.
Each of the models features an HDMI port that supports up to 8K resolution, and the M4 Pro model is able to support up to three 6K displays at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or HDMI, an improvement over the previous M3 Pro model. The M4 Pro chip can alternatively support one display at 6K resolution over 60Hz and a second display at 8K resolution at 60Hz or 4K resolution at 240Hz. The M4 Max model can support up to three external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 144Hz over HDMI, or up to two external displays with 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and one external display with up to 8K resolution at 60Hz or one external display with 4K resolution at 240Hz over HDMI.
Finally, the new notebooks feature an SDXC card slot, a MagSafe 3 port for charging, and a headphone jack, along with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. The units arrive in space black and silver color options, became available for pre-order yesterday, and will be available beginning Friday, November 8. In the US, pricing starts at $1,599 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro and $2,499 for the 16-inch MacBook Pro.