Apple has introduced an updated MacBook Pro with even more powerful chips. The company announced that the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro will receive M4 series processors, namely M4 Pro and M4 Max. The smaller laptop will also be available in the most affordable version with an M4 chip and minor external upgrades: it will have another USB-C port (Thunderbolt 4) and will be available in black.
Image source: Apple
Like previous models, Apple laptops powered by the M4 Pro processor will start at $1,999 for the 14-inch model and $2,499 for the 16-inch. In addition to new chips, the new products also received more RAM – 24 GB instead of the previous 18 GB in minimal configurations. In turn, the 14-inch MacBook Pro on a regular M4 chip will offer 16 GB of RAM and will retail for $1,599.
The Apple M4 Pro is offered in configurations with 12 or 14 processor cores and 16 or 20 graphics cores, respectively. In turn, the new M4 Max offers 14 or 16 processing cores, which are complemented by 32- and 40-core graphics accelerators, respectively. In all cases, the chip carries a 16-core neural engine.
Apple claims that all M4 series chips feature the “world’s fastest processor core” and “industry-leading single-threaded performance.” Single-core performance has been a strength of Apple Mac chips since the M1 generation, and the M4 chips promise “significantly higher multi-threaded performance.” The M4 Pro and Max also have faster GPU cores, and the ray tracing engine is twice as fast. The neural engine is also twice as fast as in M3, allowing for improved performance with machine learning and artificial intelligence.
In addition to improved chips and RAM, the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Pro and M4 Max chips became the first Apple laptops with Thunderbolt 5 ports. In addition, the new products are equipped with an SD card slot, HDMI output and MagSafe. All three MacBook Pros feature new 12-megapixel webcams with wider viewing angles and desktop capture capabilities. Each new product also offers as an option a new Liquid Retina XDR display with a nanotexture coating, which is capable of providing brightness of up to 1000 cd/m2 when displaying regular content and up to 1600 cd/m2 in HDR. The screen resolution is 3456 × 2234 pixels for the 16.2-inch model and 3024 × 1964 pixels for the 14.2-inch laptop.