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Apple’s updated MacBook Pro for 2024 gets a significant power boost with the M4 chip, double the standard memory, even longer battery life, and a price cut, finishing the year on a high.
The long-running laptop line now starts at £1,599 (€1,899/$1,599/A$2,499), making it around £100 cheaper than last year’s M3 models. While it’s still an expensive and premium laptop, it comes with at least 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB, which was an upgrade worth paying more for on previous models.
The exterior is unchanged from its predecessor. The body is still a solid, premium aluminum shell that looks great in gray or black. It’s not a super slim machine, but the 14.2-inch size is easy to fit into a bag without feeling too tight for working on the go.
The display remains the star of the show: a super bright and sharp mini LED display with a 120Hz refresh rate to keep everything smooth. It’s noticeably brighter than many rivals for general work and really shines with HDR content. Apple now sells a special nano-textured screen option for £150 more that significantly reduces glare when working in bright light or outdoors if necessary.
The on-screen webcam has received a very welcome upgrade to a 12MP Stage Center camera, similar to those used on most iPads as of 2021. It automatically pans and scans to keep you in the frame, which is a Great feature for anyone who lives on video calls for work. “He has a novel”desktop view”Option that uses the ultra wide angle lens to show the space directly in front of the laptop to demonstrate things remotely. It’s not the clearest view with the built-in camera, but it’s easier to try using an iPhone as a secondary camera with various accessories.
The camera still doesn’t support Apple’s Face ID system on the iPhone and iPad, which is a shame even though the Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the power button works very well.
Budget
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Screen: 14.2-inch Mini LED (3024 x 1964; 254 dpi) ProMotion (120 Hz)
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Processor: Apple M4, Pro or Max
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RAM: 16, 24, 32 or up to 128 GB
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Storage: 512 GB, 1, 2, 4 or 8 TB SSD
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Operating system: macOS 15.1 Sequoia
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Camera: 12 MP center stage
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Connectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 3x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4, HDMI 2.1, SD card, headphones
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Dimensions: 221.2 x 312.6 x 15.5mm
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Weight: 1.55 kilos
Fast power of the M4 with very long battery life
Inside, the big update is the addition of Apple’s latest series of M4 chips, first seen in the M4 iPad Pro from earlier this year. The base model of the 14-inch MacBook Pro now starts with a 10-core version of the M4 chip and 16GB of RAM (twice as much as its predecessor), which is a welcome improvement.
The M4 chip is up to 25% faster across the board than the outgoing M3 chip and up to 1.8 times faster than the original M1 chip, making it very fast. In daily use, it felt extremely fast, launching apps and processing data noticeably faster than on a 2021 MacBook Pro with M1 Pro chip.
The laptop has a class-leading battery life, lasting about 21 hours of light browsing and regularly managing about 18 hours of work with many tabs open in Chrome, a word processor, plus several small utilities, messaging apps and note taking, and some light photo editing in affinity photo. 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 create code, M4 Pro and M4 Max chips are available that add more high-performance processing and graphics cores, plus Lightning 5 connectivity.
The base model M4 laptop gets an additional Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 port compared to its predecessor and is capable of controlling two external monitors and the laptop’s display at once.
Sustainability
MacBook Pro is made from 35% recycled materials, including aluminum, copper, gold, plastic, rare earths, steel, and tin. Apple breaks down the computer’s environmental impact in its report.
The laptop is generally repairable and Apple does repair manuals available. The battery should last more than 1000 complete charge cycles and it can be replaced for £245 by Apple. The company offers free exchange and recycling programs, even for non-Apple products.
MacOS Sequoia and the first from Apple Intelligence
The MacBook Pro runs the latest version of macOS Sequoia 15.1, which ships with a variety of new messaging and other features in line with iOS 18.1. It has a handy new window tiling system, which snaps windows to the sides or full screen when you drag them to the edges of the screen, similar to the Windows 11 feature.
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has iPhone mirroringwhich allows you to wirelessly view a virtual representation of your iPhone on your Mac and control it with your mouse and keyboard, including using apps. Notifications you choose from your phone appear in the Mac notification center, which is useful for certain services that only have phone apps.
But it’s the first Apple Intelligence features that are the highest-profile new additions. These include the same AI writing tools capable of revising, rewriting and summarizing your text as seen on an iPhone or iPad. Because they’re built directly into the operating system, they’re easier and faster to use than third-party options, but I only found them useful a few times.
You can now type to speak with the new Siri, which works great on a Mac. Double-tap the Command button to bring up a text box to ask your query instead of by voice, which is much more socially acceptable on an office or cafeteria. However, Siri is still far behind rivals like Google’s Gemini in capability.
Other small artificial intelligence tools are spread across several applications. The Photos app now has natural language search and a new AI Clean Up tool to remove unwanted objects. The Mail and Messages apps have smart AI responses and conversation summaries, while notifications from all apps can be stacked and summarized for quick analysis.
None of these tools seem like great features on the Mac, but some of them can be useful in a pinch and generally stay out of the way otherwise.
Price
The 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 starts at £1,599 (€1,899/$1,599/A$2,499). The M4 Pro models start at £1,999 (€2,399/$1,999/A$3,299) and the 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 around £1,400, the Razer Blade 14 costs £2,150 and Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio 2 costs from £2,069.
Verdict
The MacBook Pro M4 shows that small improvements across the board slowly add up to much bigger things. It may not look all that different from last year’s M3 model, but it offers a significant improvement in speed and battery life and, compared to a machine that’s only three years old, makes a big difference in daily operation.
The 14-inch laptop remains the sweet spot for screen size and portability, helped by Apple’s best keyboard, trackpad, and fantastic display.
Finally, bringing the excellent Center Stage camera to the MacBook Pro is a very welcome update, even if it doesn’t come with Face ID. The additional USB-C port, twice the initial memory and the high speed of the M4 chip make the initial model much more attractive as well.
It’s still an expensive laptop, but as a premium workstation that can be used at full speed away from an outlet and lasts a long time on battery, nothing compares unless you specifically need Windows 11.
Advantages: M4 chip is fast and offers options for more available power, 16GB RAM minimum, very long battery life, fantastic ProMotion miniLED display, excellent Center Stage camera, lots of ports and SD card slot, brilliant speakers, Touch ID , excellent keyboard and trackpad.
Cons: You can’t upgrade Face ID, USB-A, RAM or SSD after purchase, it’s expensive and not a huge upgrade on the M3 model.
