MacBook Pro M4 Review: Speed demon

Apple is once again refreshing the stellar MacBook Pro chassis it released in 2021 with a new chipset. With the M4 Max at the top of the lineup, the company regains the crown as the fastest consumer chip on the market. So yeah, these things are fast.

There’s a little more to it than that as well. While the overall MacBook Pro design hasn’t changed, Apple has implemented its Nano-texture display tech, a $190 add-on that helps the screen reflect glare. I’ve never played with this before, and now that I have it, I’m obsessed. I don’t think I’d ever buy a MacBook without it again.

Combine these two key upgrades with the MacBook Pro’s already great features, and it’s hard to beat the value Apple has packed into these portable powerhouses.

The Nano-texture display goes further than you’d think

When I first heard Apple was bringing the Nano-texture tech to the MacBook Pro, I shrugged it off. It seemed like a minor upgrade to an already fabulous computer, so I wasn’t overly interested. Now, having used the MacBook with the coating all week, I never want to go back.

It might seem like a menial upgrade, but since the display is one of the main elements that you actually interact with, it makes an outsized impact. In dark rooms, you barely notice it, but under bright light and direct lighting, it’s super helpful. For instance, I was in a dark meeting room at work a few days ago, and there were large hanging lights above the seats, and the glare on my co-worker’s screen was night and day compared to mine. He had a big orange reflection in the center of his screen, and I had none.

If you like to use your Mac in dark mode or with a dim backlight, this new coating helps a lot since you don’t have to worry about outside sources messing with your screen and forcing you to pump the brightness. It’s kind of like active noise-cancelling (ANC) in headphones. Once enabled, you don’t need to have your music as loud as you would without it, and I felt the same way about screen brightness when using the nano texture display.

One caveat is how the new nano-cell texture holds up over time. My old MacBook Pro has a bit of a line on the screen from dust and dirt on the keyboard being squished against it in my backpack when I travel with only one bag. I’m hoping this new textured display will help alleviate that, but only time will tell how well it holds up to being used and abused on the road.

More than fast enough

The MacBook Pro has Apple’s fastest chip, the M4 Max, but even the M4 Pro that I tested in my review unit was more than fast enough. My review unit featured 48GB of RAM, a 14-core CPU, and a 20-core GPU. This also includes a 16-core Neural Engine for AI tasks, but that engine has 16 cores across every single M4 chip, so it’s not exclusive to the MacBook Pro.

During testing, I found the computer to be extremely snappy. Apps like Final Cut Pro and Photoshop opened instantaneously on the M4 Pro while taking longer on the M1 Pro with 32GB of RAM that I usually run. The M1 was by no means slow, and I never really considered upgrading it, but next to the M4, the older laptop showed that it wasn’t the latest and greatest anymore.

This speed also translates well into professional apps, with stabilization and another effect that might take a few seconds on my older laptop, happening super quickly on the M4 Pro. Some of the on-device neural filters in Photoshop would take around 30 seconds to run on my M1 Pro, and on the M4, they would be done in less than three seconds. It was wild to see how much faster the new chip actually is when it comes to tasks that need a lot of power.

When I started testing the M4 Pro chip head-to-head with my M1 Pro, I started in Final Cut Pro. Shockingly, both computers exported a 15-minute 4K iPhone ProRes timeline in basically the same amount of time (12:39), which speaks volumes about how well Apple has optimized Final Cut to run on all of its machines. When I took a smaller nine-minute timeline to Premiere Pro, the M4 Pro exported it about a minute faster than the older M1. The M4 was also considerably cooler to touch than the M1, which I didn’t expect but was pleasantly surprised about.

What I love about the MacBook Pro form factor

I purchased my M1 Pro laptop when it came out in 2021 and have been in love with it ever since. The machine is my road dog, and there are a few key things that I absolutely love about it. Anyone buying the new M4-equipped versions of the Pro will likely feel the same way, and compared to the M1, the M4 versions are even better.

First up is the screen. Not only does the nano texture help reduce glare, but Apple has also implemented micro LED backlighting, which gives the screen an impressive contrast ratio for something that’s not OLED. All of the MacBook Pros from 2021 onwards can hit 1,600 nits for HDR content, but the newest M4 models can hit 1,000 nits with SDR content, making them quite a bit brighter on average than the older models. Combine that with the excellent handling of HDR content, that fantastic contrast ratio and the new matte Nano-texture option to reduce glare and these displays are hard to beat.

The speakers are also something that I love, and from the first moment I tried a MacBook Pro, I was shocked by how good they were. They’re super loud and give excellent stereo separation, and the sound quality, in general, blows people away. I have a friend who mixes music, and after he bought his unit, every time I saw him for a few months after that, he would just gush about how good the speakers are and how much of an improvement they are over his old Intel MacBook Pro.

Beyond the screen, there are two things that I severely miss whenever I go to any other computer. One is the super-fast SD card reader, and the other is the battery life. On the M4 models, it’s still the same card reader, but the battery life has gotten better. My older M1 Pro was rated to last around 11-17 hours, which was already a ton of time, and when I was video editing, I could pretty much get through a full day without needing to plug in, which was impressive. The new M4 Pro/Max chip-equipped models are rated to stretch that even further to 13-22 hours, and if you have the base model with just the M4 chip, it can go for a full 16-24 hours, which is incredible. Obviously, in real workloads, these numbers go down, but even being able to push through a full day and a half of work without the charger is extremely reassuring and removes a lot of charging anxiety that I used to have with my older laptops before the M-series came out. I can comfortably take this M4 Pro I’m using into the office, work all day and leave my charger at home if I want, and that’s not something I ever expected to be able to do with a laptop.

There are rumours that Apple is going to slim down the MacBook Pros in 2026 and implement an OLED screen, but what’s on offer today is still so impressive for a mobile computer that I don’t think you need to wait for those unless you travel a ton and need something super small. The current 14-inch Pros weigh three and a half pounds, and while they’re not as light as the 2.7-pound Air, they’re still compact enough to fit in most bags and not be a huge drag.

Small refinements with a big impact

The MacBook Pro has been stellar since 2021, and now that it’s got a new screen option and a faster chip, it’s a lot better than I expected. I don’t think anyone with an M2 or M3 Pro will need to upgrade immediately unless they’re constantly working outside in the sun. However, I think people with M1 Pros who feel like they could use a little more power will be pleased with the M4 Pro since it’s so much more instantaneous than the 2021 version.

Personally, since I mainly edit smaller batches of photos and mid-level videos for YouTube, I think the M1 Pro I have still has enough power that I wouldn’t complain about it. However, I did notice and appreciate the extra speed the M4 offers. Plus, the extra battery life is really helpful over long shoot days when I’m out at events and need to edit videos and write stories for hours on end, and sometimes it’s hard to find an outlet.

Anyone looking at the M4 base model this year will be happy to know that you can now get it in Space Black. It also comes with three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports instead of two like the M3 version, which makes it easier to use accessories and external monitors.

Overall, this is a standard chip upgrade, but the option of having the anti-glare screen makes an outsized impact that I think most people would enjoy. The 14-inch M4 version starts at $2,099, the M4 Pro starts at $2,699, and the M4 Max option starts at $4,349. No matter what option you choose, adding the nano-texture coating to the display costs $190.