Hot on the M4-enhanced trail of the Apple iMac and the entirely redesigned Mac mini comes the M4-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro—the basic model of Apple's 2024 laptop line. (Apple hasn't refreshed its popular-favorite MacBook Air with M4 at the same time.) Though the MacBook Pro (starts at $1,599; $1,949 as tested) scales up to a 16-inch screen with formidable workstation-class silicon in the form of the M4 Pro and M4 Max, the 14-inch model with the standard M4 chip is a highly capable laptop for content creators and power users. If you want something more impressive than the MacBook Air but don't need the 16-inch version's unbridled power (or accompanying higher price), the MacBook Pro 14-Inch is a fantastic choice for professionals and consumers alike.
Configurations: Customizing the MacBook Pro
Our review unit of the MacBook Pro 14-Inch is close to the $1,599 entry-level model, which comes with Apple's 10-core M4 processor, 16GB of memory, and a Space Black finish. Ours rings up at $1,949 thanks to two upgrades: a 1TB rather than 512GB solid-state drive, and a display with Apple's option for nano-texture glass, designed to reduce glare and reflections.
But this size of the MacBook Pro offers many options for shoppers who want more power and are willing to pay for it. The 14-inch model can be outfitted with the M4 Pro and M4 Max processors, with memory and storage scaling up to 128GB and 8TB, respectively. It's possible to spend up to $7,049 for a MacBook Pro 14-Inch configuration, but even if you don't go anywhere near that ceiling, you'll get remarkable power for the money.
Alternately, if you need a bigger screen, the 2024 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,499 with the M4 Pro chip, 24GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The larger chassis can be configured with the same memory and storage ceilings as the 14-inch model for $7,349. (That's with the M4 Max and the nano-texture screen option.)
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Design: Is an Unchanged MacBook Pro Timeless, or a Retread?
Though the MacBook Pro 14 features some excellent improvements in processing and AI-powered features, the physical design is exactly the same as on the previous model. That's hardly a surprise, as Apple sticks with its designs for years on end. It works because the company's laptops are about as refined as it gets, with the only real changes in recent years being a different port lineup and the switch from the old glowing-white Apple logo to a shiny chrome emblem.
In any case, the 14-inch MacBook Pro isn't just familiar, it's the identical twin of the 2023 edition, measuring 0.61 by 12.3 by 8.7 inches, weighing 3.4 pounds, and featuring a matte Space Black finish that repels fingerprints.
The screen is superb, with a high-resolution 3,024-by-1,964-pixel panel backed with mini LED backlighting for near-OLED levels of contrast and excellent HDR performance. Apple dressed up our sample with a nano-texture glass layer whose microscopic etchings scatter ambient light. The idea is to cut down on glare and reflections, while maintaining the color and contrast of the underlying Liquid Retina XDR display, and it works.
The panel's high refresh rate is also a nice touch, with a peak 120Hz for gaming and media creation. Bolstering it is Apple's ProMotion adjustable-refresh-rate technology, matching the screen redraw to whatever the media is, from document editing to movies and games. The Liquid Retina XDR display also has Extreme Dynamic Range features that include up to 1,000 nits of brightness for outdoor readability and 1,600 nits of peak brightness for HDR content. (Unfortunately, we weren't able to replicate the 1,000-nit brightness in our display tests, because the laptop uses an ambient-light sensor to ramp up the brightness in response to sunlight, something we had trouble replicating in our test space.)
The audio is just as impactful, thanks to Apple's cool force-canceling woofers, part of the six-speaker audio array built into the MacBook Pro. By pairing two drivers to vibrate in opposite directions, the technology allows for bigger sound with fewer distortions. The Dolby Atmos spatial audio support is also nice.
Input Devices & the Camera: Familiar Feels & Faces
The keyboard is a familiar comfort—that is, if you already love the MacBook Pro's keyboard from past editions. Plenty of people like the current iteration of Apple's laptop Magic Keyboard, and I've sung its praises in the past. The 1mm of key travel is a little shallow, but the typing experience is solid, with good feedback and easy-to-read key legends, as well as effective key backlighting. But it's also unchanged from the previous model, which means that if you've found past Mac keyboards to be too finicky or shallow for your liking, this one won't change your opinion. That said, the keyboard's inclusion of a Touch ID sensor, full-height function keys, and an ambient-light sensor for automatic backlight adjustment still make for one of the most full-featured laptop keyboards you'll find.
The Force Touch trackpad is also an excellent, if unchanged, feature. The generous size gives you room for comfortable swiping and scrolling, and the haptic feedback for each click is clean and crisp enough to make you forget that it's not mechanical. Plus, the pressure-sensitive Force Touch features give you a whole range of input options and contextual menus depending on whether you apply light, medium, or hard pressure, opening up an array of convenient features that are quick to access and easy to use.
One notable upgrade from the previous M3-powered MacBook Pro is the move to a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera. This cool upgrade from the 1080p FaceTime camera of past models adds support for Desk View, which uses the lower part of the camera's field of vision (plus some fancy image processing) to function like a face-down document cam when you want to show something on your desk.
The only problem I had when testing the new camera was that, despite its significantly higher-resolution sensor, image capture is still limited to 1080p HD. That may be necessary to let the webcam perform its Center Stage trick of keeping you in the middle of the frame as you move around. But it's still a bummer to be shooting 1080p video with a camera that can see 4,000 by 3,000 pixels.
Connectivity & Ports: Plugged-In Enough
The MacBook Pro 14-Inch features connections like an SDXC card slot and an HDMI monitor port, two ports that returned in 2021 after disappearing in 2016, along with a 3.5mm audio jack and a MagSafe 3 charging port. The good news is that the M4 Pro's MagSafe charger is identical to the M3 version's, so you can use them interchangeably, which you couldn't do with previous models.
But the stars of the connectivity show must be the trio of Thunderbolt 4 ports. With a compact USB-C connector and support for 40Gbps data transfer, DisplayPort output for external monitors, and charging capability (a USB-C laptop charger is significantly more affordable than a new MagSafe charger), your options are actually better than many of the models featured on our Best Laptops page.
Finally, the MacBook Pro 14 also has Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity.
Software Enhanced: macOS Sequoia & Apple Intelligence
The new MacBook also benefits from Apple's latest version of macOS, dubbed Sequoia. Most of the updates are small, leaving the core functionality of the operating system alone, but improving things like split-screen management, presenter controls for video calling, and various quality-of-life enhancements to the baked-in Apple apps.
But there is one major change with the introduction of Apple Intelligence, the umbrella name for Cupertino's AI assistance tools and features. This collection of tools relies heavily on ChatGPT, providing ChatGPT-powered features like content summaries, proofreading, and other writing tools that are now available in numerous apps. Siri gets a double scoop of technical-support knowledge added, as well as a type-to-Siri feature that makes it easy to message the assistant on a laptop. And Apple Intelligence for Photos tools give users AI-powered photo editing in Apple Photos.
It's not an overwhelming number of new additions, but these new AI capabilities will run faster and smoother on the M4 chip's enhanced neural engine, making the new MacBook Pro a perfect showcase for the new features.
Testing the 2024 Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch: M4, Tried & Test-Driven
For our testing of the M4 MacBook Pro 14-inch, I compared the new laptop against other recent MacBook models, like its 2023 M3 predecessor and the more 2023 potent M3 Max version of the MacBook Pro 16-Inch, so that we could get a clear picture of how the new M4 processor improves overall performance. For those thinking about switching from Windows, I also included in the test comparisons the recent Dell XPS 14 and the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11, which are an ultraportable and a mobile workstation, respectively. Whether you want a capable all-arounder or a professional powerhouse, these comparisons should make it clear where the M4 MacBook Pro stands.
Productivity & Content Creation Tests
Our Mac testing isn't an exact copy of our Windows testing protocols, due to the differences in operating system, chip architecture, and software catalog. But there's plenty of overlap, starting with our productivity tests.
We use a number of benchmarks that focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 6.3 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
We also run PugetBench for Photoshop, a test utility fashioned by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the 2024 version of Adobe's famous image editor to rate a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The overall difference between Apple's M4 chip and even excellent Intel options like the Core Ultra 7 processors used in the Dell XPS 14 and HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 really stands out in our testing. In Cinebench renders, the multicore score of the M4 MacBook Pro 14 dwarfed the Intel-based machines, as well as last year's M3 MacBook. The same was true in HandBrake, as well as Geekbench, which measures overall aptitude at daily productivity tasks. Even in Photoshop, the M4 Pro fell second only to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M3 Max. The bottom line is that for both raw processor performance and applied power in productivity apps, you'll find the new MacBook Pro to be faster and more capable than even some of the best Windows machines we've tested.
Workstation-Specific Tests
We chose to forgo our usual graphics testing for this review, as the limits of testing a system before release prevented us from running the 3DMark tests we normally use. We'll return to this shortly after the reviews publish, as we'll do additional graphics and games testing on the new Macs. But for now, we have no 3DMark test results to report.
However, we did run our workstation performance tests, which focus heavily on GPU performance in tasks like rendering in Blender and manipulating footage in Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve Studio.
For these tests, we also brought in the 2024 M4 Pro-based Apple MacBook Pro 16-Inch, so we could also see how the new base M-series chip compares to a version up the M4 line.
Here we get a very clear picture of where the M4 fits in versus the previous line of M3 chips. In DaVinci Resolve Studio, the M4-powered MacBook handily beats the older M3 base model, but it comes in behind the more-capable M3 Pro and M3 Max. Similarly, while the M4 is a clear step up from the M3, the more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max still deliver better performance in both CPU- and GPU-focused versions of the Blender benchmark tests.
Battery & Display Tests
We test laptops' battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Apple touted the new MacBook Pro's battery life when it announced the systems, presenting it as the first MacBook to last a full 24 hours. Because we test battery life differently than Apple's published streaming video test, we had actually already seen MacBooks break the 24-hour mark. But the latest model still pushes battery life to lengths few machines have hit in our testing, with an unprecedented 28 hours and 33 minutes of video playback time. Impressive, and more than sufficient to be called genuinely all-day battery life.
Display testing is a little less straightforward, since Apple's brightness claims (as mentioned) involve the ambient-light sensor, which we don't address in our standard screen tests. However, what we saw in testing was still impressive, with the new MacBook Pro inching ahead of the already impressive 2023 models with better color reproduction and higher display brightness. The result looks superb and is only enhanced by features like the nano-textured glass and the variable brightness that ramps up under outdoor lighting conditions.
Verdict: An Iteration on a Winning Formula
Taken altogether, there's no doubt the 2024 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro is an excellent base-level Mac. As the step-up model between the MacBook Air and the more capable Pro models with M4 Pro and M4 Max silicon, the M4 model doesn't feel like the entry-level member of the family. Instead, it feels like a premium top performer. It would take top honors if it weren't launching alongside the even more capable 14-inch and 16-inch models with those higher-tier versions of the M4.
But even without winning an Editors' Choice award, the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro commands attention with some subtle new features. From the display-glass option to the addition of Apple Intelligence and a new 12-megapixel webcam, the 2024 MacBook Pro manages to improve upon last year's model. Pretty impressive for a system that looks identical to its predecessor.
It's a dead ringer for 2023's model, but Apple's M4 MacBook Pro remains a portable content-creation powerhouse, thanks to a beefed-up processor, smart AI features, and seemingly endless battery life.
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