Don't Buy MacBook M4 Pro Over M4! - It's Not For You!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ม.ค. 2025
- Comparing M4 vs M4 Pro and why the common person coming across this video doesn't need M4 Pro. Apple Silicon is leaps and bounds better than Intel Macs, so buy accordingly.
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Future proof = waste of money in 99% of cases.
All these tech influencers pushing the standards too much in the name of “future-proofing”
I had it on Cdcare had to decline the pending order because it’s really a waste of money 💰 I’ll rather save more to get a big ride than paying 4m on a system
Totally agree!
Nah. Just depends on what do you do on your job with a Mac
For 50% of ppl who they use it for programming and browser app my 7 years old Mac is still usable so… totally not true I just waited too much to change mine but every Pro you buy is 5-7 years future proof
Kind of funny, because in 2017 I bought the top tier Macbook pro, and it was still a powerhouse for most productivity software up to this year. A solid 6-7 years of use. The base models then couldn’t hang as well today. If you keep your laptop for at least 5 years the pro might be worth considering.
It's refreshing to see a common-sense video on purchasing a Apple laptop. Too many videos like to push the bells and whistles. Not everyone needs all that.
wow… i’ve been killing myself and losing sleep literally over the decision…. I ended up with the base version and kicking myself after watching all these videos saying that I should’ve gotten something more…. You’ve calmed me down considerably with your practical point of view….. thank you for your sanity!
Be happy with your purchase. If it’s not enough for you then you can upgrade
I bought the m4 pro with the 20c gpu. I really don’t think I need this much power. I’m might go ahead and send this back for the m4.
You can get the base m4 and it should scale up to 400k subscribers. But you will upgrade before you hit 400k. Days is upgrading and he hasn’t hit 100k. But oh so close!!!
@@connor3008If you’re unsure about the purpose of something, you don't need it.
I was right there with you. Losing sleep, worrying about the decision, seeing the somewhat close prices and worrying about "future proofing".
I actually bought the M4 Pro first since everyone was saying that's what you need but just returned it and got the regular base M4. Can't tell a difference whatsoever and saving $400 is always nice and I can put that towards buying a new computer in a few years if I need to.
I have recently upgraded my MBP to M4 chip base version with extra memory from last intel i5 pro model.
An average Joe does not need upgrades every year or so or even require bump in the performance.
I appreciate your content to support users like us unlike the so called tech tubers promoting Maxed out Apple products which even they can’t push it to it’s limits.
There are youtubers that push it to its limits, maybe I should become one of them
@@DayoAworunseyou definitely should become like them. Pump em dollars man
I’ve watched dozens of videos on TH-cam about these two laptops. Everyone was talking about users who edit videos and photos. I really appreciate your opinion and consider that you’ve provided the best explanation regarding which laptop should be chosen for an average user.
I'm the consumer you mentioned, forced into an upgrade from my 2013 machine. I started with m3pro machine, and I maxed out the cores while editing a midi song track. When the lid sensor went out and BestBuy offered to replace the machine, I lucked out and they replaced it with an m4pro machine. Based on my experience, I would have been upset if I had not gotten the best I could afford when it came to processing power. I think many people are on that same boat. Some may never use it, but they'll miss it when they need it. To me, the upgrade was worth it...
I've watched 10s of videos these days on that subject and you're the only one actually being totally honest about M4 vs M4 Pro : that most probably the normal average user will not need the computing power of the M4 Pro, except if he is a researcher or mouting the next Star Wars movie. That was good to hear you, thank you, you just earned a subscriber.
After re-examining my needs, I found that the performance of my current M1 Pro is still sufficient for me
lmao
I tend to agree with this if someone upgrades about every 3 years and are an average user. I tend to upgrade only ever 6-7 years so I generally buy a maxxed out spec Mac in order to get it to last as long as 7 years with decent performance at the end of its lifecycle. Last computer I had was a 27" 5K iMac, max spec (except for a 3TB fusion drive HDD). It served me well until 2021, so i can't complain. Then I upgraded to an M1 Macbook Air and M1 iMac that I gave to my son and was blown away by the performance. But it didn't really do what I wanted it to do with games, editing 4K video and just overall multitasking performance with business apps (lack of memory I think held these computers back). So this time I splurged and bought a 16" M3 Max MB Pro, 48 GB of RAM and the 1TB SDD. Pretty happy with the performance so far, it handles everything I can throw at it and then some, and I am comfortable using this computer for many years. The M1 iMac that my son uses keeps soldiering on, and should serve him well into college next year, along with an M2 iPad Air if he needs something portable for classes. He wants to upgrade the iMac to the newer M4 iMacs, but I told him that is on him to pay for this time :).
You are dumb if you think MacBooks are for gaming
I agree with your observations. I just received my M4 Pro with the base M4 Chip. I got 1 Terabyte HD and I went for 32 gigs of memory (I think I probably should have chosen 24, but time will tell). The 3 Tunderbolt ports, better screen, better camera are a nice upgrades.
I am concerned with supply disruption and prices with the incoming administration. I have no idea what is going to happen in the future. I wanted to upgrade next year, so I pulled the trigger now. I have updated my MacBook Pro M4, iPad Pro M4 and iPhone 16 ProMax. I think I am good for the next few years.
Yeah bro, you're good for at least the next 4 years
you made a good decision with the bump in HD storage
Can you help me out? I'm deciding between Macbook 14" M4 with 32 GB unified memory and Macbook 14" M4 Pro with 24GB unified memory. The difference is between the cores. My work involves video editing on Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, Davinci or After Effects. I need to upgrade my laptop but I'm not sure which one to choose between these two options. I want faster performance and something that lasts me long without slowing down
@@Filmitmishal I am not an expert in this case, but I do follow a lot of TH-cam Chanels. If you do things like video editing, it seems that the M4Pro chip gives you more power with the increased cores. My understanding is the 24 gigs of memory will be properly handled by MacOS. I only do occasional videos and record large Zoom meetings, so I am not a power user. I tend to like to keep my hardware current. I provide tech support for a social group of seniors and my main concern is they are mostly using Intel processors from 5 to 10 years old with some not being supported for security updates. I am working on upgrading everyone to M3 Air and M4 iMacs right now. In the past on my old MacBook Pro's, I ran out of Hard Drive space and then Memory before I became unsatisfied with the chip, but that is for light video editing. Best of luck with your choices.
@@Filmitmishalif in doubt go for the 24GB if it doesnt do the job. Then return. (You have up to 14 days to return) then upgrade to the larger United memory. Hope this helps
Don't waste money upgrading an M4 model. The M4 model with 24GB RAM and 1TB SSD will run you $2000 through apple right now. You can buy the M4 Pro model with 20 GPU cores, 24GB RAM, and 1TB from Best Buy for $2100. The 6 extra performance CPU cores, 10 extra GPU cores, TB5, and doubled memory bandwidth is easily worth $100 and you'd be kind of silly to leave that performance on the table over a 5% price difference. Getting the M4 model with no upgrades makes strictly more sense right now, at least until holiday sales clear.
I agree with this, I need a smooth experience for video editing.
This model you are talking about has always been $2399. Did you trade something in to get it at 2100
@@Sequel7get a open box in “excellent condition”. It’s the same thing as getting it brand new.
My M1 air is still running strong 🤙🏼
Same, even with Apple Intelligence
True. And the only reason I’m upgrading my M1 Air is because I didn’t upgrade the specs :-). As you say in the video.
Though, it will be nice to get a faster Apple Intelligence - is that something you can check for us, performance with AI between M3 and M4?
As I understand it, Apple Intelligence uses a lot of local resources to run.
I believe you, M1 air is a powerful machine
How many gb of ram?
External storage for a desktop is fine, but not for a laptop. Convenience is important. I really think 1TB is ideal. When Macs came with 8GB Ram, for sure the priority was to upgrade the Ram. Now, the priority is to move up from 256GB SSD.
For me as a Virtual machine user to run windows on Mac I really need the 24Gb ram model so I can put 8 on windows and 16 for MacOS.
@@bodigames Yes, correct. In fact, I also use Parallels with 12GB for each 🙂 My Windows VM is 100GB so I am quite happy to have 1TB drive
I agree with you guys. Just want to share my case. I like the m4 max performance, so I use the laptop for personal use and my company work. So I got the 2TB model
@@seattledude2022 I think we're all jealous ;-)
@@philippelambinet1425 Hope this can really help me work better, get promotion and pay back my laptop :)
My imac from 2013 is still working like a charm ! 16ram 1tb ssd. For simple use is ok, for playing vst plugins, simple libraries,Kontakt, falcon, Nexus, Avenger, Serum is already obsolete, after 11 years is a good reason to upgrade to the M4 PRO MAX 48ram and 1tb storage and keep it for another 15 years. ✌️😬
I appreciate sponsorship ( :) ) and sane reasoning. Except M4 Pro with 24 GB of RAM costs literally same amount of money as M4 with 32 GB. Both with 512 GB of storage, but M4 Pro's is faster, just like Thunderbolt. Again - screw you customer! Most of lineup exists to sell upper lineup because AGAIN M4 PRO makes no sense with 24 GB of RAM. 13:26 - yeah, but that's why Apple won't give us MacBook Airs with multiple display support (like real one) and miniled display an full features. Apple tied functionality to performance to upsell.
how does an m4 pro with 24 gb make no sense?
I'm so glad I found this comment. Can you help me out? I'm deciding between Macbook 14" M4 with 32 GB unified memory and Macbook 14" M4 Pro with 24GB unified memory. The difference is between the cores. My work involves video editing on Avid Media Composer, Premiere Pro, Davinci or After Effects. I need to upgrade my laptop but I'm not sure which one to choose between these two options. I want faster performance and something that lasts me long without slowing down
@@Filmitmishalif you want better performance then go for the M4 pro like he said in the video if you do work that requires lots of performance such as video editing, … then go for the m4 pro. Plus the m4 pro is probably gonna last you 4-5 years easily.
@@Filmitmishal Depends on how intensive video editing you are doing. For instance, for a normal video editing, not 8k or smth like that, m4 is gonna be more than sufficient. However, if you are going to do some intense video editing, go for m4 pro.
I picked up the M4 Pro for $1750 at Best Buy. Meanwhile M4 with equivalent memory is $1800 on Apple website.
14 inch display
The M4 is 1400 on Bestbuy mate.
Yea i got the m4 16 gb 1 tb for 1710 after tax on Best Buy.
@@murtazataha7177read what he said one more time 😂
@@murtazataha7177 reread the part where he said "with equivalent memory." Dayo's point about upgrading the M4 instead of going for the M4 Pro doesn't really make sense when Best Buy is cutting $200 or $300 off the top of off-the-shelf configurations. You can spend $2000 to buy a custom order through apple that you'll wait 3 weeks to get in the mail, or you can get the M4 Pro 20 GPU core for $2000 and walk out of the store today. Second option is strictly better.
Thanks Dayo - I just got the M4 base model because I’m a standard user so your video helped confirm that I made the right choice. I appreciate your practical and balanced advice.
Thank you for this video! I was feeling great about getting the M4 as it would suit all I need to do for my busines. But your last statement on saving rendering time on video just 100% sold me on getting the M4 Pro.
Tech TH-cam needs more people with sanity like you.
Remember folks, this is for the average consumer
Even for average consumers, the MBP is overkill. Most will be fine with the Macbook Air. Unless they are above average and really need the Pro features.
@@craesh The only good reason for a standard consumer to get the Pro is the XDR display. The colors and refresh rate are immensely better than on the Air.
But that's a luxury you will have to fork out almost a thousand extra dollars for. So ask yourself is better image quality worth ~$800-$1000 to you?
@darkzerk7 I agree. The display makes a big difference. I was hesitating to buy a MBP instead of an MBA, spending over 500€ for a equally speced device. Finally, I'll give the MBA with it's poorer display a try.
@@craesh Good decision. The Mini-LED display on the M3 Air is more than amazing. Yes, the XDR is better, but not $800 better.
@@craesh a Chromebook would work!
You are the only person i trust when it comes to product reviews. Thanks so so so much for this video. It helped a lot. I've been using a dell i7 for 10 years and the laptop sound like a tractor on my table. I wish to learn some video, sound and photo editing in future and i want a laptop that stays for atleast 5-7 years and i believe if i can use my current laptop for so long then m4 MBP would be perfectly fine.
Thank you so much, i appreciate your honest reviews more than i wrote in this comment.
An honest comment deserves an honest reply
All you said can be reduced to this statement: If you are wondering if you need the M4 Pro over the M4 then you do not need the M4 Pro chip. People who need it know from the very beginning that they need it.
There's a lot of highly artistic people that actually needs it that are not very technical though (I'm not one of them so I get you)
@@cainco98 I don't know a single video/photo editor who is limited by their hardware and doesn't understand that.
@@cainco98 haha and the most artistic people use paper and pencil. Processors are so powerfull that you can do a lot of stuff. Remember that peaople went to space without these mashines. If think that if you realy need power then you will use desktop not laptop.
"Our sponsor... nobody" had me dead hahaha
0:40 and with that… u gained a sub 😂
lol...facts
Appreciate it
a day later still thought it was funny ngl
I am dying of laughter
You just became my fav Ytuber for honest opinion, rather than just ending the video like other - "so its upto the viewers to decide"
What I like about this video is it just Makes sense. The M4 is so powerful that a base pro with and external ssd can get a lot of professional editing for music or video seamlessly.
I mean I just got one and use flstudio and Logic Pro everyday and it’s nice asf.
I think it pairs great with a desktop pc tbh, I mean I normally don’t like laptops but this one is it.
M4 pro seems nice but I ain’t gonna need that power until I’d upgrade in like 4 years anyways
no problem my man
great video. i like many suffer from fomo and overthink my purchase. i upgraded to m4p from the m1p and within 5 minutes i realized that i didnt even need to. its like going from a iphone13 to a iphone 15, you cant tell the difference in performance. ita a mental game and apple is laughing all the way to the bank. ANOTHER thing i realize is that in this moment of my life, i can literally get away with using a air. we dont accurately asses our needs and let the fomo take over in all the hype.
Poetically said. It's easy to spot the difference between the two when they are side by side, but if you walked in a room with a machine, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you were doing stuff that really pushed the M4 to its limits.
Thank you, I’ve watched a lot of videos and yours was the one that made the most sense. I bought the base model MacBook Pro and I was going to return to get the pro chip and I don’t need it. I will return the base to get a terabyte on storage. But you saved me money. I appreciate your honesty I’m going to subscribe just because you were totally honest with your review. Thank you.
The base M4 $1,599 will crush anything 99% of people need to do. From photo to video editing to whatever else people want to do. Unless you need more internal storage the base model is all you need.
Thank you for the video. Finally someone who reviews it at a human level, and doesn't merely just focus on benchmark numbers and on a single field of use such as video editing, but instead you've covered multiple fields of users who'd be using it, and gave out a decent argument which isn't measured in numbers but rather the experience, especially the part where you mention that we won't even reach the full utility of the chip in most cases, which is a thing that nobody else seems to mention. Subscribed.
I feel soo much better now that I ordered the correct model now ; the MacBook Pro m4 base model . Thank you for this video !
The M4 Pro has two cooling systems, thunderbolt 5 and a lot of more power. M4 basis has only one and if you want to use a macbook for years then it is not waste of money. If it is only for 1-2 Years I am with the normal M4. But not, if for next years and to get powerful machine.
The base M4 will give at least 5 year of useful life.
I don't think many MacBook Pro users would upgrade their laptop in 1 or 2 years. Apple still has many campaigns of users still holding out on Intel.
Also has 50% more ram standard. Was the right choice for me as well.
I still have the M1 Pro and haven’t ever heard my fans kick on before.
i HAVE and still use m1 since it come out on the air, best laptop I have owned....thats 4 years so the M4 basic will last this at lest :)
Making the upgrade to the M4 pro comes with an additional 8g of ram so honestly, half the price difference is right there in addition to the M4 pro chipset along with TB5. I personally went with the M4 pro because I can afford it, and with holiday pricing I'm getting it with 24g ram for $1,599. If I was on a tight budget I might consider going base M4 for $1,399, but of for me it was a no brainer.
My 13" MBP M1 has served me for well over 3 yrs and looking forward to the M4 Pro serving me well for the next 5-7.
where did you find that price ?!!
@@abdelhameedkassem5811 it is available in best buy go check.
Very sensible advice, thumbs up. "Future proofing" for the average user is a waste of money. Most consumersreplace their laptops anyway every few years (3 or 4 years) by choice (new design, new features, etc), so there is no actual "future" to proof against.
I'm upgrading from a 2011 MBP 😀
Your videos convinced me to get the M4 > M4 Pro. I’m not a professional, but I do need an upgrade from the base M1 MacBook Air that has served me well the last 3 years. The price difference between the M4 and M4 Pro will go towards AppleCare. Thanks again man! Appreciate the hustle making these videos. Never change. All the best!
Grats man! I'm also on the M1 air but am a light user
@ Thanks man! Yeah I need more RAM/storage. But also a nicer display and definitely a boost in speakers wouldn’t hurt either!
I went with the M4 Pro 24G-1TB only because of savings! I was able to get it from Best Buy for $2,099 during the Black Friday deal, normal price is $2,399 for this configuration. In addition I'm a business owner with tax exemption on all of my Best Buy purchases, so I was able to pick up my laptop without any sales tax whatsoever. My final price out the door at Best Buy was $2,099..I may not ever use the machine to its fullest potential, but for me it just made sense to go this route. I basically got the M4 Pro 24G-1TB model for less than the normal non Black Friday price of the M4 Pro 512 gig model mentioned in this video at $1,999 plus tax. No shade at all, this was a very informative video. I'm just sharing my personal experience.
Had the same thought process but Best Buy must’ve hit their “limit” on the quantity they were willing to sell of this specific version. Wasn’t available yesterday in silver (last night) for the 300 dollar discount, available today though for 200 dollars off. I ended up just going with the M4 pro base model (1999 price). Hope I don’t regret it.
@Realestowt wait for official cyber Monday tomorrow
@@DayoAworunse already made the purchase last night when it said unavailable for the upgraded version. I’m honestly not sure I needed the upgrades though if anything maybe the 1TB would’ve been nice to avoid more external SSD use but I already have a couple . Picking it up today so start thinking I do need the additional cores and storage I’ll do an exchange.
I really appreciate this perspective. As a power user, the reason I know it's time to upgrade is when I have 128bg of ram and still feel my machine buckling under the load. If you're not being slowed down by your computers performance, you probably won't utilize any new performance you pay for.
This is the most common sense review I have seen. I also bought the regular M4 in my MacBook Pro 14". I did upgrade to the 1 TB SSD and did get the Nano Texture display. I work in a home office with a lot of natural light so having the nano-texture has been fantastic. And I like you said, I will never need the power of an M4 Pro and M4 Max. I do some basic photo editing, Word, Excel and browsing. Yes, I could have purchased an Air, but I wanted the better display and extra ports which I do use a lot. I have been absolutely happy with my M4 MacBook Pro.
I need to watch more of your reviews more regularly. You are a reviewer for the masses. Thank you.
The masses huh:
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Solid advice here. I am a web designer/developer and I just got the M4 in. My work is basicly text editing and simple image editing (cropping/resizing and vector work). I run a local server, an editor, a SASS compiler and a GIT client. l use a FTP client for file transfers. For design I use Adobe XD. Time is tracked with time management/billing software that always runs. I have several browsertabs open. I make daily backups. I have an external 4K monitor attached.
I will not see any productivity improvements if I buy a more powerful mac. I will not earn more money. If I open activity monitor on my intel powerbook, I see that I use 10-12 GB of the available 16. Zero swap memory, so 16GB is enough. On the M4 this is the same. The M4 is plenty fast for everything I do.
What people tend to forget is that if you have less costs you end up with earning more money.
i bought M4 Pro. My first time to buy a macintoush machine. It didnt fly as i thought it would,. I agree with you
> It didnt fly as i thought it would
What was ur expectations? I am planning to buy it.
Great advice. That's what i went with. Bought mac mini m4 with 24GB ram/ 512 GB SSD upgrade. All the youtubers suggested to go to m4 pro mac mini instead of upgrade. But my workfflow does'nt need that GPU power. Yet still saved 400$.
Would definitely shy away from the Pro version of the mac mini
If it weren't Apple machine, but something with shorter life cycle, I might agree.
But for 5+ years easy with this perfected form, paying just 25% more for the base (or less with deals) for much more than just 25% of possible performance with cpu, gpu and encoders too, is going to make that 5+ years better, even if not used to the max all the time. The max value simply sits with M4 Pro this time, let's not do anti-future proofing just to save a 'few bucks' (unless absolutely necessary).
I love how you review products as if you're a normal person and not somebody who thinks Final Cut Pro workloads are the end all be all of what people do with computers
awesome review, straight talk for the normal user, subscribed!
Great advice man.
I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro. I actually bought it of a friend for close to nothing many years ago because he just had to update his as some people do.
At the time this Mac was the full spec one, 15inch model, 17, 16RAM...
I am a recording musician/composer and have no restrictions whatsoever with this almost 12 yo machine.
I think what you say makes sense. But if it was me, I would buy the one I could afford (dot). If I could afford the pro, or whatever, I would definitely buy the better one I could afford and stay with it for as long as it lasts until I can no longer do what I need.
I do feel that the base models are great but great for many years less than upgrades ones.
I really appreciate the honest review of the performance of these machines and how they relate to people in the real world. I've noticed too a lot of these techtubers throw graphs in your face and tell you the this chip is this much more powerful than this one, and this one is ... blah blah blah. What they don't do is tell you the average Joe doesn't need the pro version of any of these M series chips. And this is me coming from a quad-core Intel MBP where tbh, for the stuff I do on my Mac - even a M1 Air would be good enough for me.
I had lots of notebooks (Mac, Windows and Linux) for the past 15 years, compiling, doing photo editing and other heavy stuff. For work as well as private.
Frankly speaking, you can do anything on any computer. They won’t break under any load. It may just take longer on one than the other. Turnaround times may vary between a few seconds and several minutes, I regularly had my PC blocked for 10-15 minutes in the past while compiling or executing test cases. I survived, the PC survived. Of course, time is money in a business context.
Having that said, you will just spend money on saving time while executing a task. Money won’t enable you to perform a task. Unless you have very rare use cases, like training LLMs for which you need LOTS of RAM.
RAM is the worst bottleneck, so I always prioritize RAM and buy as much as I can afford. I still remember my old Pentium MMX constantly swapping to my HDD until I upgraded from 16 to 48 MB RAM. Better than any CPU upgrade.
I grabbed the pro for some extra gaming horsepower. Also they had the pro for 250 off on blackfriday, which move the m4 pro even closer to the m4 base model. This made the m4 pro base model at 1750.
Do not buy a MacBook for games 😂😂 just buy a windows laptop then.
@manny6147 I have windows laptops, and a high end pc :D
Wow! Thank you very very much for an extremely succinct presentation! I have only reviewed two videos beside this one. Your to the point analytical presentation of the M4 and M4 Pro has me swaying toward the M4. I an an Adobe Photography Suite user with three Adobe applications, one or two search engine pages, and an iOS Numbers application open. On my older MacBook Pro the photo editing applications bogs down. Your common sense approach to what’s actually needed I definitely do not need the M4 pro… i’m now looking at the M4 with more RAM and 2 TB of internal storage (then I will only have to bring one 2TB external SSD for redundant field back up). AgainThank you very much.
Thank you, coming from an intel 2016 MacBook Pro, I was thinking about getting the M4 Pro but now I'm considering getting M4 base model with more ram
“not everything people say on the internet is set in stone” .. I never like videos, but this one made me click the like button.😊
This may be my new favorite channel! Such a great practical review for most of us and I consider myself a pro user. All of Dayo’s advice is spot on as I use the base model and have zero issues.
:)
This is exactly what I was looking for- I was on the cusps of getting a M4 plus and I just started using apple products lol. My daughter is a graphic designer and her company is upgrading them to the M4 and she was like what do you need a pro for. So you guys sold me thanks!!
Nobody mentions the display! My M1 Air was still working fine but I actually wanted a larger screen. Bought the 14" MB4 M4 16GB (1TB & Nano upgrades). The higher quality display, combined with smaller bezells and the menu bar located round the "notch" allows me to use 1800 x 1169 which gives me much more space to work yet it's an almost identically sized laptop. Going back to the M1 Air feels claustrophobic now. In everyday use it is noticeably a bit faster for everything.....'snappy' best description.
SSD read/write not noticeably different - BM speed tests both the old Air M1 and this MB Pro M4 in the 3,000 MB/s range. However, Handbrake compression speed and iMovie export speed around twice as fast - which is really useful for me.
I'm still torn whether to return it and go for the M4 Pro though. I really expected higher SSD speeds and I am getting a Zike drive with 4TB SSD capable of 7,000MB/s. I will be transferring TBs of data back and forth dealing with a video archive and obviously the fastest I can work will be limited by the internal SSD r/w times. Can't decide if I will have a real world problem which is why I was watching this video - it's almost convinced me to stick....
I am a Software Developer and i upgraded my MBP 2017 i5 8gb to new M4 space black. I run kubernetes docker apps and i can run it smoothly on M4 and also train GenAI models, going for M4 pro for completing training few mins early ain't worth spending extra money. I can just take a short break and come back and training will be finished
Hi, my usecase is like yours. Does it run well on the base model m4?
@Ridhoperdana Hi there, yes it'll run without any issues as my friends Macbook Air M1 is able to do the same but takes little long time for AI tasks and slightly lags when multiple pods are running etc but task gets done without much issues. It's given by company to him for work purposes, I heard positive feedback from him. I'm positive that M4 will not have any issues like M1 because there's a huge improvement in performance of CPU and GPU processing power. Go for it, Apple store guys also suggested to go for M4 as I'm a developer
Thank you. Finally a video that speaks to regular Mac users rather than 4K video editors!
Glad it was helpful
I am a cloyd engineer and i got the base m4 and use tb4 after three years. He right
Brother, you just earned a subscriber
Brother, you just earned a reply
I saw this a while back, and I absolutely agree with your thinking here. In my case, I went for the mid-tier M4 model, with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD, since I know for my casual video editing, managing and storing my mp3 and image libraries (including all of my iPhone videos and pictures since 2017), plus the usual documents, spreadsheets etc., it would be the right spec without breaking the bank. This is my first Mac, and I have found this to be an absolutely stunning system. It has taken everything I've thrown at it with ease, and I have yet to hear the fans power up at all. The battery life is a revelation, macOS has been excellent, and the build quality has been pretty much perfect. The ecosystem (integration with my phone, etc.) has been amazing, and I don't think I'll be using Windows for my personal computing again. I'm absolutely impressed.
Thank you Sir! I have struggled with this for days, M4 or M4 Pro. You hit me perfectly and I made the purchase of the M4. Thank you for an honest POV!
Sensible arguments ! Good work ! Keep it up !
Got the M4 pro with base storage, considering transfer speed over thunderbolt 4 an external SSD is great. I use
"Afterplug 2-Pocket Adhesive Pouch" which pretty much sticks it on my laptop.
RAM I actually do have some pressure issues with as I tend to have a lot of stuff open / simulators for projects and containers but I do a lot of dev work.
Single core for the average person is the most important thing. For me I can make use of multicore because I do a lot of work with things like Spark (multiproc heavy). There is a casual benefit to a pro which is gaming (more graphics cores) but that's the only one I can think of. I primarily work on my Linux machine but the single core performance on this is crazy.
For ML the most important thing is RAM for being able to run a model, but if you can run it then more graphics cores will just make it faster. Also future proofing is a bit harder when moore's law exists. Also remote stuff (apart from ML) isn't really that great, you see this problem with "light" clients that are used a lot in enterprise. It's much slower with the high latency.
Did the same with the mini upgraded to 32GB Ram and 512GB SSD much better than the pro chip for my use
Great video, couldn’t agree more with your point of view and well articulated too 👍👍👍
Glad you enjoyed it
good advice. for canadians it is less tempting to go for the pro. the 24/1tb spec on the m4 is 2600and the pro is like 3200-2300 before tax.
that is some diabolical pricing
Thank you! You clarified my main issue- the M4 is all that I’ll be able to use daily. Very helpful- thanks!!!
Your welcome
It has taken me 13 years as a developer to finally find a use for the extra cores, but I found myself ram-limited on my M2 mba before being GPU-limited: Unreal Engine 5, 24 gb ram available. UE5 tried to allocate 80 GB, so I ended up killing my machine with 60 GB of swap in use. The MBA GPU also struggled heavily until I turned down the screen resolution to 1/2x.
what a great video, knowledge, delivery, really breaking it down for the average consumer!
BEST REVIEW EVER!!! Thank you so much for being real and clearly explaining when someone would actually need the higher Pro chip model! You're right, it's NOT for me. 😅
Great review and insight. I ordered the M4 MacBook Pro. This is an upgrade from my M1 MacBook Pro. I use it for professional Photography and that media is shifting more and more to video. The M1 was never underpowered. I watch at least 8 video to convince myself of the upgrade. 😂you are right about use case 👍🏽
RAM would help you out than raw performance if you do more stuff on your computer.
Reminds me of what MKBHD kind of review 10 years ago...I liked that guy. that being said, being a REGULAR user, scrapped the rest of tech reviewers and from now on I will only listen to you. well done man!
He’s still pretty good
This has definitely given me something to think about, but here’s my current dilemma: I’m a BIM manager at an architecture firm and looking at a Mac where I’d be running Parallels to run Revit (when I’m not remoting to my office workstation), and I would also be using 3D modeling and rendering programs. I also use a lot of the AI functions of Photoshop, but all 3 processors have the same Neural Engine. I’ve been leaning toward the M4 Pro on the basis of the rendering abilities of more GPU cores, but I’d be curious to hear the experiences of others.
Rule number one (pointed out here - and a VERY VERY good rule to follow!) NEVER buy something you might use in the future - when you have yet to use it. NEVER buy anything based on what it MIGHT do in the future either! 99.999999% of the time - you will never ever see those situations.
Good video. thanks!
Finally, an honest techtuber that’s based in reality. Most people will not ever fully use the capabilities of a m4 pro. Its like someone who buys a high end sports car but only does every day commuting in local traffic and some highway driving with slight speeding. An utter waste of a car designed for fast driving.
Great points and great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
Love your content! Keep up the great work
Will do
If you want to play games on it then get the M4 Pro. As a dev, i’d consider getting a base MBP M4 and use the cost difference on an m4 mini to use as a build agent rather than blow your load on a single machine unless money is no object.
I still own one of the Intel MBPs at the moment, specifically the i9 MBP16. Got it with 32GB RAM and 2TB of storage, specifically because I anticipated that I'd work with virtual machines as part of a research thesis I was attempting. That time has passed, and my use has fluctuated from that to just being my work machine as a CS lecturer, recording tutorial videos for classes, and then back to the initial intended use case with virtual machines when I pursued a different postgraduate degree. The main constant, however, was just me dabbling with program and website development semi-regularly for both teaching classes and in a hobbyist fashion.
I'm still impressed that it is still holding up well into the 5-year-old mark for most of my current tasks, but I can't help but feel that it won't be long in around a year or two at least when I'd have to upgrade. The upgrades I went for my current machine would probably be the same as if I were to get an MBP16 with M4 Pro, 36GB RAM and 2TB of storage, and honestly I felt that thinking about longevity helped me get some extra time and use with this thing (my previous MBPs were starting to not cut it by the 5-year mark). The only thing my MBP really has trouble with is OBS, which I hope my next machine can handle for a long time to come. I only started using OBS about 1-2 years ago, but it's hard to work with when my computer simply hangs a few moments after running it. However, I am in no rush to upgrade, simply just getting ready the funds for when the time comes to upgrade. I have a Windows gaming laptop with good enough resources for that, but I'd like to have that option to use OBS as part of my teaching workflow to create more tutorial videos on my MBP as my work machine.
What would you recommend? Regardless, great video! Definitely helped lots with trying to decide what my future upgrade would need to be and how I will need to prepare. 😊
Awesome video and great knowledge on both books…….. thank you
Pretty sure the M3 macbook air can be bought for nearly half the price of the base m4 macbook pro. I'd imagine that would be a much more suitable alternative purchase for most people
That's true
Really great explanation of the performance differences between the M4 models. Thank you! I got the base model M4 with upgraded specs and am very happy with it so far.
I'm a professional video editor often video editing on davinci resolve on or off battery for 6-8 hours straight. Dealing with multiple 4k h.265 10 bit tracks, AI noise reduction. graphics intensive effects, on videos 10-20 minutes long. I believe I'm the actual right user for the pro, yet still on a budget, trying to stay around $2k
It is my first time using Mac and I purchased the M3 Macbook Air 15 16/512gig because M4 is not yet available in my country. My workflow on a daily basis are 20 chrome tabs open, ms office. I came from a Huawei Matebook 13 2019 model 8/512gig The only reason I upgraded, because I broke the screen and Huawei cannot provide parts to fix my laptop. I would say buy what you need and always based it on your budget.
I was very much against this in the intel days of Macs but I very much agree. I upgraded from an i9 15” to an M4 Pro 16” and it’s vastly overkill for my needs. I would’ve easily been able to survive on an M3 15” Air but I really wanted that miniled screen and better speakers. Though kinda redundant with the 15” air, I would’ve loved a base M4 16” Pro simply for the better hardware.
Just picked up the M4 MacBook Pro for $1399 at Best Buy - they price matched the CostCo sale. I am using this as a backup and more portable machine for data transfer to my 16" MacBook Pro M1 Pro from 2021. I edit mostly Multicam 1080P video in FCPX(11?), along with some 4K commercial stuff, and the M1 Pro hasn''t missed a beat. I'm happy so far (it's been 1 day) with the M4 14" for what I want it for! I am glad I got it over the M3 Air 13" - just so I have a more capable computer when I need it for streaming situations or quick edits on the go, or whatever. Will probably update the big 16" computer to the M6 or M7 Pro some day... Whenever that is. I don't know if I'll ever need a Max for the work I do.
thinking of making a big upgrade to the m4 pro, i make music, edit photos and videos, but i want this computer to last like 10 years at least. smaller 4k videos might be fine on the m4, but would there be any setbacks with hour-long projects? Or if I have both audio and video programs up at once?
I paid 2400 for m4 pro chip with the 1tb including 3 year apple care which I think was worth the price. Straight from Apple Store is definitely not worth it with it being priced at 2838 with the same spec I got for 2400 at best buy
Thanks for focusing on the most important stuff in this tech review- The common sense. Great review
My old machine is a 2019 MacBook Pro 16" i9. It would be tough to go down to a 14" screen, so the M4 Pro is a requirement by default. PS the Toyota Avalon was discontinued, but you could go to a Lexus ES!
Sat in my buddy’s Lexus, was v impressed
09:28 this point exactly.
Thanks, other reviewers should see and learn!!
In general I agree but 14" is legacy small, for the 16" model you don't have the M4 option sadly.
Tbh, the m1 air can work for you for ten years. If you don’t need heavy tasks like professional media rendering or local ai. It’s an excellent machine.
Still have my m1 air, might gift it to a family member.
Depends what you do on it. I have the macbook air m1 with 8GB of RAM and honestly cannot do much more than opening a couple of browser tabs. I got now the m4 pro with 24GB of RAM and hope my next upgrade will be necessary only in 6 years or more.
I had the M3 basic & was quite satisfying, but I just got the new M4 16" 'cause I wanted a bigger display.... & I'm very very happy with it
Displays on the 16" are on a different level
Dayo - Thanks for your excellent and amusing video; I'd been on the fence about upgrading my M1 Pro 16" to an M4 but I think I'll keep it a bit longer. Although I'm now in the midst of "leveling-up" with an MS in Analytics, I'm hard pressed to push this laptop very hard even with coding all the various AI/machine learning algorithms I have to create. Instead, I'm planning to upgrade to an M6/M7 in 2026 as TSMC moves to 2nm production in the next couple years; that will be another "game changer".
Dayo, love the consistent quality of your videos and hope you had a great Thanksgiving!
Quality should continue improving.
Really liking that Black Myth Wukong background on the right, does anybody know where I could get it for myself?
I think the biggest benefit of a M4 Pro is it gives more graphics cores. Do you like to run some games on your laptop in your spare time and don’t have access to a gaming PC for whatever reason? Check the games and benchmarks to see if the game you like needs the extra oomph.
One other question is how often you upgrade. Generally upgrades do not increase resale value while steps to the next base config do. So… if you have two similarly priced machines the one with the pro chip is much better to sell than the base chip one.
Also, even thunderbolt 4 storage with NVME drives inside can be as fast as some of the lower configurations for internal storage on M4 Apple laptops. The drive shown in the video is quite slow by comparison as it’s 1/4 the speed of what’s available under thunderbolt 4 if I remember correctly. The new thunderbolt 5 external drives are faster than most internal storage in Apple laptops, although it is significantly slower than what you find in high end PCs with gen 5 nvme.
I bought a base model M4 Mac Mini and before spending 2 weeks with it I would have disagreed with you, however! Now that I have used it , I wish it just had 24g of ram. Other than that it is awesome for 70% of what I do
lol 70% is not really convincing
Great down to earth review
🌎