In recent years, base MacBook Pro models have felt like an automatic skip. It made more sense to pay just a few hundred more for upgrades that truly justify the “Pro” moniker, or save money by stepping down to a MacBook Air without many sacrifices. But that’s changed as of the M4 model. With the base MacBook Pro with M4 matching its all-time low price of $1,399 ($200 off) at Amazon and B&H Photo right now, it’s quite possibly the best value of any MacBook available.
The 10-core M4 chipset has a decent speed advantage over the 8-core M3 inside last year’s MacBook Pro, of course. Apple claims its CPU has the strongest single-threaded performance of anything out there, not to mention a neural engine that’s two times faster than the M3’s. Our benchmarking certainly corroborates that it’s faster, although depending on what you’re doing on the laptop, you may not notice much difference. But what really sets the 2024 model apart is its starting allotment of 16GB of RAM, which is double that offered by previous generations. That helps with the Apple Intelligence features seeding into macOS Sequoia and also makes it suitable for heavier tasks than most average workloads require.
The M4 MacBook Pro also picked up a third Thunderbolt 4 port this cycle, plus an upgraded 1080p webcam that has a taller field-of-view for the new Desk View feature. Those are all very good advantages for the money, and you should only feel compelled to step up further if you have stronger needs such as heavy 4K or 8K video editing, photo editing, programming, or other intensive tasks.