Read Mashable’s full review of the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro (M4).
The 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro from late 2024 is for deeper-pocketed shoppers and power users who want to make as few compromises as possible without going totally overboard. For an extra $400+ and a slightly bulkier design (though not by much), it gets you cooler multi-tasking performance, a great battery life, nicer speakers, a brighter, higher-res display with that coveted 120Hz refresh rate, and a better mix of ports compared to the 15-inch M4 MacBook Air.
The Air’s shortcomings certainly aren’t dealbreakers for the average person with casual usage habits, to be clear, but this beefed-up machine remedies them for those who can afford it.
It’s not priced as enticingly as the M4 MacBook Airs, but the 14-inch MacBook Pro is probably the most well-rounded laptop in Apple’s current lineup. It lasted 16.5 hours in a video rundown test — longer than 84 percent of the laptops in our database — and it earned a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 15,199 in our CPU benchmark. That makes it the second-fastest MacBook we’ve ever reviewed (and the sixth-speediest laptop overall). Plus, unlike the M4 Air, it has a built-in fan that prevents it from breaking a sweat when running multimedia software, games, and other intensive tasks.
The M4 MacBook Pro is slightly less portable compared to the M4 Airs, but not by much. (It’s less than 0.2 inches thicker than both sizes and 0.1 pounds heavier than the 15-inch model.) Still, this affords it enough room for extra fixings like an HDMI port, an SDXC card slot, and a bonus Thunderbolt port, as well as an awesome hi-fi sound system with force-cancelling woofers. Its audio quality wowed former tech editor Kimberly Gedeon: “I’ve been reviewing laptops for several years now,” she wrote, “and nothing comes close to what the MacBook Pro has been able to do with sound.”
The M4 MacBook Pro looks as spectacular as it sounds. Its Liquid Retina XDR (mini-LED) display offers a resolution of 3024 x 1964 pixels, 1000 nits of brightness for SDR content (but a peak brightness of 1600 nits in HDR), and a 120Hz refresh rate. Compared to the M4 MacBook Air’s standard Liquid Retina screen, it’s crisper, brighter, and smoother when displaying visuals in motion — not necessary for all users, again, but nice to have if you can swing its price. It can hit the $2,000 mark pretty fast if you tack on more RAM, storage, and its nano-texture (matte) display option.
