Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M4) review

Not an iota has changed in terms of design and this still looks like any other MacBook Pro you’ve seen or used over the past 5 years. The 14in model gets thinner speaker grilles, though the six-speaker array contained within is still the gold standard for portable PC speakers with the clarity, stereo imaging and ability to sound much larger than the boundaries of the display may have you believe. Port sides are abundant with three USB-C ports capable of Thunderbolt 4/USB-4 speeds (40Gbps). Doing a U-turn on its minimalist strategy from a few years ago, now it’s almost surprising that Apple still provides an HDMI 2.0 port along with an SDXC card a lot and even a headphone jack.  Though, this headphone port is capable of hosting high impedance headphones, sealing the deal for music producers who like to look the part with large, audiophile cans. The MagSafe 3 charging port can now also support a 96W fast charger if you happen to buy that separately.

 

 

 

 

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The display is still the brilliant Mini LED that Apple calls Liquid Retina XDR and goes plenty bright at 1600nits peak brightness and boasts the accuracy that makes all Apple products such a pleasure to view content on. Colour profiles are easy to switch from Apple XDR to HDR or web sRGB standards. New for this year though is the option of specifying your display with a NanoTexture coating that works as an anti reflective layer. I’ve been using the 16in MacBook Pro for the last couple of years and while its glossy screen didn’t make me want to quit my job; the Nanotextured screen just made me realise how bothersome were the overhead LED lights at the Stuff HQ. If you like to take your laptop to a cafe or work al-fresco, this is a feature you never knew you needed. It’s that good and for an additional 15,000 bucks, an absolute no brainer. Does it affect contrast or colour saturation? Not if you’re working directly on-axis, which is how most of us use our laptops anyway so the short answer is, there’s no significant compromise and only gains.

On paper the base M4 with “only” 10 CPU and GPU cores might not seem like an upgrade, but it all depends on what machine you’re porting from. Compared to my 16in MBP from 2022 with M2 Pro, it seemed pretty much on par handling the same kind of 4K video exports, Lightroom edits and handling multiple apps. Benchmarking scores aside, a minute-long 4K video clip took only around 25 seconds to export along with audio effects, splicing and filters applied to it. A lot of AAA games are enroute to the MacOS too in 2024 and coupled with the native ray-tracing capabilities of the M4 chip, should greatly increase its appeal to the desktop PC class gamers too. Memory upgrade is possible to 32GB and storage up to 2TB but the 16-core Neural processor is identical in all variants of the M4 MBPs, aiding in AI-related tasks.

ALSO SEE: Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max review

Its inherent strengths have always been that amazing trackpad that even now no other brand/model has been able to quite match and a battery life that even puts the MacBook Air to shame now. The 72.4Wh battery is good for a whole day of heavy-duty tasks and maybe even two if your workload consists of daily-use apps like email, music, messaging and browsing. It’s a total powerhouse that refuses to die on you and could be one of its biggest wins. Apple has also taken this opportunity to bring the Centre Stage feature in FaceTime to the front camera of the MacBook Pro 14in. There’s still no FaceID for some inexplicable reason, but having a better 1080p camera that tracks your movement and also lets you showcase what's on your table via Desk View is a handy feature to have.

Nothing I did within my scope of work triggered the internal fans and I even did use it for the most part sitting on my lap, without any heating issues. It’s the little things like this, and of course the seamlessness of MacOS Sequoia with the iPad, iPhone and Watch that keep me linked to the MacBook. I listen to music on my iPad connected to my DAC via a USB cable, so the iPad is always sat next to me and MacOS lets me use the trackpad of the MacBook Pro to control the iPad too, just by taking the cursor over the edge of the MacBook Pro’s display. It just works. The iPhone mirroring function now lets me charge my iPhone away from the work area and yet be in complete control of it via the MacBook. Heck, it even lets me access Instagram and other apps that don’t have a native MacOS version. Again, it just works. After taking a break, I come back and open the MacBook Pro and don’t even have to enter the password to login as long as I’m wearing the Apple Watch. You guessed it…it just works!

Apple Intelligence is the only area that still feels like a WIP in that it still doesn’t feel naturally baked into things. Summaries for notifications are largely inaccurate and sometimes just inappropriate while the writing tools are also provided by many third-party apps now. Clean-up is a great photo-editing tool to remove unwanted objects or people from your pictures and works brilliantly to detect the undesired elements, but again, it feels more natural on the iPhone in most cases. With ChatGPT integration coming soon though, it could have a more significant impact on this MacBook Pro’s value proposition. As for now, it’s best treated as a bonus and not THE reason to buy a MacBook with M4 silicon.

In conclusion, besides the powerhouse performance that is expected from the M-series silicon now, the 14in MacBook Pro feels like the complete laptop anyone could ever want. It has the connectivity, the power, the battery life, the display, the sound and most importantly, the slickest desktop operating system around. It simply is the world’s best laptop made better.