M4 MacBook Pro Comes With a Killer Starting Point

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Earlier this year, I went on record as saying that “at £1,699, the base model 8GB M3 MacBook Pro is a superb laptop”. I even made a video about it which a lot of people watched and a lot of people /disagreed with.

The crux of the issue wasn’t the price (the entry-level MacBook Pro has actually been spot on in that regard for a while), or the port deficiency over the more expensive version, or the lack of a Space Black option – it was the fact that Apple only included 8GB of unified memory.

Eight gigabytes. In a ‘pro’ laptop. In 2024. How could I recommend such a thing?

My point back then was that if you bought these laptops in bulk for teams of people, or simply wanted the cheapest MacBook Pro available, it would still offer lots of value for money. I stand by that.

Now, everything has changed.

Things have gotten even better.

And there shouldn’t be any more arguments.

Who am I kidding, eh? This is the internet.

The base model MacBook Pro gets serious

Yesterday, Apple finished off their week of M4 Mac announcements with the new MacBook Pro. I say “new” – it does look identical to the previous version, obviously; no one was expecting a design change as big as the Mac mini.

In the upper echelons of the MacBook Pro lineup, we now have M4 Pro and M4 Max versions. These are stupidly fast and capable (in the M4 Pro’s case, it’s up to three times faster than the M1 Pro), but still incredibly expensive. They are, without doubt, the most impressive laptops Apple offers, but they are resolutely for professional usage and large business budgets.

The base model MacBook Pro is something entirely different. Starting at £1,599/$1,599 (that’s a £100 price cut in the UK), it’s not what you’d call cheap, but it’s a perfectly acceptable entry price for an aspirational piece of tech. More importantly, it’s attainable for a lot of people.

It’s also a much better laptop than the M3 version I lauded over back in January. It now has two more CPU cores (taking it up to 10), one extra thunderbolt port (there’s now three in total), 1,000 nits of peak brightness for standard content, and a Space Black option.

That’s not all. The biggest change is that we now have double the memory. That’s right – the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of unified memory. Eight gigabytes is a thing of the past. No more arguments.

Who am I kidding, eh? This is the internet.

However, I defy anyone to not say that the new entry-level MacBook Pro isn’t a super-exciting prospect for anyone who wants an awful lot of laptop for a relatively modest outlay.

There’s just one obvious comparison, isn’t there?

Why not just buy a specced-up MacBook Air?

When Apple Silicon debuted in 2020, the M1 MacBook Air finally revealed what that deliciously thin chassis was capable of. It remains the best laptop Apple has ever made.

The MacBook Air didn’t feature in this week’s round of Mac M4 upgrades – that will, presumably, happen earlier next year. Regardless, the existing M3 version is still a superb machine and it did actually receive its own upgrade of sorts this week. The 8GB model has been kicked to the curb – that’s right, Apple has now completely rid the entire Mac lineup of that starting point.

So, why not just spec up a MacBook Air and save yourself £300 on a base model MacBook Pro? It’s a fair question, and for a lot of people, the Air will be a much better fit.

But it is worth checking out what that extra £300 buys you.

There’s the obvious. The MacBook Pro has the M4 chip inside, whereas the MacBook Air is still on the M3 platform. You also get two extra CPU cores on the former, which won’t set your world alight, but will offer a smidgen more longevity. Equally, the unified memory might be identical in size, but the MacBook Pro’s has more bandwidth.

You can squeeze more power out of a MacBook Pro, too, thanks to active cooling. That means far less chance of throttling under load, and full access to the performance on tap.

One of the biggest differences between the two laptops in terms of convenience is the port situation. On the MacBook Air, you get two thunderbolt ports. On the MacBook Pro, you get three alongside an SD card slot and a HDMI port. The Pro also has an XDR display with double the brightness of the MacBook Air’s, and ProMotion.

Did I mention the increased battery life and better quality mics and speaker system inside the MacBook Pro?

That’s quite a lot for three hundred quid, isn’t it?

Who is the base model M4 MacBook Pro for?

Good question. Who is buying these base spec MacBook Pros?

As noted earlier, I think it falls into two categories. If you’ve got a team of people who need MacBook Pros but who aren’t bending the fabric of space and time every five minutes with complex calculations, the base spec is a no-brainer. It’s budget friendly and offers loads of return in terms of many years of productivity.

If you’re someone who just wants a MacBook Pro (which is fine, by the way – who is anyone to tell you otherwise?) then all of your Christmases have immediately come at once this week.

Some within the latter group may literally just want a MacBook Pro, even if most of their usage would easily be handled on a MacBook Air. However, others may have genuine reasons for grabbing as much performance headroom as possible. Video editing, music production, and coding are just three tasks which the entry level MacBook Pro will eat for breakfast – again, for many years to come.

Will I upgrade?

No. I bought the M3 Max MacBook Pro last year at great expense, and having handed over the reins of video editing to someone else, my need for such a laptop is highly questionable.

It’s about to get even more questionable, because I’m eagerly awaiting delivery of my specced-up new M4 Mac mini. That machine will become my main studio computer and it looks like it’s going to at least match anything I can do with my MacBook Pro (bar inserting an SD card into its tiny frame).

I have no need for the M4 MacBook Pro. I may even sell my M3 Max version, to be honest. But anyone who is in the market for such a machine has unwittingly entered the best time, ever, to buy one for an absolute snip.

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