Summary
- The 14-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro is the ultimate value for money and is hard to beat.
- The latest Apple Silicon offers superior performance and power.
- The laptop has a stellar screen, speakers, and battery life.
The 14-inch MacBook Pro is an expensive laptop—there’s no getting around it. However, it may also be the best value-for-money laptop Apple has produced to date, and it is perhaps the best value laptop I’ve ever used. It’s hard to imagine how it could be improved other than by slashing the price.
Apple MacBook Pro – M4 Pro
$1763 $1999 Save $236
This “binned” M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 14-inch screen is one of the best deals ever to come from Apple’s factories. It’s not the cheapest laptop in the M4 MacBook Pro family, but it’s by far the best value for money. This is the last laptop most people will have to buy for many years.
- Extremely powerful in this form factor
- Little to zero noise even under heavy loads
- One of the best screens on a laptop ever
- Thunderbolt 5 gives significant futureproofing
- Insane battery endurance even under full load
- Supreme build, fit and finish
- Speakers are ear-candy
- Upgrades are too expensive
Price and Availability
This “binned” M4 Pro-equipped MacBook Pro retails for $1999 and is available through Apple’s own site and online retailers like Amazon. In the box, you’ll find the laptop itself, along with a color-matched braided MagSafe cable and a white 70W Apple charger. A higher-wattage fast charger is an optional extra.
The M4 Pro Has Performance to Spare
Even today, a typical M1 MacBook offers more than enough performance for the vast majority of users. If you aren’t concerned about performance, a MacBook Pro is the wrong Mac for you anyway, and you’d be better served buying virtually any of the MacBook Air models, none of which are performance slouches.
This “binned” (it has some disabled cores) M4 Pro chip comes with eight M4 performance cores and four efficiency cores. The base M4 chip has only four performance cores, so it is significantly slower but still far above what typical users might need.
Suffice it to say that if you want to do video editing, 3D modeling, coding, or just about any non-casual computing task, this M4 Pro chip will take it in stride. While the two higher-tier chip options in the 14-inch range are somewhat faster, the difference is academic in most cases and simply means getting a few frames less or taking a few seconds more to complete a sustained task.
Nothing I could throw at this laptop made it sweat. Heavy video encodes, 3D model work for 3D printing, slicing huge and complex models, and throwing every heavy game that I could get to run either as a native Mac game or through a compatibility layer like Whiskey.
From a user experience perspective, the performance feels no worse than that of my Core i9-13900HX with RTX 4060 workstation laptop. Except the laptop sounds like a jet and eats over 200W of power.
Add to this a base RAM of 24GB of fast unified memory and special AI hardware, and this is going to be a great platform for local AI over the next few years. The onboard SSD also puts out around 5GB/s for reading and writing sequential data, which is significantly less with the base M4 processor but also increases with higher-capacity drives at every tier in the M4 MacBook Pro product stack.
More Battery Than You’ll Know What to Do With
For this specific laptop specification, Apple claims up to 22 hours of battery life, but of course, that number comes down in real-world mixed use. To test battery endurance, I used the laptop for a 10-hour work day, hooked up to my desktop monitor and with a Bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and headphones connected.
I used both the internal and external screens, with browser windows on both, apps downloading in the background, Apple Music streaming constantly, and the odd YouTube video in between. After ten hours of my normal daily workload, I managed to use 30% of the battery.
Under heavy workloads (if you call Baldur’s Gate 3 “work”), this system will last around eight to ten hours, though that’s my estimate based on the battery drop after an hour or two since my stamina doesn’t match this machine’s.
Either way, there’s nothing to complain about when it comes to battery life, and you don’t have to compromise on performance since even the worst-case scenario will get you through a typical workday.
The Trackpad Still Rules, But the Keyboard Is Catching Up
If you’ve read any laptop reviews, you’ll probably hear mention of the MacBook trackpad. Either because it’s a MacBook review or because a non-Mac’s trackpad is being compared to Apple’s technology. There’s not much to say other than this is still the best trackpad on any laptop, and most of the time, it’s not even close.
The haptics are as good as ever, palm rejection has never failed me on any modern Mac, and the M4 MBP is no different. It’s large and precise, and it’s hard to see how it can be made better.
On the keyboard front, Apple has had less luck with MacBooks. Its ill-fated butterfly keyboards cost a bundle in recalls and repairs, no doubt. Even after multiple goes at trying to fix it, it still wasn’t great. My previous M1 MacBook Air had the first generation of new scissor-switch keyboards, and that was more than acceptable—even enjoyable. I wrote thousands and thousands of words on that keyboard, and it was fine.
The keyboard on the MacBook Pro is significantly better. It’s “thocky” as the mechanical keyboard fans like to say, even though it is, of course, not mechanical. The feel, feedback, and stability are excellent. It’s the best laptop keyboard I’ve typed on, personally.
A Good Webcam on a MacBook?!
The 12-megapixel camera in the MacBook Pro with M4 is really good. I might go as far as calling it great. It’s a big step up from the terrible webcam that’s been in Apple’s MacBooks for years, and the addition of Center Stage is a genuine boon. This is the same technology that uses smooth digital cropping to ensure you’re in the middle of the frame. If two people are in the shot, the camera zooms out to accommodate you both. If you walk around, it will follow you.
It’s perfect if you want to give a whiteboard lecture or otherwise walk around and show things to the people on the other end of the line. Given that you can natively use your iPhone’s main camera as a webcam, perhaps Apple didn’t have to put much effort into this, but for the people who don’t use an iPhone but do use a Mac, it’s much appreciated.
Physically, It’s a Work of Art
I don’t like to think of myself as someone prone to hyperbole, but this Mac is one of the most beautiful physical objects I have ever seen or handled. This is my first experience with the redesign MacBooks underwent a few years ago, and every edge is rounded. Every surface is solid, and the system’s finish is peerless, in my opinion.
Operating the lid also feels balanced, and, of course, one-finger operation is basically perfect. The weight is also just right, making this 14-inch Mac feel portable without feeling cheap.
And It Even Has Ports?!
This MacBook still has a paucity of ports, but with three Thunderbolt 5 (Thunderbolt 4 in the M4 chip model), one MagSafe, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot, there’s actually more than enough places to plug things in. With the Thunderbolt 5 option, you’ll have enough bandwidth, realistically, for anything you need. If Apple ever brings back eGPU support, you’ll be ready. Thunderbolt 5 SSDs? No problem.
The Screen and Speakers Alone Are Worth the Price of Entry
It’s easy to get into the weeds about specifications and performance, but the display and speakers of a laptop are two components you spend the most time with and affect the quality of the experience.
I’ve experienced all manner of screens over the years, from terrible early passive TFT LCD screens to the latest and greatest OLED technology. The Liquid Retina XDR screen on the 14-inch MacBook Pro is, frankly, one of the best screens I have ever laid my eyes on. It was discovered that Apple added quantum dots to this generation, combined with miniLED technology, and whatever else they have going on under the hood, results in a bright screen with very good blacks, amazing colors, and crisp resolution.
Looking up from the MacBook to the LG CS OLED I have mounted on the wall, there’s honestly not much between them at a glance.
I always cringe at how terrible laptop speakers are, even on very expensive and otherwise premium models. Apple has long bucked this trend, and just like my previous MacBook, this M4 Pro MacBook Pro has excellent sound. There’s no need to use headphones if you don’t want to. Music, movies, games, whatever you want to throw at it, it sounds great with a nice wide stereo sound stage and decent full-range sound.
Should You Buy the 14-inch M4 Pro MacBook Pro?
I strongly considered giving the 14-inch Apple MacBook Pro a perfect score, since the computer on my desk right now is basically perfect. Other than the unending need for more performance, there’s very little that can be improved here.
If you don’t like macOS or need Windows or Linux, then it doesn’t matter how good the MacBook is otherwise, but if you want what’s likely one of the best laptops ever made, then this is it. The base model M4 MacBook Pro loses much of its shine, as do the more expensive models in this range, but this specific $1999 machine seems almost too good to be true.
What does hurt the score circumstantially is Apple’s continued practice of asking for extraordinary amounts of money to upgrade RAM and storage. Luckily, the laptop’s base specifications are plenty for almost everyone, so likely you won’t feel the need to upgrade unless you have a specific reason for it.
Apple MacBook Pro – M4 Pro
$1763 $1999 Save $236
This “binned” M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 14-inch screen is one of the best deals ever to come from Apple’s factories. It’s not the cheapest laptop in the M4 MacBook Pro family, but it’s by far the best value for money. This is the last laptop most people will have to buy for many years.
