Apple MacBook Pro (M4 Pro and Max) review: still on top

When you’re editing photos in the middle of a wedding, every second counts.

I occasionally moonlight as a wedding photographer. It’s a high-stress job that involves taking thousands of photos throughout a 10-hour workday and never missing a crucial moment. And the team I work on goes above and beyond: our goal is to get a set of photos picked, edited, and on display before the happy couple is cutting their cake.

That rapid-fire editing process usually takes about two hours on an M1 Max MacBook Pro. But a couple of weekends ago, I brought along our review unit of the new M4 Max MacBook Pro. It took just half the time.

The M4 Max is the most powerful of Apple’s new M4 processors. It was released this November alongside the M4 Pro, and it’s available in both the 14- and 16-inch versions of Apple’s top laptops. While the entry-level M4 MacBook Pro saw excellent improvements this year thanks to an added port and speed gains, the higher-end M4 Pro and M4 Max models mostly received year-over-year chip bumps with some slightly faster ports. They’re not the most exciting upgrades around, but they represent the best performance Apple can offer in a laptop.

Instead of just running the same ol’ benchmarks to tell you how the bigger numbers are better, I asked our readers what they wanted to see. And mostly, they wanted three things: photo editing, video editing, and gaming. So I handed off our M4 Pro review unit to one of our video producers to use in his editing workflow for The Verge’s videos on YouTube and TikTok. I took the M4 Max to a wedding and back to test photo editing. And I played a bunch of games along the way.

The high-end MacBook Pros are very much designed for actual pros. The 16-inch M4 Pro and M4 Max models start at $2,499 and $3,499, respectively — and our review units are a whopping $3,349 and $6,149, upgraded to include 48GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD on the M4 Pro and 128GB and a 4TB SSD on the M4 Max.

They’re mostly the same laptops as last year, carrying over the same sleek design, jumbo-size haptic touchpads, excellent speakers, and bright Mini LED displays with notch cutouts. Everything that was good and nice to use on the previous model is still good here on the M4 generation. And this year, all MacBook Pro models now come with a new higher-resolution Center Stage webcam that crops and pans to keep you centered in the frame, and each laptop can be optioned with a nano-texture display for $150 to reduce glare.

Those were nice improvements on the 14-inch M4, and they’re welcome additions for the M4 Pro and M4 Max here. In addition to those across-the-board upgrades, this year, the M4 Pro and M4 Max models also have faster Thunderbolt 5 ports and higher memory bandwidth (273Gbps on the M4 Pro — more than double the M4 — and up to 546Gbps on the 16-inch M4 Max). It’s a nice addition, but at this point is still mostly for futureproofing.

If you’re paying top dollar for a laptop, it’s because you want top-flight performance. And on numbers alone, these machines deliver: the M4 Max is around 20 to 28 percent faster than last year’s M3 Max across most CPU and GPU benchmarks, and even the 14-core M4 Pro edged out the 16-core M3 Max in multicore CPU tests by up to 5 percent. Compared to the new entry-level 14-inch with the 10-core M4 chip, the M4 Pro scored about 74 percent higher in Cinebench multicore CPU tests and 133 percent higher in GPU tests.

The machines don’t fully outclass the 14-inch M4 model when it comes to single-core CPU performance, though, because they’re mostly the same cores (the M4 Pro and M4 Max just have more of them). The M4 model is within 6 percent of the M4 Pro and M4 Max in Cinebench and Geekbench single-core benchmarks. Since the only difference between the CPU cores in the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips is how many there are (and the split between performance and efficiency cores and the memory bandwidth), the slightly higher single-core scores in the 16-inch MacBook Pro models are likely due to better thermals from more physical space.

The real delta between the M4 family is in multicore CPU and GPU scores. The M4 processor in the base MacBook Pro 14 has 10 CPU cores (four performance and six efficiency) and 10 GPU cores, which is the spec I tested in my review last month. The M4 Pro tested here has 14 CPU and 20 GPU cores, and the M4 Max we have is configured with 16 CPU and 40 GPU cores. The extra cores are a big part of what you’re paying for with these premium chips.

The M4 Pro is 84 percent faster than the M4 in the PugetBench Premiere Pro video benchmarks, and the M4 Max is an extra 39 percent faster on top of that. (Of course, the large amount of RAM in our test units is also pulling extra weight with video and photo work.)

If you’re jumping from an older MacBook Pro to the M4 Max, you may see even bigger numbers. Compared to the M2 Max with 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores, which we reviewed less than two years ago and rebenchmarked last year, we saw around twice the multicore CPU performance and 177 percent higher GPU scores according to Cinebench. That sounds like a huge difference, but keep in mind that, when it comes to real-world usage, it doesn’t always feel that way. When we exported our usual five-and-a-half-minute, 1.7GB 4K video sample test in Premiere Pro, the M4 Max’s export time was just 21 seconds faster than the M2 Max — not exactly a terribly longer wait.

That’s how these machines perform in theory. How do they fare in the hands of someone using them for actual work? To find out, my colleague Owen Grove spent a week editing and producing video on the $3,349 M4 Pro MacBook Pro with 14 CPU cores, 20 GPU cores, and 48GB RAM instead of his work-issued 16-inch model with an M1 Pro containing 10 CPU cores, 16 GPU cores, and 16GB of RAM. 

Owen usually shoots on Sony FX3 cameras in 4K at 100Mbps bitrate in MP4 format. His workflow mostly involves Adobe Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, After Effects, and when it’s needed, the Supertone Clear noise suppression plug-in (which really bogs things down when applied to a bunch of clips). He also sometimes edits videos on his home Windows desktop PC, which has an Intel Core i9 12900K CPU, Nvidia RTX 3090TI GPU, and 64GB of RAM.

The M4 Pro offered Owen smoother performance while scrubbing through timelines and an overall faster experience. “The M4 was going really smoothly,” Owen said. “A lot smoother than the M1.” He worked on various in-progress video projects to get a feel for the new laptop through color grading, editing, and some graphics work, and the M4 Pro solved the sluggishness he would see when Supertone Clear was used on many clips in his timeline, allowing him to scrub through footage without things getting crunchy and a little slow like his M1 Pro or Windows machine. 

One of the biggest benefits of the M4 Pro for Owen was how much faster it can make proxies (lower-resolution copies that are easier to work on before you finish your edits with the original source footage). The M4 Pro took one hour, 38 minutes to make a batch of proxies for one of Owen’s projects. That task took about two hours, 22 minutes on his M1 Pro and two hours, 48 minutes on his desktop. That’s a ton of time to save, and it’s the kind of thing where you can see a busy professional thinking a newer or pricier laptop could be worth it.

Those small time savings were particularly useful during my recent stint photographing a wedding. The principal photographer’s workflow for his same-day edits involves manually culling thousands of photos from him and his second photographer (that’s me) in Lightroom Classic — directly off the SD cards — down to about 100 to 120 keepers to use in a slideshow. Then, he applies a baseline color-correction profile using AfterShoot AI, which is trained on his own Lightroom catalog to match his signature style. Finally, he goes back to Lightroom Classic for the time-consuming fine-tuned edits of each individual image.

His SD cards were filled with 50-megapixel raws from two Sony A1 cameras, and mine had 24- and 33-megapixel raws from my Sony A9 III and A7 IV. Once his culling and editing were done, he exported them all as full-resolution JPG files, AirDropped them to his iPad Pro, and set up slideshows of the finished images on both the laptop and iPad to display in the reception hall. As you can imagine, people love getting this early preview of the day’s photos while they’re partying — and the sooner it’s ready, the better.

The M4 Max’s CPU and GPU prowess, along with the ridiculous 128GB of RAM, helped keep it snappy while scrolling through all those high-resolution photos. The machine didn’t slow down or stutter when applying heavier, per-image edits like radial gradients, selective exposure adjustments, or even when using Lightroom’s subject detection to make automated changes like darkening a sky. This saved precious seconds at each step, going a long way toward cutting down the overall editing time.

After that job was done, I imported over 2,600 24-megapixel raws from an SD card into my own Lightroom Classic catalog on the M4 Max. It took about four minutes, 15 seconds, with another five minutes to build Smart Previews for easier editing later. This same card took about 15 minutes, 31 seconds to import on my personal M2 Pro Mac Mini and more than 15 minutes more to build those Smart Previews.

That’s noticeably faster, but for me, as someone who only moonlights as a pro photographer — and isn’t usually dealing with those tight time constraints — there’s no way I can justify $3,500 (let alone over $6,000) for an M4 Max. I’ll deal with the waiting. My colleague, on the other hand, seemed entranced. He told me editing on the M4 Max felt as fast as using his M1 Ultra Mac Studio back home. The thought of getting that performance on the go had him pondering the upgrade, but he still hesitated at the price.

Several commenters asked us to test the M4 Max’s gaming performance. I know I’m not the only one who wishes a $4,000 workstation Mac could play games as well as a $1,000 gaming machine. But while things are slowly getting better thanks to Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit and the occasional AAA game making its way to Macs, most developers and publishers just don’t prioritize porting their games. There are some great examples of native Mac games on Steam, like Hades II and Baldur’s Gate 3, but they’re still few and far between.

It’s a shame, because the M4 Max shows tiny glimpses of just how great Mac gaming can be. I tested Baldur’s Gate 3 on the M4 Max, and it looked and played great. At maxed-out ultra settings, it often maintained around 80fps and even topped out above 120fps (depending on the area). The picture really popped on the nano-texture display — though running at these settings killed the battery from 100 percent to flat in just under 90 minutes, so staying plugged in is necessary.

I also tried emulating PC games using third-party software like Whisky and CrossOver. It’s been years since I built myself a Hackintosh, and boy did I forget what a pain in the ass this kind of stuff can be. Downloading and setting up Whisky and CrossOver isn’t terribly difficult, but it’s obviously much more work than just installing Steam and running native games.

Each game you try to play opens up a new can of worms as to how well it runs, whether there are any game-breaking compatibility issues, and how much tinkering it requires to get it running. Elden Ring took extra steps in Steam settings (and a search through Reddit to troubleshoot it) to get my controller working. Even once it was up and running, I couldn’t seem to get much higher than 40fps even at low resolutions and graphical settings. It looked nice at max settings, but it often dipped from the 30fps range into the 20s once there was too much action or on-screen effects. This is a game that runs on a 10-year-old PlayStation 4. But even if you don’t mind just barely getting by on your $6,000-plus Mac, you can’t play online or get in-game messages left by other players while playing through emulation. You’re getting inconsistent performance and missing out on one of the signature features of Soulsborne-style games. Ouch.

Windblown seemed promising at first but fell flat when I tried to emulate it. The new indie title from Dead Cells developer Motion Twin is a lush and colorful 3D isometric roguelike game with fast action. It can run fine on a Steam Deck at 720p, but on the M4 Max, it’s pretty much unplayable at any resolution because it slows to a crawl when enemies use abilities with flashy particle effects — guaranteeing you’re going to get hit or die.

If you’re lucky enough that all your favorite games have native Mac versions, then maybe you can have your cake and eat it, too. But for as many times as I’ve heard “Apple is getting serious about gaming,” even the most powerful Macs still can’t match a budget gaming laptop in most games. That’s a shame.

Frankly, these laptops are exceptional. They’re what we expect from MacBooks designed for creative professionals, but so were each of their direct predecessors — and just like their M1, M2, and M3 forebears, they get quite expensive. The base M4 MacBook Pro starting at $1,599 is the Pro of the people. But an M4 Pro is the logical choice for more demanding professionals — especially since it’s where the 16-inch screen comes in for those who prefer larger displays. The base 24GB / 512GB M4 Pro, at $1,999 for a 14-inch or $2,499 for a 16-inch, is going to be fine for a large swath of creators, especially since the 16-inch nets you a 14-core CPU like the one we’ve tested here. 

If you plan to use your laptop for intensive work and hope it lasts for well over five years, I recommend configuring the M4 Pro with as much RAM and the highest number of cores as your budget can accommodate. If you have a very graphically intense workload like 3D rendering or lots of advanced visual effects for video postproduction and you need every second you can claw back from rendering and exporting, then the M4 Max, with its extra GPU cores and higher memory bandwidth, may be your bag. But if you’re considering any of these computers for work, you’re the best judge of whether any of these machines is worth the price.

Many people are going to be just fine with their current computers that take slightly longer to do heavy tasks and require a little waiting around. But if you’re the type that makes their living doing creative work, and saving time in your edits and workflows will noticeably benefit your business, your craft, or your sanity, then an M4 Pro or M4 Max laptop is worth it.