MacBook Pro M4 Max Initial Impressions

Find out how I found the M4 MacBook Pro M4 Max, in my quick 4 day review.

After reviewing the M4 iMac and M4 Pro Mac Mini a few weeks ago and being suitably impressed by the performance on offer, I decided to find out what the M4 Max offered in the MacBook Pro.  I have had a MacBook Air M3 for a year now and I haven’t had a MacBook Pro since the Intel era (for those of you not aware, Apple used to use Intel chips in their computers before the switch to their own CPU’s), so I was keen to find out what you got for your money.

I picked up the £3499 M4 Max 16” which is the base model M4 Max…. don’t laugh.  You can spec the machine up to nearly £8000 if you max everything out and increase the CPU/GPU cores etc.  The reason I chose the base model was because I thought this is likely to be the model most people might go for looking at the M4 Max.  The MacBook Pro range starts at £1599 and now goes all the way up to £4000 in pre-built configurations.  As mentioned, you can go way northwards of that figure, on the Max if you get overexcited with the upgrades, but I don’t think you need to from my experience.

16” screen is lovely but the laptop is huge to carry around!

I recently posted a video review of the M4 Max (see above), recommending that people spend their money on the RAM upgrade over the Max chip, which I still agree with.  This caused a bit of a stir because Apple limits the RAM upgrade on the M4 chips depending on what model you go for.  For example, if you choose the standard M4 MacBook Pro and wanted, say, 64GB of RAM, you can’t do this as Apple maxes out the M4 chip at 32GB. You would then need to upgrade to the M4 Pro to get more RAM. I think 32GB with the M4 standard chip should be plenty for most people, which I will discuss later on.

How much RAM do we really need?

This brings me nicely to a question that a lot of people seem to struggle with.  How much RAM should they spec their MacBook Pro laptop with?  A year or so ago, when we had the M3 MacBook Pros, they all came as standard with 8GB of RAM, which is ridiculous in this day and age.  Apple managed to convince us all that Apple silicon was so good at memory management, having 8GB of RAM on a Mac was the same as 16GB on a Windows machine.  Now, I do agree that Apple software is better at managing memory from my experience, so you can get away with a bit less for everyday use.  As soon as you start doing anything intensive though, like video/photo editing or even light gaming, that RAM is eaten up, and the computer will resort to pulling memory from your SSD (hard drive).

If you don’t have enough RAM as mentioned, the computer will constantly have to use up hard drive memory.  Why is this a problem, you might say?  Basically, doing this wears out your SSD faster and also slows the system right down as it takes longer to do this than use the RAM (which is part of the Apple Silicone chip now).  Luckily, Apple has now relented and offers 16GB standard on all their laptops, even the MacBook Air has silently been upgraded to 16GB for the same price.  I have an iMac with 16GB and the standard M4 chip in, which offers excellent performance, I can say, after over a month’s use.

Usual Apple quality design and build

I think a MacBook Pro M4 with, say, 32GB of RAM will offer plenty of performance for most people, even the most demanding users.  On my iMac, I can video edit easily at the same time as other demanding tasks, and I haven’t seen any slowdown on the machine. 

I realise there are people who need more than this and you would be looking at the M4 Pro and M4 Max anyway, but you just don’t need as much as you might think from my experience with these new M4 chips.  The Mac Mini M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM doesn’t feel much faster to me than the iMac with the M4 and 16GB.  I have noticed the activity monitor using all 24GB on the M4 Pro, but that might be just because it’s available to it.  In the real-world use, I haven’t seen a reason to need more RAM for my needs as a video creator. 

Do you need the M4 Max chip?

Now, you might be thinking that no one needs the M4 Max chip because of the above comments, but this isn’t the case and it does have a limited market.  If money is no object, then by all means, buy the M4 Max MacBook Pro.  It’s a fantastic laptop with tons of power and future-proofing, but I understand (and I include myself in this) that not everyone has that amount of money to spend on a laptop.

After trying out all of the M4 variants in various different configurations, I honestly think the M4 standard version is fine for most people (myself included).  In testing, compared to the standard M3, you will see a big performance upgrade.  I ran various tasks on the M3 iMac with 16GB compared to my M4 iMac 16GB, and it performed much better, so I assume Apple has done more tweaking under the hood than they advertised, maybe.  I have also picked up the base model M4 MacBook Pro M4 to try out as I think it will handle most tasks you can throw at it (full review coming soon).

If you do intensive graphics design or 3D rendering, coding, etc., then I would look at the Pro or Max variant, but I think you would still be surprised by how good the base M4 chip is.  I couldn’t justify spending £4000 on a laptop for my business because the video render times on the Mac Mini and iMac are so good, even in 4k 60.

Should you upgrade from the M1,M2,M3 Max variants?

This is a question I see asked a lot, and it’s not surprising because a lot of people who have a M1 Max MacBook Pro (which is now 4 years old) are starting to think, “Do I need to move on upwards?”  I have tried a MacBook Pro M1 Max with 36GB RAM compared to the M4 Max, and there is a noticeable increase in performance on video editing tasks. The timeline on Premiere Pro ran better with more graphics on, and render times were faster.  However, in terms of the build of the machine, not much has changed over the years!  It felt the same as the M4 one, even though I know things have been updated slightly, like the webcam, etc.

The M1 Max is still a great laptop and will be for many years to come.  If you are happy with the performance on your M1 machine, then I see no reason to upgrade at the moment.  It would only be worth an upgrade if the battery is going, or you now need more RAM, etc.  If you have the M2 Max or M3 Max, then these should be fine for a few more years yet as they are all great performing CPUs. 

This is the magic of Apple Silicone: that it offers so much better performance compared to the older Intel Macs and thermal efficiency.  The MacBook Air demonstrates this the most as it doesn’t even have a fan in it!  I started editing my channel on the MacAir M3, and it was fine some of the time, even with 4k 60, and rendering times weren’t too bad!  I recently tried out a top-of-the-range Windows laptop, and the fan was so loud when editing, and my MacAir hands down beat it on the render times.  Apple may charge more for Macs than Windows, but you get much better longevity out of the machine, and trade-in values are better.

Conclusion:

The space black colour is really nice but a fingerprint magnet!

The new M4 MacBook Pro lineup, I would say, is Apple’s best yet, in terms of offering something for everyone.  I think we finally have a reason for most people to just buy the base M4 model, due to the ‘free’ upgrade to 16GB of RAM.  From my testing, it is amazing how much performance you can get out of this base CPU, and I can easily run my video editing business off that chip, without going for the M4 Pro or Max variant.

The M4 Max is a great technical achievement, and it is worth it for some people.  If you need the fastest video render times and money is no object, then the Max is the way to go, because it has so much power.  The 16” model is an absolute monster to carry around though, so I would look at the 14” if you plan to travel a lot.  Another option would be to just buy a base MacBook Air/Pro and a Mac Mini M4 Pro for use at home.  The Air is so good to travel with compared to the Pro and is more than capable of light video work on the go.  The Mac Mini M4 Pro is an amazing value-for-money machine, with so much power and takes up no space on your desk at all (check out my channel for a full review).

Before you buy a new MacBook, please have a look at the the M4 and M4 Pro before the max and save yourself some money, as they are such great performers.  I will write a full review of the base model MacBook Pro M4 soon.