Apple has made some astounding claims about the M4 MacBook Pros — enhanced power efficiency and increased performance to name a couple. You'd be wise to approach those claims with skepticism, especially without independent testing.
Luckily, we've now had a chance to put the new MacBooks to the test in our own labs, and it seems the M4 MacBook Pros do actually live up to the hype.
So just how impressive are Apple's new MacBooks? Let's get into it.
Apple MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro battery life
Apple claimed up to 24 hours of battery life on the new MacBooks, and thanks to our own lab tests and hands-on time, Apple has made a solid play for the top of the battery life charts.
The MacBook Pro 16 M4 lasted an astounding 20 hours and 46 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test. Our proprietary battery test benchmark sets a laptop to 150 nits of brightness and surfs through a series of static, dynamic, and video web pages.
Thanks to that impressive battery life, the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro is one of the longest-lasting consumer laptops we've tested this year. The only laptop that lasted longer than the new MacBook Pro 16 is the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 which clocked in at an incredible 21:03.
We also compared the new MacBooks to the previous generation of MacBook Pro laptops, and more recent battery life champions like the Dell XPS 13 (9345) with Snapdragon X Elite and Dell XPS 13 (9350) with Intel Core Ultra 200V processors, the new Macs leave the competition in the dust, outpacing even last year's MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max and MacBook Pro 14 M3 by a solid margin.
The new Apple MacBook Pro 14 M4 is also competitive against the Dell XPS 13s and has better power efficiency than the MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max and MacBook Pro 14 M3.
So this year's Macs do indeed live up to Apple's hype in terms of battery life. While we didn't get quite 24 hours, Apple did back that claim with a video streaming test, which differs from our benchmark quite a bit. Apple's web surfing claim for the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro was just 17 hours, while the MacBook Pro 14 M4 had just 16 hours of expected web surfing battery life. We set our laptops to a lower brightness than Apple's web benchmark, which helps account for the disparity.
Apple MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro performance
Apple claims the MacBook Pro laptops with M4 chipsets are up to 3.5 times more powerful than the comparable M1 chips. The M3 was 20% faster than the M2, and 31% faster than the M1. So we expected a pretty solid leap forward with the M4 chipsets, and once again Apple hasn't let us down.
Based on the Geekbench 6 multicore scores of the MacBook Pro 14 M4, the M4 is about 27% faster than the M3.
While we didn't get our hands on a MacBook Pro 16 M4 Max chipset, our M4 Pro chip outpaced the high-end M3 Max chipset we tested last year. While it's just a 9% increase with the M4 Pro, the fact that the mid-range M4 chip has a 9% lead on the highest M3 chip is an impressive leap in performance, and at a much lower price.
Both M4 chipsets we tested performed better than the Snapdragon X Elite and Intel "Lunar Lake" Dell XPS 13s. The M4 was just 3% better than the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Dell XPS 13 (9345), but it has a 39% lead on Intel's Core Ultra 200V model of XPS 13 (9350). We also included the Asus Zenbook S 16's performance to compare with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset, and AMD was also left in the dust by the Apple M4 chipset with a 13% lead.
Outlook
If you've been dragging your heels on the Apple M-series laptops because they just didn't feel worth the upgrade from your Intel MacBook or Windows laptop, there's never been a better time to make the jump than now.
While some configurations of M4 MacBook Pro are expected to get less battery life than the MacBook Pro 14 M4 and MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro configurations we tested, based on Apple's expectations, you're still getting an impressive amount of battery life:
- 14-inch M4: Up to 24 hours video streaming, up to 16 hours wireless web
- 14-inch M4 Pro: Up to 22 hours video streaming, up to 14 hours wireless web
- 14-inch M4 Max: Up to 18 hours video streaming, up to 13 hours wireless web
- 16-inch M4 Pro: Up to 24 hours video streaming, up to 17 hours wireless web
- 16-inch M4 Max: Up to 21 hours video streaming; up to 14 hours wireless web
As for performance, the M4 chips once again dominate the current chip environment. While we are still waiting on some configurations of the Intel Core Ultra 200 series based on other architectures, the M4 chips have outperformed the most recent Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm offerings. So if you want the fastest processors, the M4 chips are indeed the way to go.
These days, most apps work on macOS natively or through Apple's solid Rosetta emulation. So you won't have the same compatibility issues as the Snapdragon X laptops.
And with the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro having better battery life and better performance than the MacBook Pro 16 M3 Max at a $500-$900 discount, this is the laptop we'd have to recommend to just about anyone.
