Introduction: The M1 Max MacBook Pro Experience
I have been using this M1 Max MacBook Pro for the past three years since it came out, and it's been great. I have felt absolutely no compulsion to upgrade since, haven't needed to. It's funny, most of my work is pretty light, but occasionally I will have to edit a video on the go, which is when the extra horsepower and the screen and everything about this comes in handy, and it's great. If I didn't have to do that ever, I would just have an Air or a Surface Laptop, something like that. But that range of work is why this has been great for me, and it's been awesome so far.
The M4 Generation: A Tempting Upgrade
So along comes this M4 generation of MacBook Pros, and it's the first generation that I have actually been tempted to maybe upgrade to. They've stacked a couple of the right upgrades in the right places for things that actually make a difference to me.
Performance Improvements: From M1 to M4
The first big pillar is performance. The main reason why this new laptop matters at all is that it's got the new generation of M4 chips inside. We all know the leap from Intel chips to Apple silicon chips for M1 was generational. But since then, it's been a sort of more reasonable incremental upgrade, going from M1 to M2, then M3, and then M4. I think it's pretty obvious that nobody with an M2 or M3 needs to upgrade, but there have been enough improvements now stacking up upon each other from M1 to M4 that the numbers are now starting to get kind of interesting.
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Hardware Upgrades: M4 Max vs. M1 Max
So just to set the stage, this laptop that I've been using is the M1 Max maxed out. Basically, the best you could get at the time. 64 gigs of unified memory on this system. And this unit I've been testing of the M4 Max is also maxed out. It's the best you can get now; faster, stronger on the new one: Three nanometers versus five, 546 gigs per second of memory bandwidth versus 400. Just the hardware improvements to get to M4 Max are clearly there. To keep the apples-to-apples comparison going, Apple, in their own presentation, said up to 2.2 times faster CPU performance than M1 Max and 1.9 times faster GPU performance. So we're looking at around twice as fast, and the synthetic benchmarks I've run back this up. I got over 4,000 in Geekbench 6 CPU single core, which is the highest single core score ever in a Mac by a while. And the multi-core score was incredible, too. Tops the chart. And then, GPU has improved a lot to the point where it's bumping up against M2 Ultra. Not M2 Max, M2 Ultra chips, the one that's currently in the Mac Pro. So it's pretty clear that on paper, yeah, these M4 chips are blazing; they're incredible. But that's just on paper. What about in real life? What about real workflow stuff?
Real-World Performance: Video Editing Benchmarks
On YouTube, you might have noticed a lot of the benchmarking and real-world stuff that you see is video editing benchmarks, just because that's the most intensive thing most YouTubers do on their computers. It's the most intensive thing I do. But yeah, that's what's gonna drive my purchase decision, so that's the first thing I looked into. So my own benchmark is literally loading up a video project in Final Cut Pro, moving things around, messing with clips, cutting, effects, tracking, and then, of course, export times. This project here is a mix of 8K RED raw footage and action camera footage with comped graphics and smaller video files from the Snapchat glasses. And not only did this laptop open and flip through Final Cut faster than any other machine I've ever used, but it also exported the final video roughly twice as fast as my M1 Max laptop, which is really exciting for me.
Magnetic Mask in Final Cut Pro: Unlocking New Potential
So a pretty prime example of the performance unlocking something new is Final Cut Pro 11 just came out, and I've been messing with it for a little bit, and there's a new headlining feature called Magnetic Mask. And my theory is that it's taking pretty heavy advantage of Apple silicon, specifically the neural engine, 'cause it's "AI-powered," but I had to prove it. So previously, to cut a subject out of a background in a video, it was this painstaking process called rotoscoping, where you're essentially manually drawing the mask for every single frame. Now, this one works even better than some plugins I've used, like mRotoAI, and it's even faster. Basically, all you do is click the subject and sort of refine your selection, and then once you're good to go, you just analyze forward for the entire clip and just let it do its thing, and it just continues for the whole clip.
Benchmarks: M1 Max vs. M4 Max vs. M2 Ultra
I ran through this on the M4 Max. I ran through this on the M1 Max, but I did some other machines as well. And the results, well, the M1 Max was able to pull this off in two minutes, 56 seconds. The M4 Max got it down to two minutes and 13 seconds. But then M2 Ultra got it down to a minute and a half. But then the Intel Xeon Mac Pro, super expensive with the dual Radeon Pro GPUs, took six minutes for the same 45-second clip here. So, the leap is crazy, and it just keeps getting better. I'm thinking M4 Ultra is gonna be, as a video editor, pretty sick. But of course, you might not be a video editor; you might be something else; you might be a photographer. I just watched Tyler Stalman's video on his M4 Max laptop. It's really good. The second half of his video, he does a lot of testing against the M1 generation with Lightroom and Resolve, and not only does it continue to crush M1 Max, but sometimes it actually gets close to or it beats the newest Mac Studio with M2 Ultra, which is pretty insane. So I'll link his whole video below; it's really good.
Performance Compared to Desktop Chips
Now, obviously, we expect Mac Studio and Mac Pro to eventually get their own M4 generation updates with the M4 Ultra chip. I'm sure that'll be immense. But even so, with this, it's crazy to see Apple silicon is still improving fast enough that this new laptop chip is outperforming some of the desktop chips from earlier years of Apple silicon. There's a bunch of other real-world benchmarks out there. I'll link some more below that are really good. But I think the bottom line from my testing and from other tests that I've watched and read is, yeah, there is now a significant bump up in performance from M1 to M4. Not just 30 or 40%, but, like, 200%, which is pretty crazy.
Design Updates: Space Black and Nano-Texture Display
But that by itself might not be enough to convince you to upgrade, so there's more. Luckily, several other things are updated about this laptop as well. So, first of all, this laptop is Space Black, as you may have noticed, which the M1 generation didn't have, but it's not exactly new. It's actually had the same two colors as M3, Space Black or silver. I do love me some Space Black, but anyone who has one already knows it looks really good new, but then (sighs) it kind of collects fingerprints and starts to wear over time. Still, the best solution I found is a skin over a case, just as that little bit of scratch protection, and you'll never see fingerprints again. So I'll leave a link below to channel-sponsored dbrand's Glitch skin if you wanna check that out. It's much more interesting than black or silver.
There is another visual improvement here too, and you've probably noticed it watching this video. It looks so good. That is the nano-texture display option. It is new, and I love it. It's incredible. And the thing is, I have slight reservations about how it might wear over time, but on a laptop like this, it just looks so good. Nano-texture started out as a $1,000 option on the Pro Display XDR, and this is the hardest one to recommend. Like, it's stupid expensive, and then it's also so delicate to maintain. It just picked up fingerprints so easily. You'd have to have the right low-pile soft microfiber to actually clean it. Like, it is tough. I wouldn't recommend it to most. But it seems like it improved since then because now it's a $300 option on the Studio Display that a lot of people have. Then they offered it as a $100 option on the iPad Pro, which obviously that's something people are touching constantly with their fingers, and we haven't really seen too many issues with it. And so I think on a laptop like this, like, if it can be... Geez. If it can be, like, maintenance pain-free, then it feels like a kind of no-brainer. Like, this is my favorite option on this laptop.
Thunderbolt 5 and Future-Proofing
So then the only other big thing that's new here is Thunderbolt 5, which is funny; it's kind of overrated and underrated at the same time. So the outgoing laptops all have perfectly great, very fast Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. Love that. Almost every new high-end laptop has that.
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