Yes, I did it again and bought a MacBook Pro with an Apple chip. This time the M4 Pro arrived at my desk. After I got my M1 Pro in 2022 (one year after its launch) for my personal belongings, I thought it might be time to upgrade my work setup and replace the 2019 Intel based 16”. This machine was a mess from the beginning. Thermal issues all the time and fans giving me headache during the day. This was a good machine back in the day but with Apple silicon compared this Intel based laptops really suck.
When Apple conducted their Mac launch week in October I was impressed how they updated their complete lineup including the iMac and the Mac mini - the latter is so cute and powerful, yet efficient! The Mac mini draws around 40W when in full swing - this is crazy!
I wanted a laptop for sure since I also need to travel with it from time to time. The 14” form factor is absolute best for me although the 16” display is very tempting. With the black week ahead I monitored several offers of a MBP 14” with the M4 Pro, 24GB RAM and 1TB SSD - and finally caught one on Amazon with a discount of roughly 400 EUR. Never buy from Apple directly.
I didn’t do benchmarks here but some figures: I installed DaVinci Resolve 19.1 in 35 seconds. The SSD reaches 6GB/s read and write which makes it the fastest ever built into a laptop.
Compared to the M1 Pro I don’t see much a difference in speed or response, but I see a difference in memory. The M4 has 8GB more RAM so I can now run 2 Parallels VMs with Windows 11 ARM simultaneously without any issues. This machine still draws only 10W, CPU is around 7% while it drives 2x4k displays along the internal Retina XDR - crazy.
During my work days I didn’t notice a fan noise and checking all using the Stats app confirmed a fan rotation of 0 for both. CPU temperature was around 40°C, so basically this machines is bored 
Ok, using Windows 11 in a VM and all my other tasks are not graphically heavy loads. But I can run all this mentioned above together with Logic Pro X and a 30 track score with several instances of Native Instruments “Kontakt” without any drops.
Long story short: the M4 Pro is more than enough for me and should be for most tasks out there. Just make sure storage is above the entry level, 24GB memory is more than enough for this chip and the operating system.
If you are still running an Intel Mac now is the time to change to the M4.
Left: M1 Pro. Right: M4 Pro.