16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max Review: The MacBook Pro Peak
3 Facebook x.com Reddit
16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Max
5.0/5 Buy at the best prices
New The 16-inch MacBook Pro with M4 Max is a beast of a machine that highlights the raw power and efficiency of Apple Silicon.
The latest MacBook Pro refresh arrived in November, along with several other Macs. We also got a new M4-powered iMac and a completely redesigned Mac mini.
When it comes to the MacBook Pro specifically, they come in 14-inch and 16-inch versions. You can get the 14-inch version in M4 and M4 Pro versions, and the 16-inch version in M4 Pro or M4 Max versions.
We're reviewing the 16-inch Space Black MacBook Pro with the M4 Max processor and 40-core GPU. It has 1TB of memory and 64GB of combined storage.
Subscribe to AppleInsider on YouTubeSubscribe to AppleInsider on YouTube
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Internals and ports
Most of this machine is the same as before. The exterior design is unchanged, except that the base M4 model can now be had in the popular Space Black color scheme. We still wish it were a little darker.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: The left side houses the MagSafe 3, Thunderbolt 5, and audio ports
Looking at it, the left side of the machine houses a MagSafe 3 port for charging up to 140W, flanked by two Thunderbolt ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right, there's an SDXC card reader, another Thunderbolt port, and an HDMI port.
You get Apple’s excellent built-in keyboard on top of a still-spacious glass trackpad. Years later, Apple’s trackpad still has no equal among the competition.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: The keyboard is as good as ever and a joy to type on
The display is 16.2 inches diagonally and has a resolution of 3,456 by 2,234. It looks beautiful, has a typical brightness of 1,000 nits, ProMotion up to 120Hz, and supports the P3 wide color gamut and TrueTone.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: What's new this time?
There are a number of improvements here, even if Apple left the chassis the same. For example, the display's maximum brightness of 1,000 nits is 400 nits brighter than before.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: The screen looks great with a matte finish
This is especially useful outdoors, whether you go for the glossy or new nano-texture finish. It can also get dimmer.
If you’ve ever worked until the wee hours of the morning or tried to use your computer in bed in the dark, you may have tried keeping the display brightness extremely low. Like the iPhone 16 series, it can now go down to 1 nit.
We, of course, often work until the wee hours of the night. So this, like the iPhone, has proven to be a surprisingly useful feature.
Not everyone will need this, and Apple doesn’t push it that hard. For us, however, it’s very useful and more comfortable on the eyes.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: new 12MP camera and Desk View support
Also on the display is an improved camera, hidden in the notch. Now it's 12MP and supports Desk View. Video is still limited to 1080p.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Desk View on the updated camera
Even if you don’t use Desk View, the higher resolution and improved M4 ISP are welcome, and we were shocked at how much better it looked. We did a side-by-side comparison with our M3 Max MacBook Pro, and it was dramatic.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Camera quality old vs. new
Photos were richer with more contrast and better colors. Frankly, it makes the camera much more usable for processing apps.
Thunderbolt 5 will be a standout feature — finally
After we first saw prototypes of Thunderbolt 5 devices at CES 2024, we're finally seeing the first cables and docks hitting the market.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Third-party Thunderbolt 5 cable
It’s capable of 120Gbps of aggregate data transfer, which is three times more than Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4. There aren’t many devices that can do that right now, but we’ll see a lot of them over the course of this machine’s life.
When you buy a Mac that you plan to keep for three, five, or even ten years, you want it to support the latest technology. That’s what this one offers.
This will matter more as more peripherals become available. At the time of writing, only a few things have been announced.
The only thing we didn’t get here is Wi-Fi 7, and we’re very disappointed. It’s the one upgrade we expected to get but didn’t, purely because of the new wireless standard that was finalized earlier this year. The iPhone 16 series already supports it, too.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Apple has plenty of ports
Once again, when you want a machine that will last a long time, you need the latest standards, and it's a shame to see that it's missed here. We'd rather have this on our Macs than our iPhones.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Nano-texture display
Under the “new changes for 2024” section, the MacBook Pro lists an optional nano-texture finish. It's similar to what's offered on the iPad Pro, iMac, and Studio Display.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Trying to shed light on glossy (left) and matte (right) finishes
We won't go over this again, considering this isn't the first Apple product to feature this finish. In short, it reduces glare and the impact of bright light on the display. This diffused light, in our experience, makes the screen look even better.
There will be debate over which is better for color-heavy workflows like video color correction or professional editing in Lightroom and Photoshop, but for us, it makes sense. Side by side, the color difference is minimal.
If you care so much about color representation, a separate reference monitor might make more sense. With a laptop, the idea is to be portable, and the nanotexture delivers that.
The only downside is that ambient light makes it appear a little dimmer in certain conditions. It’s a worthwhile tradeoff, though, since we’d typically have to crank up the brightness to combat glare.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Testing the two displays outdoors
Once the brightness reaches 1,000 nits outdoors, that difference disappears, and the new model looks just as bright as the old one. It also has great viewing angles, which is a plus.
In all the environments we tested, the nano texture looked better. Even the loss in clarity is minimal, and we would happily pay the $150 upgrade price.
Funnily enough, the nano texture also didn't make the display look cleaner. It still showed some oils, but overall it looked and stayed cleaner than a regular glossy display.
We've never been a fan of traditional anti-glare screens used on PCs, and it's understandable why Apple waited for a better technology before introducing its own version for the Mac.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max Review: Performance
Here we test the 16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max, which is a 16-core processor with 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max Review: Geekbench Single-Core Test Results
This is the same breakdown as the M3 Max, but it’s faster now, with the clock speed bumped up from 3.68GHz to 4.5GHz.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Geekbench multi-core test results
As for performance, Geekbench 6 shows us a 25% boost in single-core performance. We also saw a 30% boost in multi-core performance.
The Metal graphics test was a bit more modest, hitting 189,752 from 163,927. That’s about a 15% boost for this 40-core GPU.
To put those numbers in perspective, the M4 Max easily outperforms the M2 Ultra’s processor. That shouldn’t be a huge surprise, since we’ve never had an M3 Ultra chip to compare it to.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Blender GPU benchmarks
Perhaps even more impressive is that the M4 Max is also comparable to the GeForce 4080 super GPU in some workloads. This is a huge desktop graphics card with laptop-like performance.
In our testing, we wanted to offer something new to the new machine, which coincided perfectly with Apple’s new Final Cut Pro update.
One of the new features is Magnetic Mask, which is one of the most processor-intensive video tasks we do outside of 3D motion graphics. It uses AI to track a subject, masking the background without the need for a green screen.
We applied it to a 12-minute 4K 24FPS video, and it took 14 minutes and 27 seconds to complete. On the M3 Max, it took a minute and 32 seconds longer.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Final Cut Pro editing testing
Overall, that’s about a 10% performance boost. It’s not a ton, but in a longer or higher-resolution project, it could mean some serious time savings. Of course, high-performance workflows probably won’t use Magnetic Mask, but still.
To give you a full picture, we ran Cinebench R23 on both our last-gen and current-gen machines. The M4 Max scored 27,108 for the multi-core test and 2,237 for the single-core test, compared to 21,355 and 1,816 for the M3 Max, respectively.
That once again shows a roughly 30% increase in multi-core performance. That’s a solid increase for an annual upgrade, and even more impressive compared to the exceptional M1 Max machine many people still use.
That could be a big enough jump to entice holdouts to upgrade to Apple’s latest and greatest portable Mac.
16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max review: M4 Pro where it is
While the M4 Max is an incredibly powerful chip, and points to a stunning M4 Ultra launch down the road, the real story seems to be with the M4 Pro.
Generation-wise, that’s a significant bump over its predecessor, and at the rate Apple Silicon is advancing, it’s still more powerful than many pro users will need.
16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max review: Apple’s M4-series chips are great
Our most demanding workflow, multi-camera 4K video, is now barely a burden even for the base M4 processor. These days, we’d be happy with the M4 Pro, even if we opted for the extra power headroom and better performance the M4 Max offers.
Notably, the M4 Pro has up to 14 cores, two more than before, but also bumps up the number of performance cores from six to 10. We'd be fine if Apple just gave us more efficiency cores.
Memory bandwidth has also nearly doubled from 150GB/s to 273GB/s. All of this adds up to an exceptional upgrade for a midrange chip.
16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max review: Part of our benchmarking suite
Last year, the M3 Pro felt like it was being held back by a mediocre upgrade. That gave users more reason to upgrade to the “max” variant.
This year, it looks like the M4 Pro is where it’s at, and unless you have a super-demanding workflow, it’ll probably hold its own.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: Is Apple's new flagship portable Mac worth buying?
It's not every year that Apple Silicon has to deliver a huge boost. This year, it was likely above average for the M4 Max, between 20% and 30% for the CPU and less for the GPU.
Still, it’s impressive how much power Apple can pack into a laptop that’s so incredibly portable. And unlike many Windows PCs, you won’t see a significant drop in performance when running on battery power.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: It’s easy to slip the MacBook Pro into a backpack, even at 16 inches
There’s very little to criticize here, as Apple continues to refine and push the MacBook Pro line. There’s a lack of Wi-Fi 7, but otherwise Apple has exceeded expectations.
It’s powerful, fast, sleek, portable, and reliable. It’s the machine we’ll turn to most often to get work done.
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max review: The new MacBook Pro is incredibly good
The only reason not to buy the 16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max is if you don’t need that much power. In this case, the M4 Pro model is ideal.
Rumor has it that we'll see a refreshed MacBook Pro next year that's even thinner and will supposedly add Wi-Fi 7 and updated OLED displays. That's what's on the roadmap, and will hopefully make any upgrade decisions easier.
This is a workhorse of a machine, and will be a solid choice for an upgrade before moving up to a refreshed model in a few years, once Apple has ironed out all the bugs of the first generation.
This is the peak MacBook Pro. And we're here for it.
16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max Review: The Pros
- Nano Texture Display Is an Incredible Upgrade
- M4 Pro and M4 Max Performance Is Outstanding
- New Camera Is Noticeably Better
- The Best Portable Mac Design and Performance
- Thunderbolt 5 Is a Game Changer
- New Minimum Brightness Level Is Great for Working at Night
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max Review: The Bad
- No Wi-Fi 7
- Thunderbolt 5 accessories still rare
16-inch MacBook Pro m4 Max Rating: 5 out of 5
Where to Buy Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Max at a Discount
The 2024 16-inch MacBook Pro is now on sale at numerous Apple resellers, with discounted prices starting at $2,199 in our 16-inch MacBook Pro Price Guide. At the time of publication, Amazon is selling the M4 Max models for $3,199, reflecting a three-digit discount off the MSRP.
AppleInsider readers can also save up to $300 on every CTO M4 MacBook Pro configuration with promo code APINSIDER at Apple Authorized Reseller Adorama. The same code also gets $30 off three years of AppleCare on 14-inch models and $40 off three years of AppleCare on 16-inch MacBook Pros.
You can also find the latest 14-inch MacBook Pro deals in our price guides:
- 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pricing
- 14-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro and M4 Max Pricing
Follow AppleInsider on Google News
