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rwh63

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 24, 2010
627
398
New England
was hoping to snag an M4 14" base Pro during the recent sale period. didn't happen. one detriment was the delivery times were late december through mid january. so, did some reading, and see many positive comments on the M1. thinking of looking at used options, so i can grab one now. what do you folks think? is the M1 a great value used? is it in any way better than the M4?
 
The M1 Pro is still very capable. It’s (overall) only slightly less performant than the M2 Pro and outpaces an M3. Of course, that’s not to say the M4 doesn't have benefits. Beyond raw CPU and GPU performance, for example:

• M4 has second generation RT hardware, allowing it to rival M2 Ultra (e.g., Cinebench 2024). Although, in a balanced graphics test (e.g., Geekbench), it’s a more predictable increment.
• M4 Neural Engine (i.e., NPU) is ~3x as fast even though it has the same number of processing cores — ML/“AI” performance.
• M4 (and M3) include hardware AV1 decoding support — basically, beneficial if you watch UHD/4K (or higher) resolution content on YouTube or Netflix.



As usual, the value is subjective.
 
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if it were available on apple refurbished M1 Pro sure its a good proposition... because they make sure its spanking new
otherwise i'd just go straight for M4 Pro, its the chip of this year for Macs, not too expensive like the Max but not too cheap like the M4 its a perfect balance.
 
if it were available on apple refurbished M1 Pro sure its a good proposition... because they make sure its spanking new
otherwise i'd just go straight for M4 Pro, its the chip of this year for Macs, not too expensive like the Max but not too cheap like the M4 its a perfect balance.
if a new M4, i was just going for the regular chip, not the Pro or Max.
 
Bumping this. I have the opportunity to get a used M1 MacBook Pro, still having 5 months of Apple Care, and fairly certain treated well (have to check on battery cycles), for less then a new M3 Air. I am comparing the M1 Pro, though, to a base M4 MacBook.

From my understanding, overall performance is slightly better on M4, graphics are better on M1 Pro, and things like webcam, Center stage, Bluetooth and wifi protocols are better on the M4.

Anything else I'm overlooking?
 
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