M1 Pro vs M4 Pro vs M4 Max MacBook Pro 14"

[LEOMODE]

Trying to upgrade as I passed on M3 series. To my knowledge, M3 Pro is just a slight upgrade from M1 Pro (I think like 15-20% even on GPU?). I am wondering now if it's time to upgrade to M4 Pro or even M4 Max, but I have a few daunting questions:

1) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro: I know CPU wise it won't be much of a difference, would you think it should now be time to upgrade as perhaps GPU will be a drastic upgrade (e.g. playing games will yield at least 20 more fps?)

2) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro vs M4 Max: Would M4 Max still be less in efficiency draining more battery even at idle/normal tasks? I know M1~M3 Max has been like that. I am hoping that with newer technology now M4 Max will still yield better battery life than M1 Pro.

Thanks.

 

[dmn11]

have the same question myself - I'm currently leaning towards keeping my M1p for 1 more year, mainly as it still performs well and it's going to recieve all the AI functionality so for my needs I don't see a reason to upgrade today and it's always better not to get the 1st version of anything... and we're on the 1st version of AI so my guess next year we'll see a bigger gap

in case someone from Apple is reading this and has some funny bad ideas... just so you'll know the only reason why I with Apple is the fact that I know that I will be paying more but the products last longer... so don't you change that

 

[phobic99]

I kinda have the upgrade itch myself but I'm also looking at keeping my M1 Pro a bit longer. I'm trying to hold out for OLED screens more than any other upgrade at the moment and haven't noticed any slow downs with how I use my machine currently.

 

[jabbr]

the single-core speed alone is going to be around 50% better on the M4, multi-core likely major upgrade.

I'm curious about any potential power savings. I think the miniLED panel is the major power sink so I'm not sure how much more battery life they can squeeze out from better CPU efficiency.

Thunderbolt 5 would be very appealing for a future 120Hz 5K monitor.

 

[AirpodsNow]

I plan to get the M4 MBP. Currently on 16" M1 Pro 16GB/1TB config. I really loved the machine, it's quiet, but too big. My primary goal is to get a 14".

I have been 'guessing' the performance as well, based on the M3 family and the M4 iPad Pro. As an apple silicon user since M1 Pro, I have been able to do my casual games on the MBP. It's mostly through a simulation layer or similar, not native (Ryujinx, Whisky and Parallels). I have found it therefore ram and vram lacking and also the gpu. So I hope to go at least double that (36GB seems to be the next level) and 'better' gpu (M4 pro?) or more gpu (M4 Max, base or 'maxed' gpu model).

It seems that the M3 Max (30gpu or 40 gpu) battery usage is higher than the M1 Pro, so they last (slightly) shorter. Plus me going from a 16" to a 14" will reduces it even more. Therefore I also hope that the M4 will be more power efficient. I believe the non Max models would last last long or longer than the M1 Pro 16", but I would assume the Max models will still consume more power and last shorter. It seems that more performance just takes more power (so less efficient).

Then there is the issue of the difference between M1/2 Pro vs M3 Pro. Initially they had 200Gb/s, now they offer 150GB/s for the Pro. So M3 = 100GB/s, M3 Pro = 150GB/s, M3 Max base = 300GB/s, Max max = 400GB/s. Also the M3 Pro has more efficiency cores (in comparison to performance cores) in comparison with the M1 Pro. Somehow they have tweaked the M3 Pro to be 'more' in the middle between the M3 and M3 max models, whereas in the M1 family, the M1 Pro seems to be much more performant comparatively. Therefore for those M3 Pro buyers, who needs more than 16/18GB of ram slowly find themselves upselling to the 'base' M3 Max.

1) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro: I know CPU wise it won't be much of a difference, would you think it should now be time to upgrade as perhaps GPU will be a drastic upgrade (e.g. playing games will yield at least 20 more fps?)

2) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro vs M4 Max: Would M4 Max still be less in efficiency draining more battery even at idle/normal tasks? I know M1~M3 Max has been like that. I am hoping that with newer technology now M4 Max will still yield better battery life than M1 Pro.

Thanks.

Sorry to blabber on like that, it's just that I have been looking at too much info on these in the last month.

1) Yes I think the GPU has been much better arleady since the M1 Pro. If you look at benchmarks, the M3 Pro has been able to play so many games much better than the M1 Pro. So the M4 Pro would assumignly do so as well.

2) The M2/3 Pro last 1 hour longer than M1 Pro (according to Apple's compare Macs' site). I would imagine that the M4 max (base, the low GPU config, not high gpu config) would still last less than the M1 Pro (33.7 billion transistors) due to higher wattage usage of such a Max chip (was the M3 Max 97 billion transistors?). Eventually a smaller transistor count chip, I assume, would just use less power and therefore make the battery last longer.

However, it's more important to look at your own use case. If you never 'drain' the battery to less than 20% for instance, you might be ok with a Max model? And if you never maxed out the M1 Pro, any other upgrade will be much better already. Do you know your usage? I have been using the istats menu for years now. The advantage is that it shows a 30 day history of the usage of my cpu, ram, battery, gpu and temps. So I can easily see when I have been 'maxing' out the machine or not. You can just do a trial for the coming week and see it yourself?

And in my case I definitely need more gpu and ram due to casual games that I have been playing. Based on YouTube research, it seems that a M1 Max gpu would come close to my gaming needs, so I compare those numbers to the latest M3 chips, and it seems to me that I still would need to go to a 'based' M3 Max (https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks/). Some games I watch was it baldurs gate or some other native title was hitting ~40 fps on M3 Pro, which I think would be nice to be more closer to 60 fps, so again a M3 Max would be better. Unless the M4 Pro would provide more than 18GPU cores, I think it wouldn't be enough a jump for me.

Anyways, that has been my research so far.

 

[DHagan4755]

You can guess but until Apple announces them & we can look at all of the details we really don't know. From what we do know now the entry m4 config will have the best battery life but we can't be sure yet how much better the M4 Pro & Max chips will be with power consumption.

 

[giffut]

Frankly speaking, I wouldn´t do it other than changing the screen size from 16 to 14 or vice versa.

The M1 is still an excellent platform and I would advice for using it until you come to a real bottleneck in your workflow, not just a benchmark difference which is not always the same percentage in real life performance.

Think of sustainability - don´t waste resources on luxuries because "I want to and I can" thinking.

 

[gpat]

One reason to upgrade would be that M4 is apparently going to be the "big" upgrade CPU-wise and we're not really going to see something relevant again, until the M7 or so.
I would bite if the M4 MBA came with the capability to drive 2 external monitors with 1 extra TB port. But that would make me downgrade in Apple's lineup, so they probably wouldn't want that.

 

[Acronyc]

I have an M1 Max 14-inch MBP and I have no plans to upgrade, no matter how great the M4 machines look. I specced this out to last me at least 5 years and I'm coming up on 3 years next month. I'm confident I'll get another two years out of it and probably longer given how well it still performs.

 

[cassmr]

1) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro: I know CPU wise it won't be much of a difference, would you think it should now be time to upgrade as perhaps GPU will be a drastic upgrade (e.g. playing games will yield at least 20 more fps?)

Both should be a decent upgrade in performance. But M1 Pro is no slouch. It's really hard to generalise what actual frame rate increase you may see as it'll depend on game and settings. You'd likely be better off saving the money and buying even a mid spec gaming pc. Even if you had planned to sell your existing machine to fund it, you'd still be better off interms of games you could play that way. But i do appreciate the appeal of having just one machine that does everything, but I think the mac will continue for the time being to be a bit disappointing on this front.

If that was your only reason for upgrading, it would be worth waiting. At least in a year or two they will be doing a bigger redesign and oled + 1-2 years more chip development.

2) M1 Pro -> M4 Pro vs M4 Max: Would M4 Max still be less in efficiency draining more battery even at idle/normal tasks? I know M1~M3 Max has been like that. I am hoping that with newer technology now M4 Max will still yield better battery life than M1 Pro.

The max will be less efficient and yes less efficient than m1 pro. There have been some energy improvements over m1. Unfortunately, its hard to actualyl say definitively because sometimes the battery is better off being drained faster to finish a task sooner than it is to operate on a lower draw for longer. But at the extremes, basically idle/video play back vs pushed to limits, the pro should retain better batter life, but may get less of the pro work load done on that charge.

The other complicating factor is that your battery has likely degraded. So in practical terms, you may be able to move to the m4 Max and see very little real world battery life difference.

Best to wait until they come out, you clearly dont need to buy it day one. I'm not a big fan of the channel, but maxtech on youtube tends to run over 2-3 weeks after launch about 20 different comparisons between the new machines max vs pro, and vs older macs as well as windows competitors, including a focus on battery life. That may be your best bet at an answer.

 

[nutriousmitten]

My question will be an M2 Pro (Apple refurb) or M3 Pro (when they clear those out) vs a M4 base.

Contemplated pulling the trigger on both in 2024, mainly for the 18 vs 8 GB of Ram on the Pro vs the base M2 or M3.

With the base M4 coming with 16Gb, the differences for me start to be not so great.