M4 MacBook Pro 14 Review: Why You Should Upgrade?

The M4-based MacBook Pro starts at $1,599 and goes up to $1,199. I have the middle-tier option here, priced at $1,799, which includes 16 GB of unified memory, a terabyte of storage, and the nanotexture display I added for an extra $150. It got generally positive reviews, so I wanted to see for myself—not only the M4 processor, not the M4 Pro or the M4 Max, which we looked at, but the M4 base model.

Design and Build

We have one in space black, this is heavier compared to that—way heavier. That was the first thing that came to mind. I also had the silver in the 16-inch, and this is the space black. We have the matching space black cable, a USB type-C to MagSafe.

We get 70-watt power charger with the flip-out prongs. You can get a higher-wattage charger for some extra money. We have that one on the MacBook Pro 16 but that’s it.

I had this on the 14-inch M3 Max that I reviewed, but this is the standard version and the build quality is excellent once again from Apple—top of the line. But you’re paying a premium for their materials. They use unibody aluminum and all the premium design they put into their laptops.

One thing with Apple you can always do this of course, the one-finger test. I do have a slippery table, so that will, of course, turn on the laptop once you lift the lid. This one has the 14-inch display. I can tell you right off the bat that this will be less reflective than the standard display.

Ports

There are some differences if you go with the M4 Pro and the M4 Max.

One of them is the Thunderbolt ports. These are Thunderbolt 4, as opposed to Thunderbolt 5. You also get your MagSafe and a headphone jack, all located on the left side. On the right side, you get a full-size SD card reader, a third USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port, and HDMI 2.1. This Thunderbolt 4 is different from the M3 version, which didn’t have Thunderbolt on that port. I believe you only got two Thunderbolt ports, if I’m not mistaken, so that’s a difference year over year with the M4 version.

As far as user upgradeability, bad news again from Apple: you cannot upgrade anything here, not even the SSD storage, which you can on many Windows counterparts that we look at here on the channel. And to make matters worse, Apple charges a heavy premium for upgrades, so it’s not a good overall picture when it comes to serviceability and user upgradeability.

Keyboard and Touchpad

As I’ve mentioned many times and in that 16-inch review I did on the MacBook Pro recently, I’m not a big fan of these keyboards. They collect a lot of grease, and the tactility and overall feedback are good but not great. I definitely prefer the ThinkPad keyboards, Lenovo keyboards, HP keyboards, and even some of the Dell keyboards over this one. I’m just not quite as accurate. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t type as fast or as accurately on this one as I do on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 I reviewed, it was much better in my opinion.

So, if you’re going to do productivity work, I definitely prefer those keyboards over this one. That being said, it’s definitely a good keyboard overall, and I think it has one of the best, if not the best, haptic touchpads in the business. It really sets the standard in terms of haptic feedback, overall gestures—everything works as you’d expect and works really well. Apple makes the best touchpads in the business. I don’t think there’s any question about it, although Sensil has been making a lot of gains and is probably the best, if not the best, on the Windows side of things. But overall, the Apple touchpads here on this MacBook Pro are excellent, and I highly recommend using them because they are the best in the business.

Display and Audio

About the display, one of the main reasons I picked this up was to get the Nano texture option, which you can also order from Apple. It has a 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with mini-LED technology, a resolution of 3024 x 1964, and a 120Hz refresh rate. It also has a 16:10 aspect ratio. The brightness is excellent; I measured 622 nits SDR indoors, with peak sustained brightness up to 1,000 nits. It can reach 1,600 nits for peak HDR, and overall, SDR brightness can hit 1,000 nits outdoors. For maximum brightness, you’ll need to enable auto-brightness, so keep that in mind.

Watching high dynamic range movies on this has been excellent, and editing has been great due to its color accuracy. The color gamut coverage is impressive, with excellent deep blacks, good white points, and great contrast. It does have PWM like an OLED, but it’s not as pronounced, so it’s not a big issue for most users. Overall, it’s an excellent display though I think OLED displays are sharper and more vibrant, so I prefer them. But this one is the next best, as far as I’m concerned.

A couple of things to note: there’s no touch option, as that’s reserved for the iPad line. When comparing it to the standard display, one of my biggest concerns was the loss of vibrancy with the Nano texture. I’m happy to report that’s not much of an issue. Yes, the standard display with its glass is a bit more vibrant, but not significantly so. I would definitely choose the glare and reflection reduction of the Nano texture option any day. It does cost an extra $150, but I think it’s worth it, especially for those doing productivity work or video editing near an open window or in a space with a lot of sunlight. The reduction in reflections and glare is noticeable and definitely worth it in my opinion. However, everyone’s use case is different, and it’s subjective. But I do believe the reduction in glare and reflection is worth it.

There’s a six-speaker sound system best in the business. Now I’m going to compare it to the 16-inch, which I think is the best but with the 14-inch you can’t expect it to be quite as good as the 16-inch. The chassis is just not as big, but it is excellent for a 14-inch laptop. Still better than probably 99% of the Windows laptops out there, if not all of them.

This is the camera on the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro for 2024 as we head into 2025. It’s 1080p, of course and not an IR camera, so no Face ID like on an iPhone or Windows laptop with an IR camera. This relies on the Touch ID fingerprint scanner located in the power button.

Performance and Gaming

I looked at the M4 Pro on the Mac Mini and the M4 Max on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Now, this M4 has a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU. I went with the one with a terabyte of storage and 16 gigabytes of unified memory—that’s the middle-tier option at $1,799. I added another $150 for the nanotexture option, so I paid close to $2,000. I did trade in my M1 Pro MacBook Pro and got around $750, but I’ll have to double-check that. It helped a little with the price.

Device	Score
M4 Max Macbook Pro 16 (14-core cpu, 32-core gpu)	9,373
M4 Pro Mac Mini (12-core cpu, 16-core gpu)	7,067
M2 Ultra Mac studio	9,130
M4 MacBook Pro	4,534

The single-core performance in Geekbench is excellent and multi-core performance is also especially compared to others in the category. However, when you compare it to the M4 Pro or M4 Max, don’t expect it to perform quite as well, especially in GPU performance for tasks like video editing. I ran the DaVinci Resolve plugin benchmark, and as you can see, the results were quite interesting. Obviously, it’s not as good as the M4 Pro I saw on the Mac Mini or the M4 Max on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. That’s to be expected.

So, if you’re going to do any high-end creative work or pro work, I would definitely go with the MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro or the M4 Max if you need that extra horsepower for graphics. But I think for most people doing everyday tasks like Microsoft Office, email, or web browsing, the base model M4, saving a few bucks, is definitely worth it. Again, it depends on your use case.

As for gaming, it’s doable on this, but I would recommend the M4 Pro or M4 Max. The gaming experience won’t be quite as good as with Windows titles, and there aren’t as many titles available, so keep that in mind. Gaming has improved, and some good games are coming in 2025, but I would stick with Windows if you’re serious about gaming.

Fan noise is pretty much non-existent for the most part 95% to 98% of the time. I did notice the fans kick in when I pushed it under heavy load, such as running the Puget Bench and DaVinci Resolve benchmark. That’s to be expected because you’re pushing all the cores, with everything working at 100%, including the GPU and CPU. You’ll hear the noise there, but it didn’t get overly loud. Again, 95% of the time, this is a silent laptop. As for the surface temperatures, when pushing it under heavy load, it stayed relatively cool throughout. They do an excellent job with both fan noise and thermals.

Battery Life

The battery life pretty phenomenal at a 72.6-watt battery. It lasted over 20 hours in the video playback test, over 16 hours in the mixed usage test, and over 7 hours in the maximum load test. That’s pretty phenomenal overall. In real-world usage it’s definitely an all-day battery for this 14-inch powerhouse.

Conclusion

Like its 16-inch bigger sibling, this one is an excellent choice as we head into 2025. You’re looking at an excellent 14.2-inch mini LED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. It’s really good for content creation, especially for basic tasks. However, if you need to handle more complicated tasks or are doing pro-level editing, you’ll want to go with the M4 Pro or the M4 Max. The performance is excellent for everyday use—Microsoft Office, email, web browsing, and watching movies. It also has great all-day battery life.

The nanotexture display option is great for those who need less glare and reflection, although it costs $150. The webcam is sharp, and it has best-in-class speakers.

Now, for the negatives: There’s no user upgradeability—you can’t upgrade the SSD like you can on some Windows counterparts. There’s also no USB-A port, and relatively inexpensive upgrades are hard to find; upgrades tend to be very expensive. There’s no tandem OLED option, which would have been great, but hopefully, we’ll see something with an OLED display next year. There’s no Face ID or touchscreen option—that’s reserved for the iPad Pro. Also, the nanotexture option adds a $150 premium.

Overall, as we head into 2025 the M4 MacBook Pro is a step up from the MacBook Air because you get the better display, and I think the port selection is a bit better too. Definitely go with this if you’re looking for something with solid cooling—though, for 99% of the time, it’s silent. I highly recommend the M4 MacBook Pro as we head into 2025.