so Apple launched the new M4 MacBook Pros this is their 14-in model and it's equipped with the M4 Max their topend configuration and it also has their new Nano texture on their screen it's a texture that's designed to cut down Reflections it's the first time they've actually had it on one of their laptops uh but I want to do a quick video here that kind of goes over the important things I think you should be aware of when it comes to this device and the first thing I want to talk about is performance the CPU
gains are quite good year on-ear but it's particularly impressive that the M4 Max can outperform the M2 Ultra in a lot of benchmarks and workflows in terms of Graphics the GPU gains on the M4 Pro are decent but the GPU games on the M4 Max are very impressive most GPU bound apps and games will get a nice bump up from this plus the rate tracing capabilities are better so apps and games can take advantage of that the thing I'm most impressed by though is how good the M4 Max GPU is compared to the previous generation
especially at a very similar thermal envelope like if you think about the competitors in this space like AMD Nvidia when they come out with laptop gpus typically the new models come also come with like an increase in power requirement right it's just like you know 5 or 10 watts per year but it adds up over the course of time and on this device if you think about the M1 Max to the M4 Max the GPU has improved so much with very little increase in power consumption The Thermals on this device are pretty much the same
as last year's models in terms of memory the base configuration start at 16 GB now thankfully and they've also increased the memory bandwidth it's noticeable already on the base models but the pro and Max chips get a significant boost in memory speed so for applications that lean on Fast memory you definitely notice a bump up this year if I'm being honest though it's difficult for me to tell how much of the gains that we're seeing this year come from the memory speed increase versus the CPU or the GPU increase like they're all tied together and
I don't have the tools to lock memory speed on a Macbook so it's tough to tell I will say though that if you have an older M1 or M2 or M3 MacBook Pro I wouldn't upgrade because Apple's silicon performance progresses so fast year on-ear that it can pay off to just wait as long as you can before you buy new hardware okay let's talk about the screens so this particular device is running their new Nano texture finish and it's finish we've seen on other devices before right like their screens uh the new iPads and every
time I've ever talked about that texture in a video like a review video I've been like it's nice but it's not all that special at least not to me but check this out so on the laptop the one on the left that is the Nano texture this is a regular uh like the glossy finish and I have an overhead light do you see the difference in the reflection it's not just like a diffusion it's a pretty distinct reduction in just light emittance and I think okay when it came to the regular screens and the iPad
I even said this in my review of that like it's a nice it's a nice feature for some people but for me I would never get it but for whatever reason on the laptop I looked at this I'm like this is awesome I totally would get this if I was buying this year's device and I think it's because on a laptop your face tends to be a little bit closer to the screen because we're just like you know that's how we use a laptops versus a desktop you tend to be a little bit further away
from the screen and because it's a little bit closer I just find that the reflections that are being muted by this finish are like it just seems to have more impact there's just more value to that feature So it's 15 option and it's also not like a coating or some kind of layer that they put on top it's part of the glass it's like a a treatment for the glass they etch it with some kind of acid and it just does this to the glass and supposedly it doesn't affect the durability or like fragility of
it but we'll have to see the other new feature for the screens this year is that they now get brighter these now are able to hit a thousand nits at the top end but in order to get it you have to be in a really bright environment for that detector to be like okay you need that extra brightness it's a nice feature ad but I wouldn't be buying a new device just for that brighter screen and also there's apps like better display that crank up the brightness of your screen like beyond the stock levels if
that's something that you really need uh okay ports so the number of USBC ports has increased on the baseall from two to three so last year's M3 MacBook Pro at the base only had these two USBC ports on the left and then on the right there was no third USBC Port but now all of the MacBook Pros the M4 devices all have three USBC ports now now on the base M4 it is still just Thunderbolt 4 and then on the M4 Pro and M4 Max chips they're Thunderbolt 5 now I've said this some previous videos
but Thunderbolt 5 is not particularly useful for most people in terms of like having faster storage because Thunderbolt 3 and4 are plenty fast for that but Thunderbolt 5 enables higher resolution displays because of that extra bandwidth if that's important to you the battery life is supposed to be longer lasting this generation the battery size stays the same but for my testing I didn't see too much of a gain with heavy workflows on the 14-in model but for lighter tasks it was definitely a little bit longer lasting the webcam has improved over the previous generation the
M4 MacBook Pros are now running a 12 megapixel sensor and this because of the higher resolution enables Center Stage so as you move around it'll kind of track your face and do the stuff we've seen on like iPads and iMacs it's a neat feature and I do think that the image quality is better but it's very slight like this is still a very thin panel on the screen so you can't put like huge sens or huge Optics in that uh webcam area Okay uh the other thing that's changed for this year is they've gotten rid
of the space gray coloration which is I think a huge shame this is the space black it's not like a new color but they don't have space gray anymore it's the only dark colored MacBook Pro they have uh but otherwise it's a nice bump I think the performance this year is much more impressive than I thought it would be particularly on the GPU component uh but yeah there you have it that's the new M4 Max MacBook Pros
