The M4 represents as much of a philosophical shift as it does a performance upgrade. It is Apple acknowledging that if you’re buying a laptop with “Pro” in the name, than it should be a better machine.

The biggest reason to upgrade to the MacBook Pro M4 is the performance. This machine gets the newest M4 chip that is based on a 3-nanometer process, promising the fastest CPU core and better multithreaded performance than M3. Based on our testing, the M4 blows a lot of the competition away but not on every test.

The M4's single-core performance is between 14 and 21 percent faster than the M3s in our tests, and tests that use all the CPU cores are usually 20 or 30 percent faster. The GPU is occasionally as much as 33 percent faster than the M3 in our tests, though more often, the improvements are in the single or low double digits.

I tested a beautiful Space Black MacBook Pro with the new M4 Pro chip and 48GB memory (which I would treasure if it belonged to me). The 3-nanometer chip it uses has 14 cores, consisting of 10 performance and four efficiency cores; it has a 2TB drive; a Liquid Retina XDR nanotexture display; and it costs $3,349.

Apple last week replaced the M3 Max MacBook Pro with the new M4 Max MacBook Pro, and we picked up one of the new high-end MacBook Pro machines to

The M4 MacBook Pro is a powerful and versatile device that can help you achieve new levels of productivity and efficiency. To fully unlock its potential,