Flagship Intel MacBook Pro vs M4 MacBook Pro

It’s the end of 2024, and you’re wondering whether it’s finally time to replace your old Intel MacBook Pro with an M4 MacBook Pro. How much faster is it, how will it change your day, and is it worth your money? I ran everyday tasks, benchmarks, video editing, gaming and Xcode, and looked at what else changes when you move to Apple silicon.

These are just two MacBooks, so your results will differ with your own Mac.

• 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro: one of the fastest Intel MacBook Pros ever, with a 6-core i7, 16 GB of memory and a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 5300M.
• 2024 M4 MacBook Pro: the base M4, with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU and 16 GB.

If you have an older, smaller, or i5 or i3 Intel MacBook, your results will be much worse than this 16-inch’s.

What else changes

• Display: up to 1,000 nits SDR (versus 500) and 1,600 nits HDR, with multiple dimming zones and ProMotion up to 120 Hz.
• Ports: late Intel models had two or four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The new MacBook Pros have three Thunderbolt ports, HDMI, an SD card slot, a headphone jack, and MagSafe charging.
• Battery: the 16-inch was rated for up to 11 hours of video streaming; Apple says up to 24 hours for the new ones.
• Software: four years into the transition, macOS updates for Intel Macs are living on borrowed time. Sequoia could be the last, or maybe they get one or two more years. Intel Macs also don’t get Apple Intelligence.

Benchmarks

Test	M4	2019 i7
Geekbench 6 single-core	3,870	1,457
Geekbench 6 multi-core	about 15,000	about 5,700
Cinebench 2024 single-core	173	69
GFXBench Aztec Ruins (high)	about 90 fps	about 40 fps
Speedometer 3	46	12

The fans on the 16-inch spun up during Geekbench while the M4 was silent. The M4’s GPU was about 78% faster in Geekbench Metal than the AMD 5300M, and about 840% faster than the integrated Intel UHD 630 most Intel MacBooks have. The M4 Pro and M4 Max are far faster still.

Cinebench takes forever: the i7 needed more than 10 minutes for each render, while the M4 finished several. In Aztec Ruins, both looked playable, though the Intel’s graphics were a bit softer. On the integrated Intel GPU, I got about 5 fps, completely unplayable.

Heat and noise

During Cinebench, the 16-inch’s keyboard hit about 45°C, right under your hands, and the bottom 44–45°C, toasty on your legs. The M4 was about 36°C on the keyboard and 32–34°C on the bottom, in a 20°C room. The 16-inch’s fan is louder, with a higher whine.

Gaming

Shadow of the Tomb Raider: about 42 fps on the M4 and 37 on the i7, but the i7 sometimes stuttered for seconds at a time. Resident Evil 4, with ray tracing, ran smoothly on the M4 and isn’t even an option on the Intel.

Xcode, photos and video

• Xcode: the M4 built the benchmark project quite a bit faster, with its fans never turning on. The i7’s fans came on almost immediately and stayed loud.
• Affinity Photo: the M4 was more than three times faster in single-core vector and more than twice as fast in multi-core and raster tests. The AMD GPU held its own in one GPU raster test.
• DaVinci Resolve (PugetBench): the M4 scored 5,908, and the test beat up the Intel machine.

Final Cut Pro: I opened my iPhone 14 Pro Max vs 16 Pro Max project unrendered, at better-quality playback, with a color-graded multicam, B-roll, text and zooms. On the 16-inch, the cursor jumped around, playback was choppy and took seconds to start, it dropped frames on a Ken Burns zoom, and it got worse the longer the project was open. On the M4, everything updated right away. You can help an Intel Mac with proxies and background rendering, but the M4 lets you just import, grade and edit.

Export of the 15½-minute video: 8 minutes 45 seconds on the M4, thanks to its media engine, versus 27 minutes 40 seconds on the i7.

Battery

After about an hour of testing: 46% on the i7 and 84% on the M4. After PugetBench, the 16-inch was at 12% and had to be plugged in, while the M4 was at 75%. After almost three hours of testing for this video, the M4 still had 51%.

Everyday tasks

Installing Excel and PowerPoint from the App Store took a couple of minutes longer on the i7, which got very hot with its fans near full speed. Opening apps and switching Safari tabs (Reddit, Gmail, Google Docs) was only a little faster on the M4, but the i7’s keyboard got noticeably warmer.

Should you upgrade?

For web browsing, email, office apps and word processing, an older Intel Mac might still be fine, just louder and hotter. But if it struggles with everyday tasks, burns a hole in your lap, has fans too loud to hear over, or you want to edit video or run AI, this is a fantastic time to switch to Apple silicon. And the battery life is just incredible.

Links

• M4 MacBook Pro
• M3 MacBook Air
• Thunderbolt 4 SSD
• NVME SSD
• NVME Enclosure
• A cheaper Studio Display?
• Xcode benchmark
• My iPhone Art
• Grovemade Desk Mat and Knife (save 10% JERRY10)
• UNLIMITED Cloud Backup for your Mac with Backblaze

In this video

• 0:00 intro
• 0:31 specs
• 1:05 2019 vs 2024 MacBook Differences
• 2:00 Software updates
• 2:31 Geekbench
• 4:30 Cinebench, fans, and heat
• 6:36 Metal
• 7:35 shadow of tomb raider
• 7:56 Resident Evil 4 and ray tracing
• 8:14 battery check
• 8:30 Xcode benchmark
• 9:07 Affinity photo editing
• 10:12 Davinci Resolve
• 10:40 Final Cut Pro
• 14:23 Apps and web browsing
• 17:24 time to upgrade?