M4 MacBook Pro: High Power, Apple Intelligence and a Winning Display video

The new Macbook Pros are here and while the 14 and 16 inch designs haven't really changed, they're the first Macbooks with Apple's M four chips and are ready for Apple Intelligence. We had a couple of days to try some of the new features out and give you a glimpse at the new hardware. So let's have a look. So here they are. And as you can see, they don't look strikingly different from the M three versions. And that's because they aren't, it's really what's inside that's changed this time around and that's mainly Apple's M four chips. The M four first appeared in this year's ipad Pro, but now you can get it in the imac and Mac mini and the 14 and 16 inch Macbook Pros and that includes new M four Pro and Mac options. We've been testing the M four and M four Pro in these and yes, they're a bit more capable than the M three overall, but more importantly, they're significantly better than the M one. So if you're looking to upgrade the new chips will speed things up for you. The M four Pro and Max also have low and high power modes. So you can adjust performance for what you're doing. And whether you're on battery or plugged in the power mode can have a significant impact on performance. And you can see that from our results from the geekbench six benchmark test. Geekbench is also free for personal use. So if you want to see how your laptop measures up, so you can download it and try it yourself for more test results. Check out our written review of the new Macbook Pros on cnet.com. But if you want more of a real life demo, I can show you what it does for gaming. So I've pulled up steam here to play a little Hades Two. just to show you what the gaming is like on the Macbook Pro. But first, we need to make an adjustment to the power mode and you can do that. Now, right here under the battery setting, there's a drop down. Now it tells you energy mode and you can go from automatic, which is what it's default at. And then you can go to low or high power mode for gaming. You probably want the high power mode. It's going to hurt your battery life. But overall, it will give you much better performance. You can use power mode whether or not the Macbook is plugged in, but of course, it's not great for battery life. So you'll want to use low power mode to help with that. And Apple is claiming up to 24 hours of battery life for both sizes. The M three Macbook reached 21 hours on our test. So getting three more hours isn't a stretch. Now with the M four, you'll also get faster neural engine performance to help with on device A I tasks like Apple Intelligence. There are a handful of new tools driven by A I for writing and for summarizing email and messages and helping reduce notifications while you work. But a couple of the best new features are in the Photos app. So for one of them is uh something that uh a lot of the other apps have, which is a tool called cleanup, which helps you get rid of things that are in the backgrounds of your photos that you might not want there. Um So what we're gonna do is open up the Photos app and I've got a photo right here ready to go. Let's just get that bigger. And now we're going to go to edit in the corner and your edit panel will open up. But right up here at the top of the panel is clean up. So you click on that and it automatically goes through the photo looking for things to remove. Uh In this case, it's a bunch of people in the background which I definitely want out of there. So it'd be nice to have them go and not leave a trace behind. And since Apple's gone and highlighted them. I'm just gonna go ahead and click on them and yep, that one's gone and then these people back here, let's get rid of those people. Those are gone. No problem. And you can see the uh image is pretty clean. You can't, can't really see any trace of those people, but we're gonna remove these people and it's a little less successful, so not entirely perfect on that one. You're gonna have to uh fix a little bit of the photo or unfortunately leave them back in there and that's all you have to do to get them back is just to undo and uh they're back in the picture, but again, it works pretty well. Um And I've tried it on a bunch of other images and uh if there's uh things like patterns or something, obviously, it's difficult with these people in front of the uh in front of the wall there. So they Apple has to recreate the wall, but otherwise it actually works pretty well. Ok. So beyond M Four and Apple Intelligence, there are a few other noteworthy editions like Thunderbolt Five with the M Four Pro and Mac chips. The new Macbook Pros are also the first to have a Nano texture display option that greatly reduces reflections and glare. You can see here next to the glossy display of an older Macbook Pro just how well it works. This despite also has an SDR brightness of up to 1000 knits when used outside. So the combo really makes it easier to work in sunlight and still see your screen. It's 100 and $50 add on, but it definitely seems worth it. And then there's the new 12 megapixel center stage camera, which is naturally an improvement over the last GENS 1080 P facetime camera, but also adds a new desk view, which is a separate app that creates a virtual camera to capture what's on your desk. Let me show you how it works. I've got here, I've opened up a facetime call and then I'm gonna go up to the camera menu at the top of the screen. And right at the bottom of the menu is desk view. So select that and it pops open the second screen, you get a little uh target there to set up what you're going to be presenting. In this case, it's a keyboard and you can uh zoom in and out so you can get tight or farther away. But a warning, the more you tighten, the worst the uh picture quality gets because you're essentially digitally zooming in and uh the cameras already doing extra work to create this virtual second camera. So the resolution is not great. Anyway, we're gonna go in and go ahead and start desk view and you see you're instantly given another view of what's on the desk and there we go, we've got it open with me on the screen at the same time and you can, uh, present what you're working on while you're doing your facetime call. That's a look at desk view and there you have it. Some of the important highlights of the new M four Macbook Pros. The M four is certainly a reason to upgrade from an older M one chip, but I'm not sure there's enough new here not to consider an M Three Macbook Pro at a reduced price. While stores still sell through the stock, the Nano texture display would be a good reason though, especially if you work outside of. And if you're really sold on Apple Intelligence features, like the natural language search in photos will benefit you though. For me, the importance right now is pretty low, the better webcam is great, although there's still no face ID support for some reason. And I like the ability to adjust performance on the fly, but you'll have to remember to use it instead of leaving it in auto all the time. And of course, the price is always an issue with the 14 inch starting at $1600 and the 16 inch starting at $2500. So what do you think is this enough to get you to pull the trigger on an M four Macbook Pro or wait it out for the M five or just look for an M three at a discount? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching and you'll see me when you see me.