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Apple M4 vs M4 Pro: What’s the difference?
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Apple has announced thenew Mac mini todayand the highest-end version is the first to carry the newly-announced M4 Pro processor.
The Mac mini with an M4 Pro processor is is £1,399, at least £300 more expensive than the top M4 (£1,099) configuration, which also accounts for other improvements. Apple clearly thinks there is plenty to be gained by opting for anM4 Prooption.
It’s worth delving into the differences between the M4 and the M4 Pro Apple Silicon offering on paper, so you’ve got a better idea of whether it’s worth splurging on that top-end Mac mini. The finer points will play out during our testing of the respective chips, for now but here’s what Apple is defining as the key benefits of its scaled-up M4 Pro chips.
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M4 Pro has more CPU cores and max RAM
In terms of sheer brute force, the M4 Pro has a big advantage. The standard M4 Pro offering includes 12-core CPU with 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores (but it can be pushed farther, to 14-cores). Apple says it offers “lightning-fast” single-threaded performance.
That’s M4 maxes out with a 10-core CPU (4 performance, 6 efficiency), meaning the Pro has double the performance cores to handle the heavy lifting.
While the M4 offers a maximum Unified Memory offering of 32GB, while the M4 Pro can double that, all the way up to 64GB. The M4 Pro has 273GB/s memory bandwidth, while the M4 maxes out at 120GB/s memory bandwidth. Again, more than double.
Apple says: “With M4 Pro, it takes the advanced technologies in M4 and scales them up to tackle even more demanding workloads.”
Graphics gains highly likely too
The M4 Pro has a 16-core GPU as standard (it can be pushed to 20-cores at the highest end), while the M4 has a 10-core GPU.
Apple says this equals twice as powerful graphics performance over the M4 configuration, although both chipsets offer hardware acceleratedray tracingfor gamers, which is a first for the Mac mini series.
Thunderbolt 5 is here
The M4 Pro chip, significantly, supportsThunderbolt 5. Apple says this enables insane data transfer speeds of up to 120Gbps, which is more than double (40Gbps) what can be achieved viaThunderbolt 4withing the M4 Mac Mini.
This also means support for more displays and better quality displays, which is quite important considering the Mac mini starts with a grand total of zero screens..
With M4 Pro Apple says you can support: Three displays, up to 6K resolution at 60Hz over Thunderbolt or HDMI. For two displays, it supports one at 6K/60Hz and a second at up to 8K/60Hz (or 4K/240Hz) over Thunderbolt or HDMI.
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Chris Smith is a freelance technology journalist for a host of UK tech publications, including Trusted Reviews. He’s based in South Florida, USA. …
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Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
