Apple M1 vs M2 vs M3 vs M4 chips: what’s the difference?
You’ve now got four generations of MacBook processors to choose from: Apple M1 vs M2 vs M3 vs the brand new M4. What’s the difference here? Should you buy an M4 or will M3 or M2 be enough? Here are the facts.
Table of contents
What are Apple M chips?
I did a deep-dive on M1 chips when they came out in 2020, and how they blew Intel-based MacBooks out of the water in terms of comparative performance.
In that M1 deep-dive, I said that cracks had been starting to show in Intel-based MacBooks in recent years. When it introduced its own M-branded chips (starting with M1), Apple blew the doors off old Intel machines.
Apple puts its base M chips – the M1, M2, and (now) M3 – in its consumer-grade MacBook Air lineup. The MacBook Pro gets a fan for better performance, better batteries, and the Pro and Max chips for more power.
M Pro and M Max chips are designed for pros who need power on the go. And boy, do they get a lot of it, in terms of battery and processing power. A laptop’s power is often constrained by its design. There’s a reason that incredibly powerful, professional-grade laptops weigh an absolute tonne.
A lot comes down to heat: when a laptop’s hardware can be sufficiently cooled by a fan system, the processor can perform better for longer. You could have the most powerful processor in the world inside your laptop, but unless you’re keeping it cool, you won’t see benefits.
Think of it like this: you can have a Ferrari on racing tyres, or you can have a Ferrari on piano wheels. It’s about how the computer can use the power it has effectively.
Apple M1 vs M2 vs M3 vs M4 chips
Here’s a quick catch-up.
October/November 2024 – Apple M4 chips land in MacBooks
First things first. Technically, Apple announced the M4 processor in May 2024. But it was sequestered and put into the iPad Pro (7th gen), until late-October when it landed in the new MacBook Pro range.
M4 still represents a 3Nm process like the M3 from earlier in the year, but (you guessed it), Apple jammed even more transistors on the silicon for faster performance. There’s a 10% bump in the number of transistors, up to a dizzying 28 billion on the M4 chip compared to the base M3 chip.
Apple is comparing the performance of M4 to the M2 chips, however, which means it’s more like a 40% bump in transistors. It also claims that there’s a 50% performance boost for M4 compared to M2 as a result.
Compare it to the M1 from a few short years ago and the numbers start to get big. Apple says that the M4 will almost 2x the speed of M1 Pro (!!!) when doing tasks like editing photos or rendering content in a 3D app like Blender.
Apple also compares the base M4 to the last 13-inch MacBook Pro with its Intel Core i7 processor on its website and – unsurprisingly – M4 absolutely blitzes the numbers. It claims 11.5x faster gaming performance in World of Warcraft, almost 10x video editing performance in Adobe Premiere, and a little over 4x performance in Excel on spreadsheet calculations. Admittedly, it’s going up against a much older machine, but it’s still huge performance in a few short years.
Then there’s all the other stuff bolted onto the new M4 processor. That includes a faster Neural Engine (hello, Apple Intelligence), Thunderbolt 5 (or the grunt to power two full-size displays on Thunderbolt 4), and up to 24 hours of battery power.
The base M4 chip features 10 cores. That’s 6 cores for “efficiency” work like internet browsing and other general tasks. Then there are the 4 “performance” cores for your heavy workloads. Of course, when you step up to the M4 Pro and M4 Max processors, things get a little more spicy.
M4 Pro
M4 Pro features 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. This makes it ideal for creatives on the go who need grunt balanced with battery power.
You’ll find this chip inside the new Mac mini (2024) and the new MacBook Pro (14- and 16-inch models).
M4 Max
M4 Max, meanwhile, features 16 cores in total. That’s 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. This one only features inside the MacBook Pro, making it an absolute portable workhorse of a machine.
Surprisingly, the M4 Max can be specced inside both the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models for 2024. Apple typically reserves its most powerful chips for its largest machines in terms of physical footprint.
That means you don’t have to sacrifice backpack space for power on the road, which is an awesome switch-up.
March 2024 – Apple M3: what’s new?
Announced in late 2023, M3 featured in both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air models. It’s designed as a 3Nm chip, compared to the M1 and M2’s 5Nm process. A 3nm process is considered superior to a 5nm process due to its ability to create smaller transistors leading to increased performance, and all using less power for a longer-lasting batteries.
It packs in 25 billion transistors, making it 25% more than M2 and 50% more than M1. All while being way kinder to your battery. Despite having a smaller battery, the M3 MacBook Air is rated for the same battery life as the M2 MacBook Air: 18 hours of video playback.
A new GPU design means better graphics performance, and new decoders (AV1) means it streams stuff from sites like Netflix more efficiently.
June 2022 – Apple M2: what got upgraded?
Then came the sequel. It must have been a case of difficult second-album syndrome for Apple’s engineers when it came to making the M2. But they got in the studio and put out a banger of a processor.
The design of the chip was fairly similar, but a new manufacturing technique meant Apple could pack in more power with more transistors.
More transistors on a CPU mean it can handle more tasks simultaneously, akin to having more burners on a stove for cooking. This translates to faster data processing, smoother running of demanding software, and improved overall performance.
The M2 was still a 5nm chip, but it had 20 billion transistors and a higher CPU speed as a result. That’s a 25% bump on M1 which was already considered formidable.
- 10-core GPU (up from 8-core in M1)
- Faster Neural Engine
- Better media engine with support for ProRes and ProRes RAW
- Support for maximum 24GB of RAM (up from 16GB)
- Faster memory
November 2020 – Apple M1
Apple dropping Intel in favour of its own chips was seismic. Not only was it like watching good friends break up, Apple thrived with its own hardware. The M1 was leaps and bounds ahead of late-generation Intel MacBooks.
What makes the M1 chip nifty is its fusion of various essential functions, such as processing power, graphics rendering, and memory management, into a single, harmonious unit. This integration not only streamlines operations but also enhances performance and efficiency to a degree previously unseen in consumer-grade computing.
It sipped power, packing enormous battery life. Plus it could be put in thinner and lighter machines given that the base M3 chips didn’t require a fan to keep them going. It changed the game for laptops and put everyone on notice.
Which MacBook should you buy?
Previously in this guide, I had said that professionals need professional gear. That means a laptop with a fan. Congratulations, creatives: you’ll be wanting a MacBook Pro. And as of late 2024, Apple will only sell you a MacBook Pro with an M4 base chip as a minimum.
Those who work harder for longer on professional-grade apps like Final Cut or Adobe Creative Cloud need a laptop with a fan. Apple puts fans inside its MacBook Pro models, alongside super-powerful chips like their Pro and Max processors so they can work harder and faster for longer.
On the other hand, if you’re someone who is only going to use a laptop for light use, you’ll want something equally light. Apple puts base-model M chips in the MacBook Air, and none of them have a fan. They’re cooled by the thermal design of the laptop. It’ll more than keep up with students, couch cowboys, writers, mobile corporate workers, and the like.
You should always buy the latest and best model you can afford. That way you won’t have to pay more in the long run by upgrading sooner. M4-powered MacBook Air and Pro models are both insanely powerful for use by the couch potato or the pro-filmmaker. But if you want to save a buck or two while still getting a powerful machine, you can certainly consider the M2 models instead!
Read more
Thinking about an iPad instead? Check out my long-term review of the iPad Air (5th gen), powered by some of the same M chips I talk about above.
