The M4 MacBook Pro is pretty stellar. Apple made it far better than the previous generation — without increasing the cost. That includes bumping up the memory of the base configuration to 16GB, improving the webcam, and unlocking the max brightness of the screen.

With the MacBook Pro 14-inch M4, Apple has created a pro-grade portable that impresses in every respect. It joins Apple's pantheon of outstanding laptops, and is set to take a well-deserved place at or near the top of our best laptops rankings.

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.