Apple MacBook Pro 16 (2024) Laptop Review

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 is available in Silver or Space Black colorways. See the bottom of the laptop.

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 2024 laptop's build quality is outstanding and serves as an industry benchmark. Its all-aluminum chassis feels rigid and durable, and the unibody design flows seamlessly into the bottom panel; there aren't any gaps around the display, keyboard, or touchpad assemblies. The Silver finish is resistant to scratches from everyday use and isn't prone to accumulating oil, smudges, or hunk over time. That said, the Space Black color picks up smudges and fingerprints. Overall, the laptop feels hefty but balanced. There are no complaints about the feet, as they adhere very well to the bottom of the chassis. The one major pain point is with the keycaps; they quickly accumulate oil and smudges and become slick within a few months of regular use.

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 2024 laptop's hinge is superb. It's solid and exhibits very little wobble when adjusting the display or typing vigorously on the keyboard. Though there's a fair bit of resistance, lifting the display with one hand is easy.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 laptop's serviceability is poor, as only the battery is user-replaceable. That said, accessing the internals is relatively straightforward; remove eight P5 screws (keep them organized, as there are two sizes), then pull the bottom panel towards the bottom of the laptop, and then pull upwards to remove it.

You can access the online repair manual from Apple's website.  

• 140W USB-C power adapter and MagSafe charging cable
• Documentation

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 has the following display options: 

• 16.2" IPS 3456 x 2234 120Hz (standard Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion)
• 16.2" IPS 3456 x 2234 120Hz (nano-texture Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion)

The standard display has a glossy finish, while the nano-texture display has Apple's proprietary matte finish. Otherwise, the two displays share the same specifications, so they'll perform similarly overall. The Liquid Retina XDR displays look exceptionally sharp, and they use a 16:10 aspect ratio that's ideal for productivity tasks. This aspect ratio provides more vertical real estate, allowing you to see more information at once when browsing the web or working on productivity tasks like spreadsheets or word processing. By contrast, you'll likely have black bars flanking the top and bottom of the display when viewing content like videos or movies. The 16:10 aspect ratio doesn't include the webcam notch; Apple added additional space for the menu bar alongside the notch. If the notch bothers you, you can hide it, though doing so will shift the menu bar down to the display itself.

The Liquid XDR display offers up to 120Hz refresh rate with Apple ProMotion. Apple ProMotion ramps the refresh rate up or down depending on the task or content on screen, helping to smooth out motion in fast-paced scenes or save battery when content on screen is inactive. ProMotion requires per-app support to function. Unfortunately, the panel's response time is on the slower side, resulting in visible ghosting behind fast-moving objects. If you prefer a static refresh rate, the display tops out at 60Hz; anything above that requires you to enable the ProMotion setting.

The display has a fantastic contrast ratio. Though its Mini LED backlight can't offer per-pixel dimming like an OLED panel, blacks still look dark and inky, making it ideal for HDR content and dark viewing environments. The one drawback is that you'll still see some blooming around bright objects on dark backgrounds.

The standard display is bright enough to use in almost every environment. It gets bright enough to combat glare in most settings, even outdoors in broad daylight, though you may have some trouble seeing darker content in direct sunlight. The nano-texture display performs better in direct sunlight. The displays get remarkably dim, making them ideal to prevent eyestrain while in dark environments.

When viewing SDR content in very bright conditions, such as outdoors, the screen can reach a brightness of 996.4 cd/m². The display also reaches 1600 cd/m² in HDR, as Apple claims. Here are the results at various window sizes.

HDR Brightness:

• 2% Peak: 1484.8 cd/m²
• 2% Sustained: 1479.7 cd/m²
• 10% Peak: 1631.4 cd/m²
• 10% Sustained: 1630.2 cd/m²
• 25% Peak: 1642.1 cd/m²
• 25% Sustained: 1630.5 cd/m²
• 50% Peak: 1604.9 cd/m²
• 50% Sustained: 1600.4 cd/m²
• 100% Peak: 1194.8 cd/m²
• 100% Sustained: 1187.1 cd/m²

The display's reflection handling is excellent. While you can still see reflections when viewing bright content, they aren't very noticeable unless you're outside in direct sunlight. Dark content is a different story, as the glossy finish struggles with mirror-like reflections; it's notably worse than the previous Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023) display in this regard. The added Quantum Dot layer is likely the cause of this behavior change. The nano-texture display uses a matte finish that behaves differently. It eliminates reflections when viewing bright content by diffusing light across the screen, making it ideal for outdoor use. It also handles dark content much better, reflecting far less light.

The display’s horizontal viewing angle is decent. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly when moving to the side, so you need to be close or directly in front of the screen for accurate, color-critical work.

The display's vertical viewing angle is okay. Again, the image looks washed out when viewed from above or below, limiting the angle at which you can set the screen.

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 2024's out-of-the-box color accuracy is outstanding. The white balance and color inaccuracies are extremely minor and hard to spot. The color temperature trends slightly warm, though it's not really visible. The gamma mostly follows the curve, although very dark scenes are a little too dark. Overall, this level of accuracy is good enough for color-critical work without any additional calibration.

The display defaults to its DCI P3 mode. Using the sRGB mode yields similarly impressive results: 

• AVG White Balance dE: 1.42
• AVG Gamma: 2.22
• AVG Color dE: 0.96
• AVG Color Temp: 6326K

The display's color gamut is fantastic. It offers complete coverage of the sRGB and DCI P3 color spaces, making it appropriate for color-critical work in online and HDR content production. While it has excellent Adobe RGB coverage, it lacks the saturated greens that define the color space. It will be fine for most people editing professional photography, but depending on your use, you may need an external display.

The new quantum dot layer is also apparent when comparing the spectrum measurements of the new display with those of the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023)'s display. However, this new display doesn't appear to expand the color gamut. The change to a Quantum Dot display is likely because it's more power efficient and improves response time (although this may not be very noticeable).

The display isn't flicker-free, but the flickering isn't noticeable because the flicker frequency is extremely fast (15kHz).

The keyboard on the Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 is great. Its layout is standard for MacBooks, so it shouldn't require much adjustment if you've used one before. The keyboard feels spacious, and the keys are all very stable. Though the keys require little force to actuate and provide excellent feedback, they have a very short travel. Heavy typers may find the travel jarring at first, as the combination of the travel and rigid key deck can feel harsh. Between the short travel and reaching over the massive touchpad and lower deck, some people may find this keyboard fatiguing to use for long periods. The keyboard makes a gentle clicky sound, so it's appropriate for quiet environments. Finally, there's an adjustable backlight that shines clearly through the keycaps; you can adjust the brightness using the control panel or system settings.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024's touchpad is exceptional and easily ranks among the best on the market. It's more than large enough to accommodate all gestures and movements and takes up a large portion of the lower deck. Its haptic engine lets you click anywhere on the touchpad, and it provides clear, tactile, and responsive feedback when simulating clicks. Finally, it tracks all inputs well, and palm rejection works as intended.

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 2024's speakers are among the best laptop speakers on the market. They get quite loud without distortion at maximum volume. As for the sound, they're full, with ample bass and clear treble, offering an enjoyable listening experience for music, shows, and podcasts alike. A minor complaint is that the bass becomes slightly muddy at maximum volume.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024's webcam is exceptional. Colors look true to life, and the image appears detailed and properly exposed. It features a new Center Stage function; this automatically adjusts the frame to keep you centered in the video. The microphone is equally impressive; voices sound full, loud, and clear, with no audible static or background noise.

One small change compared to last year's Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023) is our video recording; the webcam crops the image on the sides, resulting in Davinci Resolve adding black bars to maintain the proper framing of our video player.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024's port selection is excellent. The major change from the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023) is the inclusion of Thunderbolt 5 support. Thunderbolt 5 allows data transfer speeds of up to 120Gbps, charging, and DisplayPort 2.1 output.

The external monitor support depends upon the SoC. The M4 Pro can run up to two external displays—either two 6k displays at 60Hz using Thunderbolt or a 6k display at 60Hz over Thunderbolt and a 4k display at 144Hz using the HDMI output. The M4 Max supports three or four external displays, depending on the display configuration. For four external displays, you can run up to three 6k displays at 60Hz using Thunderbolt and a fourth, 4k display at 144Hz using the HDMI output. Alternatively, you can run an 8k display at 60Hz or a 4k display at 240Hz using HDMI and two additional 6k displays at 60Hz using Thunderbolt.

We can't confirm the wireless adapter model. Wi-Fi 6E gives you access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous wireless standards. Just know that you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. If you're interested in upgrading your home Wi-Fi, we've got you covered; check out our recommendations for the best Wi-Fi routers.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 is available with the following SoCs:

• M4 Pro 14-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 273GB/s memory bandwidth
• M4 Max 14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 410GB/s memory bandwidth
• M4 Max 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, 546GB/s memory bandwidth

These SoCs are suitable for highly demanding workflows, including 3D animation, video editing, data modeling, simulation work, and more. They feature a hybrid design, combining performance and efficiency cores to improve battery life and dedicated Neural Engine cores for machine learning operations. With two additional performance cores, the 16-core M4 Max offers superior performance in multithreaded workloads; single-threaded performance is identical across the SoCs. Otherwise, as with the previous generation, there's support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AV1 decoding. A significant difference compared to the M3 SoCs is an increase in memory bandwidth across the board. The M4 Pro sees a 123GB/s increase, while the M4 Max receives a 110GB/s and a 146GB/s bump to memory bandwidth for the 14- and 16-core CPU SoCs, respectively. Higher memory bandwidth can improve performance in applications ranging from gaming to large language modeling, though it's beneficial for every workflow. The right choice of SoC ultimately comes down to the complexity of your workflow and how fast you need to complete your tasks.

To learn more about Apple's M4 SoCs, see their product brief.

The GPU configuration is tied to the CPU portion of the SoC and, therefore, isn't configurable on its own. The M4 Pro/Max's GPUs can handle very demanding workstation tasks like 3D rendering, animation, and simulation workflows; the choice depends on the complexity of your workload. You can also play graphically intensive games, but the performance will rely heavily on the game itself, as few games run natively on Apple silicon, and even then, not every game is well-optimized.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024's RAM configurations depend on the SoC model and include the following options:  

• 24GB (M4 Pro only)
• 36GB (M4 Max with 14-CPU core only)
• 48GB (M4 Pro or M4 Max with 16-core CPU)
• 64GB (M4 Max with 16-CPU core only)
• 128GB (M4 Max with 16-CPU core only)

The RAM isn't user-replaceable.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 is available with 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB of storage. 512GB is only available on laptops with the M4 Pro SoC, while 8TB is only available with the M4 Max SoCs. All storage configurations use PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs. The storage isn't user-replaceable.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 M4 Max SoC with a 16-core CPU offers generation-defining performance, surpassing direct competitors like the Intel Core i9 14900HX in single-threaded and multi-threaded applications. This level of performance is appropriate for the most demanding workflows. The 40-core GPU also offers great performance and is well-suited for intensive tasks; although its performance is comparable to an NVIDIA RTX 3000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU in Geekbench, you can expect superior performance in real-world workflows that utilize the media engine, like denoising video footage.

Note: We've performed all benchmarks using the laptop's best-performing mode (High Power in this case) instead of the default Automatic mode, which usually throttles the performance to prolong battery life. This is more representative of the laptop's maximum potential (you can always turn it down if you prioritize battery life and/or lower fan noise and thermals).

We ran additional benchmarks using every power mode on the laptop and tested the laptop while running on battery power. Overall, there's less than a 1% difference in performance between the High Power and Automatic modes while plugged in with the power adapter, while the Low Power mode sees up to a 56% reduction in performance. There are greater performance fluctuations when running the laptop on battery power using the Automatic mode; single-threaded workloads achieve results closer to the High Power mode, while multi-threaded workloads skew toward the Low Power mode's performance.

The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max with 16 CPU cores is remarkable in Cinebench R23; it has no problems handling intensive, multi-threaded applications and heavy multitasking. The 14-core M4 Max and Pro models offer the same single-thread performance but are slower in multi-threaded workloads.

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 M4 Max laptop offers outstanding performance in Blender and is a fantastic choice for 3D rendering workflows. Unfortunately, like with the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023), there wasn't an option to use GPU rendering, even on different versions of the application such as Blender 4.3.0. All SoCs are suitable for 3D rendering work.

The Apple Macbook Pro 16 M4 Max SoC with a 40-core GPU delivers comparable performance to current-gen mid-range discrete GPUs, like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 mobile, in Basemark. While the M4 Max's GPU can handle demanding, AAA titles, real-world performance is inconsistent, as gaming performance depends heavily on each game's optimization and whether they run natively on Apple silicon or have to run through Rosetta 2 emulation.

Drive speeds depend on the SoC configuration and capacity.

Given the minimal performance difference between the Automatic and High Power modes, all battery tests were conducted using the Automatic mode.

Borderlands 3 plays decently on the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max SoC with a 40-core GPU. While you get comfortably above 60 fps using high settings, gameplay isn't very smooth. Turning down the graphical settings doesn't improve performance significantly. You'll have to turn down some settings on the M4 Pro SoC to get over 60 fps.

Every configuration of the Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 can easily run Civilization VI and other similarly demanding strategy games. The average turn time is significantly faster than the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023); the M4 Max 16-core SoC is now on par with Intel's Core i9 14900HX in this regard, the fastest laptop CPU for gaming available in November 2024.

Counter-Strike 2 doesn't run on macOS, as Valve has discontinued support.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and other similarly demanding games, run very well on the Apple Macbook Pro 16 M4 Max. The 40-core GPU delivers a high refresh rate gaming, with only the occasional stutter. Every model can achieve over 60 fps using high settings. 

The keyboard can be uncomfortably hot under load as the hotspot is directly in the middle of the key deck. The bottom of the laptop reaches 48.4°C (119 °F) under load, which is hot enough that you'll want to avoid keeping it on your lap. The fans ramp up under load and are quite loud, but the noise isn't overly annoying. The posted results use the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max's High Power mode. 

Using the default Automatic mode results in a slightly lower 49.6 dBA of fan noise under load. Temperatures improve to a more comfortable 45.2°C (113.4 °F) on the keyboard and 41.7°C (107.1 °F) on the bottom of the laptop. Low power mode sees just 27.2 dBa of fan noise, a cool 40.1°C (104.1 °F) on the keyboard, and 39°C (102.2 °F) on the bottom of the laptop. 

We performed this test using the laptop's High Power setting. 

There aren't any pre-installed applications other than those that typically come with macOS; you can see the list of built-in apps on Apple's website.  

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 2024 has a fingerprint senor in the power button at the top right of the keyboard. You can use it to log in and authorize purchases from the App store and payments with Apple Pay.