Apple M4 series

Don't expect revolution, but this is a notable all-round upgrade in performance for all members of the series

- JOHN LOEFFLER

he Apple M4 series powers the iPad Pro along with the new Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro, all of which we happen to review this month. Featuring what Apple calls "second-generation" 3nm core architecture, a faster neural engine and far more memory bandwidth, there's much to admire.

The plain M4 sits at the bottom and supports up to 32GB of unified memory (16GB is the new default). It provides 120GB/sec of bandwidth, a 17% jump on its predecessor. Perhaps more telling is that Apple claims that the M4 is up to 1.8x faster "in multithreaded performance" than the M1, and that the "performance core is the world's fastest CPU core" in terms of single-threaded tasks.

These hyperbolic claims aren't unusual for Apple, but there's good evidence to suggest they're justified.

In particular, take a look at the Geekbench 6 single-core results in the graph to the right. Not only is the M4 significantly faster than the M3 family, but also a chunk faster than any other silicon we've tested.