Best high performance laptop:

5. MacBook Pro (16-inch, M4 Pro)

The best laptop for performance and battery life

Specifications

CPU: Apple M4 Pro/M4 Max

GPU: Apple M4 Pro/M4 Max

RAM: 16GB/32GB/64GB/96GB/128GB

Storage: 512GB/1TB/2TB/4TB/8TB

Display: 16.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display (3024 x 1964 pixels)

Size: 14 x 9.8 x 0.7 inches

Weight: 4.7 pounds

Today’s Best Deals

Reasons to buy

Almost 21 hours of battery life+

Unmatched performance+

Crystal clear webcam+

Astoundingly bright display+

Robust stereo sound

Reasons to avoid

No Face ID-

Awkward vent placement-

Upgrades get expensive

Our mid-tier configuration of the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro delivered performance and battery life results beyond the 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Max, offering 7 percent better overall performance and almost three extra hours of battery life! All of that in a configuration that, with matching storage, would cost $900 less.

Our $3,499 review configuration of the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro featured the base 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU, paired with 48GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, but you can max those out with the M4 Max at up to a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, up to 128GB of RAM and an 8TB SSD. Maxing out all of the options would put you at $7,349, so you’ll want to consider your upgrades wisely.

In almost every performance metric, the MacBook Pro 16 M4 Pro is at the top of the charts. Its Geekbench 6 score of 22,822 is more than double the premium laptop average. Turning to our Handbrake test, which has the laptop transcode a 4K video to 1080p, the MacBook Pro finished in 2 minutes and 38 seconds. That’s more than twice as fast as the premium laptop average and over 30 seconds faster than the creator-focused Asus ProArt PX 16 2024. If you do creative work professionally and value your time, the MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max is the way to go.

Battery life remains the most mystifying trick that this powerhouse of a laptop has up its sleeve. Achieving 20 hours and 46 minutes in the Laptop Mag battery test, that’s over 7 hours longer than the premium laptop average and more than double its Windows content creation rivals like the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i 16 Gen 9 (9:51) or the Asus ProArt PX16 2024 (9:32). If you need are regularly working away from an outlet, this should make for an easy choice.

Is there any reason to avoid the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max? Price and macOS are the two big reasons. The M4 Pro configurations start at $2,499, and the M4 Max configurations start at $3,499. That’s at the upper end of premium for anything other than a workstation or gaming laptop, but considering the performance, efficiency, and build quality, it’s not outlandish.

As for macOS, it’s a smooth and well-supported operating system, but if you need Windows-only apps or your work just doesn’t support macOS, you’ll either is a great operating system, but if you have Windows-only apps that you need to use or you’re business doesn’t support macOS, it could be a dealbreaker.

Finally, Apple continues to improve its gaming support, but it remains distantly behind Windows for gamers. As long as none of these concerns spoil things for you, the 16-inch MacBook Pro M4 Pro or M4 Max is in a class by itself for a mainstream high-performance laptop.

Click to view chart data in table format