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These chips are incredible. Even my M1 MBP from 2020 still feels so ridiculously fast for everyday basic use and coding.

Is an upgrade really worth it?




I don’t think it will “feel” much faster like the Intel -> M1 where overall system latency especially around swap & memory pressure got much much better.

If you do any amount of 100% CPU work that blocks your workflow, like waiting for a compiler or typechecker, I think M1 -> M4 is going to be worth it. A few of my peers at the office went M1->M3 and like the faster compile times.

Like, a 20 minute build on M1 becoming a 10 minute build on M4, or a 2 minute build on M1 becoming a 1 minute build on M4, is nothing to scoff at.


I guess it’s only worth it for people who would really benefit from the speed bump — those who push their machines to the limit and work under tight schedules.

I myself don’t need so much performance, so I tend to keep my devices for many, many years.


I have a MBP M1 16GB at home, and a MBP M3 128GB at work. They feel the same: very fast. When I benchmark things I can see the difference (or when fiddling with larger LLM models), other than that, the M1 is still great and feels faster and more enjoyable than any Windows machine I interact with.


I do a lot of (high-end mirrorless camera, ~45MP, 14 bits/pixel raw files) photo processing. There are many individual steps in Photoshop, Lightroom, or various plug-ins that take ~10 seconds on my M1 Max MBP. It definitely doesn't feel fast. I'm planning to upgrade to one of these.




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