How to know which Mac is right for you

Apple has revamped four of its Mac product lines this week. While some computers got more updates than others, there isn’t a bad Mac in the lineup. However, depending on what you want to use it for, there are better or worse options for each computing style.

I’ve outlined some common use cases below to hopefully make your buying decision as easy as possible.

The video editing professional

If you want to make videos for a living, the M4 Pro chip is a great option. That leaves you with two options: the M4 Pro MacBook Pro and the M4 Pro Mac mini.

If you have to travel into an office or to locations to work, the MacBook is the best option. Personally, I only edit videos that are 30 minutes maximum, and I’ve had great success with my M1 Pro. I chose that option because the Pro uses a little less power than the Max, and since it was a MacBook, I wanted to try and get the best battery life possible.

The M4’s per-core performance should be fast enough to run any timeline, so the GPU aspect is more for rendering and applying effects. If you don’t think you need to do a lot of rendering, the M4 Pro chip will be perfect for you.

You will likely also want somewhere between 1TB and 2TB of storage.

The 3D artist

If you go a bit further than video editing, the M4 Max MacBook Pro will make things go smoother. This chip has the most power possible on the GPU side, so if you’re doing 3D graphics or renders, this is the machine for you. If you also work in a high-paced video production house where every second counts, this model will move you along with the most speed.

Again, you’ll likely want more than 1TB of storage. I’d only recommend going down to 1TB if you work a lot from SSDs, but running on the MacBook’s internal storage is faster, so you’ll want lots of space to keep your projects on.

The Photographer

This one gets a bit trickier. The M4 chip will be able to handle a ton of photo editing, especially since the new models all start with 16GB of RAM. I edit photo projects on my M3 Air with 16GB of RAM and don’t have many complaints.

That said, if you’re a pro doing batch editing and exporting tons of files at once, the extra GPU power of the M4 Pro chip-equipped computers will make that go faster. I’ll also mention that the SD card reader on the MacBook Pros is super fast, and if you use a UHS-II speed SD card, it makes browsing files right from the card super streamlined. The screens on the MacBook Pro are also super colourful and extremely colour-accurate, so if you do high-end client work that needs to be perfect, I’d expect you want a Pro since it’s a great all-in-one editing machine.

The M4 Pro machines come with 24GB of RAM standard, so they’re probably well-equipped out of the box. However, if you work with huge projects with lots of artboards or layers, 48GB will help you run more things at once. As with my other recommendations, getting 1TB of storage or more is always worth having.

The high school student

If you’re in high school, you’re generally not working on anything super intense, so I’d recommend a base-model computer. Even the M3 and M2 Airs are great computers for that level of schooling and will likely take you a year or so into university before you start to major more, and by then, you’ll know if you need more power or not. Plus, they have even more longevity now that the base models ship with 16GB of RAM.

On top of that, you could also run an M4 iMac, but if it’s your own computer and you don’t need to share it, the Air is likely a better all-in-one option.

The family

If you have a family that needs to share a computer, the M4 iMac and M4 Mac mini are great desktop options. Again, I’d recommend stepping up the storage to at least 512GB so that all members of your family can share the computer and have enough storage to save their files.

While the mini might seem cheaper, be warned that you’ll need to buy your own mouse, keyboard and screen, which can cost an extra few hundred dollars. The iMac may seem more expensive, but it’s an all-in-one system that comes with peripherals, so it is easier to set up.

University students

While many university students think they need a MacBook Pro, I think that most can easily get by with a well-specced Air. If you are doing coding or something you know will need an above-average amount of GPU power, the M4 Pro MacBook Pro will be your best option, but the Airs are way more powerful than they used to be and can do a surprising amount of work, and are more portable for taking to class.

My overall recommendation

If you don’t know what you need, I would say don’t fall for any marketing or sales tactics. I’ve seen people do wonders with M1 MacBook Airs, so don’t think you need a powerful computer like you used to years ago. Seven years ago, when I went to post-secondary and bought my first Mac, there was a pretty wide gap between the Airs and the Pros in terms of thermal throttling and performance. Nowadays, that gap is considerably smaller since, at their base, all the M-chips are really fast and really cool under load. The main difference is GPU power and port selection, and for most people, you don’t need a huge GPU, and what’s built into the base M4 or M3 will be enough.

All that is a long way of saying, just get an Air and try it out. If it doesn’t have the juice you need, you can return it up to 15 days after you buy it and get something more powerful. But for most, the M3 Air is one of the best laptops ever and I use mine for everything and love it because it’s so light and powerful at the same time.