M4 Pro vs M4 Max: Which MacBook Pro Chip Should You Buy in 2026?

The M4 Pro MacBook Pro (starting at $1,999 with 24GB RAM) is the right choice for most professionals — software engineers, designers, writers, and data scientists whose workloads don't saturate 36GB of RAM. The M4 Max ($2,499+) is for video editors working with 4K+ ProRes RAW timelines, 3D artists rendering complex scenes in Blender or Cinema 4D, and ML engineers who need to train models or run 40B+ parameter LLMs locally. The most common mistake is buying M4 Max for future-proofing when the actual workflow uses 12GB of the 36GB. CPU performance is identical across both chips — the difference is GPU cores (20-24 vs 32-40), memory bandwidth (273 vs 546 GB/s), and max RAM (48GB vs 96GB).