Apple M4 chip: specs, performance, and when we expect to see them in Macs

Apple M4 chip
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple officially announced its latest silicon, the Apple M4, at its May 'Let Loose' event, the first time the company has announced a new chip in a tablet without first bringing it to its Mac desktops and laptops.

We've got a good bit of detail on the Apple M4 thanks to the announcement and what to expect from the new chip and when we can expect it to make its way to the rest of the Apple ecosystem.

So, lets dig into this exciting piece of hardware and talk about this powerful new SoC.

Apple M4 chip: Cut to the chase

  • What is it? Apple's next generation of in-house silicon
  • How much does it cost? It doesn't sell on its own, but instead powers various Apple devices
  • When can I get it? It is available now in iPad Pro devices, and may come in Mac devices as soon as late October 2024

Apple M4 chip: Latest news

Apple M4 chip: Release date

Apple M4 chip announcement

(Image credit: Apple)

The Apple M4 chip was announced at the May 7, 2024, 'Let Loose' iPad event and shipped with iPad Pro devices on May 13, 2024.

It is expected to be introduced into the Mac lineup, starting with the MacBook Pro 14-inch (2024), Apple Mac mini (2024), and iMac (2024), as early as October 2024, with Apple MacBook Air devices getting the chips in 2025. 

However, the order of which devices get the new M4 chip could be shuffled around a bit, and we simply won't know until new products with the chip are announced.

Apple M4 chip: Specs

A spec infographic for the Apple M4 chip

(Image credit: Apple)

The Apple M4 is built on TSMC's 3nm process node, the same as the Apple M3 chip, though Apple does refer to it as a 'second-generation' chip, so it's more advanced than the Apple M3. 

It features up to a 10-core CPU (4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores) and a 10-core GPU, up from the 8-core CPU and 8-core GPU of the base M3 chip, and supports up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS) in its 16-core neural engine (Apple's version of an NPU). 

It contains 28 billion transistors, up from 25 billion in the M3, and can support up to 128GB of unified memory. 

Like the M3, the Apple M4 also has support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing, dynamic caching, and mesh shading. It also features dynamic caching, which improves the memory efficiency of GPU-intensive tasks. 

The new M4 chip also introduces support for Tandem OLED displays, which use two  OLED pixel layers together to create a single display that offers better efficiency and longevity than traditional OLED panels, as well as hardware-accelerated AV1 media support for the first time.

John Loeffler
Components Editor

John (He/Him) is the Components Editor here at TechRadar and he is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY. 

Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.

You can find him online on Threads @johnloeffler.

Currently playing: Baldur's Gate 3 (just like everyone else).