Apple is updating the MacBook Pro and introducing a number of even more powerful chips. Announced this morning via a low-key press release, the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are being updated to the M4 processor series, which now includes the M4 Pro chip that debuted yesterday in the Mac Mini and a new, even higher-end M4 Max. The entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro also gets a small design upgrade in the form of an additional USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port on the right side and a space black option to match its more premium brethren.

Like previous models, the M4 Pro-equipped laptops start at $1,999 for the 14-inch and $2,499 for the 16-inch, but both get an upgrade from 18GB of base RAM to 24GB. The standard 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro still starts at $1,599, but that model now (mercifully) starts with 16 GB of RAM instead of just 8 GB. The new MacBook Pros will be available from November 8 and pre-orders are available now.

Aside from chip bumps and RAM improvements, the 14- and 16-inch Pros with M4 Pro/Max chips are also the first Mac laptops with Thunderbolt 5 ports. All three MacBook Pros come with new 12-megapixel webcams with desktop display, and each can be configured with a new nano-textured display that can deliver up to 1000 nits of SDR brightness and 1600 nits of HDR.

Those additional upgrades are nice, but the big changes are still the chips. Apple claims that the entire M4 generation of chips has “the fastest CPU core in the world” and “the best single-threaded performance in the industry.” Single-core performance has been a strong feature of Apple’s Mac chips since the M1 generation, and the M4 chips are promised to deliver “dramatically faster multithreaded performance.” The M4 Pro and Max also have faster GPU cores, with a ray-tracing engine that’s twice as fast. The neural engine is also 2x faster than the M3 generation, for improved machine learning and AI workloads.

Apple’s newest, most powerful silicon should be best equipped for Apple’s big AI push with Apple Intelligence, which just launched this week on supported Macs, iPhones, and iPads. That said, Apple Intelligence runs on Macs going back to the 2020 M1 chip – the big hurdle for Macs seems to be RAM. Coinciding with today’s MacBook Pro announcements, Apple is also increasing the base configurations of the M2 and M3 MacBook Air models from 8 GB of RAM to 16 GB, starting at $999 for the M2. So perhaps it’s only a matter of time before older models with lesser specs are left behind in terms of the future features that Apple continues to delay through updates.

The M3 generation of MacBook Pros was a mix of continued excellence in the form of the M3 Pro/Max models and an awkward middle child in the non-Pro M3 14-inch. The top-end Mac laptops with Pro and Max chips are still great choices for creatives who have performance-intensive workflows with apps like Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro. The entry-level 14-inch M3, on the other hand, was a bit hard to justify compared to a cheaper MacBook Air or one of its more expensive siblings on sale. The new 14-inch with M4 now looks a little more interesting and deserves the ‘Pro’ branding a little more. It’s amazing how much feeling an extra USB port can give you.

Update, October 30: Added base RAM amounts for both the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M4 Pro chips.