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The chip that mainstreamed a 38-TOPS Neural Engine across affordable Macs and iPads.
Pros
- Excellent value entry to Apple Intelligence and on-device AI
- Great battery life and silent operation in MacBook Air
- Mac mini M4 is a cheap always-on local-AI box
Cons
- 38 TOPS now trails newer NPUs (50-80 TOPS)
- Limited memory ceiling on base configs
- No CUDA / x86 software compatibility
✓ Where it shines / best for
- Mainstream Mac and iPad Pro users
- Everyday productivity, photo and light video editing
- On-device Apple Intelligence at low power
✕ Not the best fit for
- Heavy multi-stream pro video or large 3D workloads (see M4 Pro/Max)
- Non-Apple platforms
- Standalone purchase
Features
- ✓ On-device / offline
- ✓ Unified Memory
- ✓ 3nm
- ✓ Neural Engine
- ✓ Ray tracing
- ✓ Apple Silicon
- ✓ 38 Tops
- ✓ Desktop SoC
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Embedded in Mac / iPad | $599 | one-time | Not sold separately; base M4 ships in Mac mini (from $599), iMac (from $1,299), MacBook Air (from $999) and 11"/13" iPad Pro. |
Pricing verified from the official source. Prices change often — confirm on the vendor's site before buying.
Specifications
| memory | LPDDR5X unified, up to 32GB (M4) |
| cpu_cores | Up to 10 |
| gpu_cores | Up to 10 |
| architecture | Apple M4, 2nd-gen 3nm TSMC |
| neural_engine | 16-core, 38 TOPS INT8 |
| memory_bandwidth | 120 GB/s |
Sponsored
A full review is being generated for this product and will appear here shortly.