I'm considering buying the 14-inch M3 Pro (11 cores) instead of the M4 Pro (12 cores). Apparently, the M4 Pro heats up more easily, consumes more power, and the fans kick in much more readily.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-14-2024-review-The-M4-Pro-and-matte-display-are-massive-upgrades.914597.0.html
There’s a 5–6 degree Celsius difference in chassis temperature under heavy load—that’s a huge difference! And from what we’ve read, you could play games on the M3 Pro (like The Witcher 3) with the fans remaining pretty much silent. As far as I know, that’s not possible on the M4 Pro.
However, not many YouTubers pay much attention to those highlights. They mention that it’s louder or slightly hotter than the M3 Pro but say it’s normal for a laptop’s fans to turn on when it's pushed harder. They’re more excited about the performance boost without emphasizing that the M4 Pro also has significantly higher power demands.
https://youtu.be/LRRpyTlsZ-s?feature=shared&t=307
Here you can see how M3 Pro behaves during Cinebench test and how M4 Pro... For me, that's a huge difference!
So, I’m wondering if losing that ergonomic balance for a 20-40% performance increase is really worth it.
Considering the M3 Pro managed to maintain better thermals, and from my own experience with the M1 and M1 Max, where the fans almost never turn on (though, to be fair, I don’t push the processor too hard), I’m worried the M4 Pro might disappoint me. User experience ergonomics are much more important to me than a 30% performance increase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac3idjslNlI
That's also an interesting video about how much has changed, and making ANY comparison to the MacBook Pro 16 with Intel just feels unsettling :/ (Even if it ultimately turns out better)
My main dilemma is whether I’m overthinking this and worrying too much about temperatures and fan noise or if there’s genuinely something to be concerned about (especially since I had bad experiences with the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro with Intel). The argument that "if you’re just watching YouTube or using Google Docs, the M4 Pro’s fans won’t turn on" doesn’t convince me, because if that’s all I planned to do, I’d buy an Air instead 😂
(though, to be fair, some reviews claim that even when editing videos or under light workloads, the M4 Pro is still fairly quiet).
What do you think? I don’t want to feel like I messed up by buying the older generation based on some delusions of mine or by exaggerating a real concern.
(Actually, for me it looks like the old good times when people were concerned whether to buy i5 2500K or i5 3560K xD, but the performance increase wasn't that big, though)