I upgraded to a 14” M4 MBP last year and I’ve found it has handled everything I’ve thrown at it. Performance wise, I was upgrading from a 2018 Intel MBP so…. Not sure I can help with that.
Everything I’ve read indicates that the M5s are not all that more impressive that the M4s who did have an impressive generational boost.
M3 Max’s may be the current sweet-spot for performance per dollar. If you don’t need to render video or do extensive graphical editing (or shudder run an LLM) the differences will be lost to you, and you will be better served with an M4.
One point that I wish I had someone to tell me before I bought mine was is this: A M4 with 24gb of unified memory performs like a Windows machine with 32gb of ram and 8gb of Vram. Similarly, a M4 with 16gb of unified ram works like a windows machine with 16-24 gb of ram and 6-8gb of Vram. The M-series chips lumps all the system ram together not dissimilar to how the second generation of Pentium 2 business laptops did in the mid aughties, where the difference is that the ram Apple uses for this unified pool is high speed, high grade where those old business class machines were used cheaper ram that equivalent desktop stuff.[1]
You might want to look at what Other World Computing’s MacSales dot com[2] has in stock. A quick peek when I wrote this show several previous generation machines available new at a considerable discount from Apple Retail, a 13” M4 MBA starting at $1250 and a 14” M4 MPB starting at $1.5k for example.
I have found the 14 inch M4 MBP carries well. While the MagSafe charging cable is nice, it is happy to draw power from any USB-C source including the large power bank I carry around. Being a road warrior myself, I pride myself into building a kit that can fit within my tacticool merse[3]
If you want the Air form factor you may have rough time competing with the Neo. Previous generation M4 Air with base 16gb unified ram is slightly more than double the cost of a Neo. It is my opinion than the M4 Air is decidedly more future proof than the Neo and will do more. (Also, the Neo is compared to the M1 Air not the M4 so your performance should be better too.
That said, there is not much difference between the MBP and MBA form factors in the current iterations, the MBP is a little thicker and a little heavier, but if you are counting grams the MBA edges out.
Bonus tidbit: After seeing this setup I’ve added a touchID magic keyboard (without numpad) and a folding laptop stand to my kit, and it has done wonders for my neck! Plus by elevating the screen higher I can more easily angle the screen to mitigate glare without sacrificing viewing angle.
Please forgive this aside if it comes across as condescending. I’ve placed this here because it’s one of the questions I wanted answered and didn’t get answered before I spent money last year. ↩︎
Intentionally not made a link. I like the company and do business with them, but I’m not shilling for them. ↩︎
It’s ballistic nylon with MOLLE webbing, so it’s gotta be too manly to call a daybag, but it functions like a mascline shoulder bag so its sorta is a purse…. Alas, when we will have better terms for real world uses…. ↩︎