Which MacBook Pro with 14-inch screen is best for handling media?

Good day,

All current Macbook Pros now have 14- or 16-inch displays and two fans. The Macbook Airs are the ones that are "convection-cooled," —fanless. I prefer fans— call me "old-school." I am old!

I feel like I would need some storage but not a whole lot because I can always get a flash drive etc

Fortunately even the entry-level Macbook Pro now ships with a 512GB SSD, my new bare minimum for storage capacity. The base 16GB of RAM should be all you need, but I would spend any extra coin on more storage. Mrs AJ has minimal computer needs but still I up-ordered her new M4 iMac with the 1GB storage option out of an abundance of caution.

...and would also need usb ports .

Apple saw the light, so current Macbook Pros, even the entry-level model, have three USB-C ports in addition to a dedicated MagSafe 3 power/charging port. The HDMI port makes adding an external monitor easy. And, yes, Macbook Pros still have a port for an SD card reader for getting your photos from camera to computer, plus a headphone jack for movies and music.

I resisted buying any Macbook Pro when the 202 M1 model first shipped due to a frustrating lack of ports. The current ones fixed that for me, and I am typing this on a month-old 14-inch M4 Pro Macbook Pro and luvin' it!

Allan Jones wrote:

I resisted buying any Macbook Pro when the 202 M1 model first shipped due to a frustrating lack of ports. The current ones fixed that for me, and I am typing this on a month-old 14-inch M4 Pro Macbook Pro and luvin' it!

The 13" M1 MacBook Pro was an early low-end model. The 14" M4 Pro MacBook Pro is a current mainstream one.

Back in the late Intel days, Apple divided the 13" MacBook Pro into two lines.

• Ones with four Thunderbolt 3 ports. These were the ones that you really wanted
• Ones with two Thunderbolt 3 ports and older Intel processors. These were close to being Retina MacBook Airs.

MacBook Pros with {M1/M2/M3/M4} {Pro/Max} chips are the successors to 13" and 15"/16" MBPs with four Thunderbolt ports. MacBook Pros with Pro and Max chips come in 14" and 16" flavors, and just about anything that you can get in a 16" model can also be gotten in a 14" one. (An upgrade over Intel days, where 13" models rarely got the best CPUs and GPUs.)

MacBook Pros with plain M-series chips are the successors to the 13' two-Thunderbolt-port machines. They include the 13" M1 and M2 MBPs, and the 14" plain M3 and M4 MBPs.

When Apple started releasing Apple-Silicon-based Macs, they started with a low-end chip (the plain M1) and with low-end Macs (like the MacBook Airs and the 13" two-Thunderbolt-port MacBook Pros).

For nearly a year, Apple sold 13" and 16" Intel-based MBPs that had four Thunderbolt ports side-by-side with the 13" M1 MacBook Pro. It was only when 14" and 16" MBPs based on the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips came out, that those "high-end" Intel-based MBPs went bye-bye. During the ~11-month transition interval, the 13" M1 MacBook Pro was clearly the best buy in terms of performance (and often had the best absolute performance) – but those other Intel notebooks held on because of their better selection of expansion ports, and support for more than one external display.

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