M4 MacBook Pro seemingly revealed again in ‘unprecedented’ benchmark and video leaks

But are they genuine?

News By Alex Blake published 8 October 2024

It’s not been a good few days for Apple. Last week, photos emerged on X (formerly Twitter) of what was claimed to be the unreleased M4 MacBook Pro, with the poster claiming it was for sale on Facebook. Then over the weekend, Russian YouTuber Wylsacom did a full hands-on unboxing of what they claimed was the same line of MacBook Pro. And now, things have gotten even worse for Apple.

That’s because a second person has claimed to be in possession of the M4 MacBook Pro, and has posted a video as proof. The poster is another Russian citizen, perhaps suggesting a link to the earlier leak. The one-minute video clip shows Russian YouTuber Romancev768 unboxing the laptop and sharing their first impressions of it. Although far less detailed than Wylsacom’s video, the MacBook Pro seen in this latest video shares a lot of similarities with the laptops featured in the previous leaks.

MacBook Pro M4 до презентации - YouTube

Watch On

The big question is whether these leaks depict genuine Apple laptops or cleverly disguised fakes – and there are some convincing elements to what's shown in Romancev768’s video. For one thing, the YouTuber shows the About This Mac screen in macOS, which lists the device as being launched in November 2024 – the same time as Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman expects the M4 MacBook Pro to go on sale.

The MacBook Pro in Romancev768’s video has the exact same model number and packaging as in previous leaks, while the device’s specs also seem to be a match. That suggests that all of the leaked laptops could have been taken from the same batch. Whether that's a real batch from an Apple warehouse, or a batch of fake laptops created by a very enterprising fraudster, isn’t clear.

Interestingly, the boxes in both leaks come with a QR code and text reading 'Scan for more information about your MacBook Pro.' Unfortunately, it seems that this QR code is slightly too blurry to successfully scan, but where that code takes you would likely give us an idea as to whether these products are authentic or not.

Benchmarks leak out

And it’s not just videos that have supposedly revealed the new MacBook Pro – benchmarks have surfaced too. On Geekbench, a new Mac – labeled Mac16,1 – has appeared, and the scores correspond with tests Wylsacom conducts in his video, with both showing a single-core score of 3864 and a multi-core result of 15288. Compared to the M3 chip with 8-core CPU and 10-GPU that you’ll find in last year’s MacBook Pro, the single-core result is about 26.7% higher, while the multi-core score is 30.6% higher.

The chip featured in these tests is noted as being an Apple M4 with a 10-core CPU comprising four cores in one cluster and six cores in another (this likely corresponds to the division between performance and efficiency cores). The base clock of the chip is 4.41GHz, and it comes with 16GB of memory, which matches the leaked MacBook Pro’s box.

Get daily insight, inspiration and deals in your inbox

Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors