It has finally arrived. Beyond M3, which Apple labeled ‘Scary Fast’, they have released a MacBook Pro equipped with the M4 Ultra chipset, now challenging the realm of ‘Impossible’.

As a hardware reviewer, I have tortured this 12 million KRW laptop for the past week. To start with the conclusion, this is a workstation disguised as a laptop. However, the question “So, should I buy it?” is hard to answer easily. I dig into the reasons in 5,000 characters.

1. Spec Sheet: Violence of Numbers

The specs of M4 Ultra make competitors look shabby.

• Process: TSMC 1.4nm (A14) - World’s first consumer 1nm-range chip.
• CPU: 32 cores (24 performance + 8 efficiency).
• GPU: 128 cores. (Equivalent to RTX 5090 Mobile).
• Memory: Max 512GB Unified Memory. (Bandwidth 1.6TB/s).

2. Benchmark: Do Scores Matter?

I ran Geekbench 7.

• Single Core: 4,500 points (30% improvement over M3)
• Multi Core: 42,000 points (Easily surpasses the desktop workstation Mac Pro M2 Ultra)

More shocking than the score is the ‘Power Consumption’. Even while pumping out these scores, fan noise is barely audible. Even if you unplug the power cord, the performance drop is ‘0’. This is unimaginable in Intel or AMD laptops.

3. Real Usage Test: A Dream for AI Developers

The true value of this machine is revealed not in video editing but in ‘Local LLM Operation’.

3.1 Running Llama-4-70B

Even when loading a 70 billion parameter model fully without quantization, the memory is spacious. Token generation speed is 80 tokens per second. Local is faster than using Cloud API. Being able to train and infer my own AI on a plane without internet is a tremendous competitive edge.

4. GPU Performance: Completion of Ray Tracing

In Blender 4.5 rendering tests, M4 Ultra threatened the RTX 4090 desktop version. With hardware-accelerated ray tracing cores doubled, Unreal Engine 5.5 can now be run pleasantly on a Mac.

The saying “Mac is not for gaming” seems to be becoming a thing of the past. The native Mac version of ‘Death Stranding 2’ defends 120 frames at 8K resolution.

5. Drawbacks: Price and Compatibility

However, the drawbacks are also clear.

5.1 Price

The base model is 6 million KRW, and the full option is 12 million KRW. That’s the price of a decent used car. With this money, you can buy two Windows desktops and a MacBook Air and still have money left.

5.2 Still Compatibility Issues

Although most apps have transitioned to Apple Silicon native, some old x86 plugins or specific engineering software still have to go through Rosetta 2. Worrying about compatibility on a 12 million KRW machine is bitter.

6. Conclusion: For the Pros Among Pros

This product is not for YouTubers or web developers.

• AI Engineers who need to fine-tune Large Language Models (LLM) locally.
• Filmmakers who need to cut-edit 8K RAW video in real-time.
• 3D Artists handling millions of polygons.

For them, M4 Ultra is an ‘investment good’ that buys time with money. But for entering Starbucks? Well, M4 Air is enough.