We’ve heard what Apple has to say, now it’s time for the benchmarks to do the talking. The numbers quoted by Apple of “three times better performance” and “better than 98 percent of Windows laptops sold in the past 12 months” might be correct if certain constraints are met, but now the new M1 Macs are proving their potential in the first independent tests.
And to confirm Apple’s basic statement: The new computers with SoCs based on ARM are fast, damn fast.
The new MacBook Air M1 registered about 1,687 points in the single-core test and 7,433 points in the multi-core benchmark on Geekbench. For comparison: a 16in Macbook Pro from 2019 with an Intel Core i9 achieves 1,096 and 6,870 points, respectively.
If Apple’s new entry-level notebook beats the previous high-end model it all looks very promising.
But there is more, even the Mac Pro in the basic configuration loses in Geekbench single core against the new MacBook Air with just 1,024 points. In the multi-core test, the Tower of Power is still ahead with 7,989 points though.
One can now look forward to the benchmarks of the 13in MacBook Pro M1 and Mac mini M1, which, in unlike the MacBook Air M1 use fans and therefore can probably be pushed a tad further. The SoC is the same except for one less graphics core in the MacBook Air.
Read: How good is Apple’s M1 chip really? and Apple’s M1 – is it really ‘3X as fast’? We also compare the M1 MacBook Pro and the 2.0GHz MacBook Pro.
Plus, the first reviews are in and they are positive. We also have a full review of the M1 MacBook Air. Also read: New M1 Macs getting rave reviews.
This article originally appeared on Macwelt. Translation by Karen Haslam.