MacBook Air with M1 chip outperforms 16-inch MacBook Pro in benchmark

Apple New M1 Chip (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

The first benchmarks of Apple's M1 Macs have arrived.
Scores posted to Geekbench today.
The new MacBook Air beats up even the current 16-inch MacBook Pro in raw CPU performance.

Reported by MacRumors, the first benchmark scores for an M1 powered Mac have landed on Geekbench. The chip reportedly belongs to one of the new MacBook Air models.

According to Geekbench, the new MacBook Air with M1 reached a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. Per the benchmark, the M1 processor has a 3.2GHz base frequency and has beat out every iOS in performance.

Macbook Air M1 First Benchmark Score (Image credit: MacRumors)

When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the MacBook Air outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

It also beat out every Mac that is currently available when it came to single-core performance, including the high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro. MacRumors does not that this is only considering CPU performance and that the 16-inch MacBook Pro could still reign supreme when it comes to GPU performance.

In comparison to Macs, the single-core performance is better than any other available Mac, and the multi-core performance beats out all of the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro models, including the 10th-generation high-end 2.4GHz Intel Core i9 model. That high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro earned a single-core score of 1096 and a multi-core score of 6870. Though the M1 chip is outperforming the 16-inch MacBook Pro models when it comes to raw CPU benchmarks, the 16-inch MacBook Pro likely offers better performance in other areas such as the GPU as those models have high-power discrete GPUs.

Macbook Air M1 Single Core Performance (Image credit: MacRumors)

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The Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro featuring the M1 processor also have posted their first scores, and they appear to be similar to that of the MacBook Air.

The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the MacBook Air, it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

You can check out the full list of benchmarks on Geekbench.

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.