Apple’s new M4 iPad Air models will be available for pre-order today, and ahead of the launch, preliminary Geekbench benchmark results have appeared for the device, allowing us to compare its performance to the prior-generation M3 iPad Air.
While Apple claims the new M4 iPad Air is up to 30% faster than the M3 iPad Air, and up to 2.3x faster than the M1-powered iPad Air; the new benchmarks don’t quite show that big a leap in power.
A pair of benchmarks from the 13-inch M4 iPad Air with Wi-Fi + Cellular (iPad16,11) suggest the M4 iPad Air CPU is 17.3% faster in single-core performance and 7.9% faster in multi-core performance. (Shared by MacRumors)
The benchmarks show single-core scores of 3438 and 3714 and multi-core scores of 12885 and 12296, translating to an average single-core score of 3576 and an average multi-core score of 12591. The prior-generation 13-inch M3 iPad Air has an average single-core score of 3048 and an average multi-core score of 11667.
The M4 iPad Air is equipped with an 8-core CPU featuring three performance cores and five efficiency cores, along with a 9-core GPU.
In addition to a new processor, the M4 iPad Air provides higher memory bandwidth, and 50% more unified system memory than the previous generation. (12GB of unified memory and 120GB/s of memory bandwidth.)
Customers can pre-order iPad Air starting today, March 4 at 9:15 a.m. Eastern Time, with availability beginning Wednesday, March 11.