iPad Pro with M4 chip delivers impressive performance compared to the just-released M3 MacBook Air

The M4 looks like a very strong generation for Apple Silicon. According to leaked Geekbench results, likely posted by reviewers who have already gotten their hands on the new iPad before next week’s embargo, the new iPad Pro with the M4 chip scores around 3,700 in benchmark Single-core CPU and around 14,500 in multi-core.

This compares to ~3,100 and ~12,000 for the M3 MacBook Air, which Apple just shipped in March. The new iPad Pro outperforms the Air by about 20%, an impressive generational leap, at least in these benchmark results.

In terms of raw performance, the M4 really lives up to Apple’s promises and should deliver. Single-core is up about 20% over all M3 chips and over 40% over M2. The generational jump in computing from the previous iPad Pro M2 is at least 42% on both single-core and multi-core models.

In fact, its performance rivals the top-end Mac M3 Pro chip on multi-core benchmark results, for which you have to shell out at least $2,199 to get this chip in the current 14-inch MacBook Pro. But on the iPad, you get faster single-core and comparable multi-core for just $999.

Note, however, that Apple is bundling chips on the iPad Pro this year, so the full-speed ten-core processor models are only available with 1TB or 2TB of storage. The 256GB and 512GB configurations feature a 9-core processor, with one less performance core. On these models, the Geekbench single-core score would be the same but the multi-core score will likely be around 15% lower.

Apple says the M4 chip is built on a second-generation 3-nanometer process, considered TSMC’s N3E manufacturing, rather than the “N3B” process that Apple is rapidly moving away from with the expected short lifespans of the A17 Pro and all M3 Macs. models. “N3E” is easier to manufacture, with much better production yields, which benefits Apple, and it also produces more efficient chips, which benefits the end customer.

The M4’s compute performance is achieved through a combination of these process improvements and architectural changes to the processor cores themselves. Apple says these next-generation cores improve branch prediction and tout larger execution engines for performance and high-efficiency cores. They also upgraded ML accelerators for machine learning tasks.

The M4’s neural engine is also significantly improved over the M3, with Apple claiming up to 38 trillion operations per second, more than double the M3. This will inevitably tie into Apple’s future AI plans on devices.

We don’t have benchmarks for the GPU yet, but it will likely be comparable to the M3’s GPU performance, perhaps with a slight improvement thanks to the improved efficiency of the 3nm process and improved thermal design of the new iPad Pro. The actual architecture of the ten GPU cores is not believed to have changed much, if at all, from what you see in the MacBook Air, for example.

On paper, the M4 will represent a huge step forward for Apple Silicon, especially when it comes to raw processor power. We can’t wait to see what the high-end members of the family will look like; we expect the M4 Pro and M4 Max to launch in the new MacBook Pros by the end of the year.

However, when it comes to the iPad, the synthetic benchmark scores of course don’t reflect how powerful the device actually is in practice. The limitations of iPadOS and the applications and software available on the platform remain a significant obstacle.