Three days after the opening of pre-orders, the first benchmarks of the brand new fifth-generation iPad Air have leaked, even if deliveries have not actually started yet. The device, identified with the iPad model code 13.17appeared on Geekbench, and scored practically identical to those of the 11 “iPad Pro. It is not a surprise, since the chip at the base is the same – namely the Apple Silicon M1; but it is still a confirmation of the fact that Apple has not applied throttling or limitations of any kind on the new tablet despite being a little less prestigious than the Pro model.
As we can see from the image above, the results are absolutely comparable between the two devices: 1,711 points in single core and 7,233 points in multi of iPad Air against 1,718 and 7,313 of the third generation iPad Pro 11 “. Parity also in the Metal test, which evaluates the performance of the GPU: 21,539 for iPad Air and 21,498. As you can see the numbers are not exactly the same, but a minimum of the difference between one run and another is always to be taken into consideration – which is why generally more tests are performed and the results are averaged.
It is however interesting to observe that iPad Air does not fear the limitations of RAM memory (8 GB against a maximum of 16) and storage (256 GB maximum against 2 TB), at least in this context; and that the refresh rate is not relevant to the test (only 60 Hz for AirProMotion up to 120 for the Pro).
Before the advent of Apple Silicon, Apple’s most prestigious tablets have always been characterized by the “X” variants of the iPhone SoCs – and perhaps we could go so far as to say that the smooth “M” chips are a bit of the spiritual heirs of the A * X. It seems difficult to assume that in the future iPad Pro will be able to mount higher-end chips, which would be the M2 Pro: questions of consumption and above all of heat. In fact, current rumors say that the new iPad Pro should arrive this fall, and that they will have standard M2 chips.
