Benchmark results for the new iPad Air show that Apple didn’t downclock the M1 chip to artificially limit the device’s performance. According to Geekbench 5 results, the fifth-generation iPad Air’s M1 chip operates at the same frequency as the iPad Pro’s 3.2GHz. Therefore, the performance of the M1 iPad Air is almost the same as the M1 iPad Pro.
According to a single model query, among the running scores that the M1 iPad Air has generated, the average single-core and multi-core scores are about 1700 and 7200, respectively:
These scores confirm that the M1 iPad Air performs on par with the M1 iPad Pro while being about 60% to 70% faster than the CPU performance of the fourth-generation iPad Air with the A14 Bionic chip.
First introduced in the MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini in November 2020, the M1 chip contains an 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, and the new iPad Air is also paired with 8GB of unified memory.
Given that the A15 Bionic chip was previously downclocked to 2.9GHz in the sixth-generation iPad mini, while other devices like the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro Max are clocked at 3.2GHz, Apple’s decision not to downclock the iPad Air’s M1 chip is notable. of. The downclocked chips cause the iPad mini to be around 2% to 8% slower than the iPhone 13 models.
In addition to the M1 chip, key features of the new iPad Air include an upgraded 12-megapixel front-facing camera, Center Stage support, cellular 5G connectivity on select versions, a 2x faster USB-C port for data transfer, and a new Selection of color. Pre-orders begin March 11, shipping March 18, and pricing in the U.S. starts at $599.
