- Early benchmarks comparing the M1 iPad Pro 12.9 to the MacBook Air M1 have emerged online.
- The iPad netted an overall score of 1,060,247 points on AnTuTu, while the MacBook Air was slightly ahead with a score of 1,118,243.
- The M1 iPad Pro 12.9 likely lost due to thermal throttling, as the MacBook can dissipate heat faster.
Early M1 iPad Pro 12.9 benchmarks have started appearing online, and the results are nothing short of stellar. Developers of the popular benchmarking software AnTuTu happened to stumble upon some M1 iPad Pro 12.9 listings and posted them on their website. To put things in perspective, they also showed how an M1 MacBook Air fared. As expected, both devices’ scores were neck and neck, with the MacBook Air taking a slight lead. While this was the expected outcome, given that they were running the same and hardware and all, it is surprising to see a pre-production M1 iPad Pro 12.9 come within spitting distance of a laptop.
Also read: India prices of iPad Pro 2021, M1-powered iMac, AirTag, Apple TV 4K, and more revealed
The M1 iPad Pro 12.9 scored a total of 1,060,247 points in AnTuTu- 240,997 in the CPU test, 514,792 in the GPU test, and 199,527 and 105,221 in the memory and UI/UX tests, respectively. This was one of the maxed-out iPad Pro variants with 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM. As mentioned earlier, the MacBook Air fared marginally better with its score of 1,118,243- 282,265 for the CPU, 538,944 for the GPU, 189,921 for the memory, and 108,113 for the UI/UX. Interestingly enough, this particular MacBook Air ran a paltry 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. A higher-specced configuration would have resulted in a better score.
Given that AnTuTu is platform-agnostic, we can rule out the differences between macOS and iPadOS as a reason for the iPad Pro’s performance. AnTuTu states that cooling has a part to play in the equation. Although both devices are passively cooled, the MacBook has a significantly larger surface area to dissipate heat. It’ll be interesting to see how the off-the-shelf M1 iPad Pro 12.9 performs compared to its cousins, as the one used in the test above was very likely a pre-production unit.
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