M1 MacBook Air Faster Than Fastest Intel MacBook Pros

The first benchmarks are in and it appears the new M1 MacBook Air is faster than any Intel-based Mac laptop, including the fastest MacBook Pro.

For years Apple’s custom silicon in the iPad Pro has turned in impressive benchmarks, but direct comparisons were tricky. Tablets often provide short bursts of intense performance, but lack the sustained performance of a traditional computer. Now that Apple’s custom silicon is in a traditional computer, however, direct comparisons can finally be made—and it’s not good news for Intel.

According to a Geekbench submission, the new MacBook scores 1687 in single-core performance and a whopping 7433 in multi-core performance. The test machine has 8 GB of RAM, as opposed to the maxed out 16 GB.

In comparison, a late 2019 MacBook Pro 16-inch, with Intel’s Core I9, only scores 1101 and 6581 in the Geekbench tests.

During their “One More Thing” event announcing the new machines, Apple said the MacBook Air was faster than 98% of laptops sold in the last year. The company also said that the new machines often ran Intel software via its Rosetta 2 translation layer faster than native Intel Macs could. Looking at these Geekbench results, it’s easy to see how.

It’s increasingly clear why Apple is moving to its own custom silicon, and the move promises bright days ahead for the Mac platform.