The M1 chip found in new MacBooks is extremely impressive according to new benchmark tests

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The M1-chip powered MacBooks was only just announced, but we’re already seeing benchmarks turn up on Geekbench. The MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro 13 have both popped up, and it seems Intel has a fight on its hands.

See, the 3.2GHz, lower-powered MacBook Air fitted with 8GB of RAM spanked every single iOS device. The A14 chip in the latest iPhone 12 scores a single-core score of 1584, but the MacBook’s M1 chip blows past that with a score of 1687. The same is true for multi-core scores, with the iPhone 12 getting 3898, and the MacBook Air breezing past to a score of 7433.

That’s impressive, but we expected the new M1 chip to outperform the Bionic chips used in the iOS-powered devices. What we didn’t expect was that the M1 chip would trounce literally every Intel-based Mac in single-core performance, including the desktop iMac with an Intel i9-10910 processor. That iMac only scores 1251 single-core, while the extra cores power it to a 9014 multi-core score.

Image: Geekbench

Now, it’s not really fair to compare the MacBook to the desktop version. That said, the picture is still the same when compared to the 16-inch MacBook Pro, which only scores 1096 single-core and 6870 multi-core.

We should probably caution that this is a synthetic benchmark and only really good to compare the generational improvements on Apple’s devices. Still, the picture being painted of the new M1 processors is of a capable chip that should perform just as well on real-world tests.

What do you think? Plan on snagging one of the new MacBooks? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Apple’s rumored over-ear headphones might look like this according to a new icon in iOS 14.3
• Your next MacBook still has a shitty 720p webcam
• macOS Big Sur is now available, but you might have issues downloading it
• The new MacBook Pro features 20 hours of battery life, an active cooling system, and more

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.