M2 MacBook Air matches 13-inch MacBook Pro in first benchmark
The first Geekbench 5 results for the M2 chip in the MacBook Air have surfaced, indicating that users should see the same performance as in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro for typical usage.
The initial wave of M2-equipped Apple Silicon devices, the updated MacBook Air and the upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro have the potential to differ in performance due to variations in cooling. However, an initial benchmark of the M2 MacBook Air seems to indicate that the difference may not be felt that much by users.
According to the Geekbench 5 result spotted by Twitter user "Mr. Macintosh," the first M2 MacBook Air result has appeared in the benchmark tool's online browser. Performed on Friday, the result for the "Mac14,2" indicates a single-core score of 1,899 and a multi-core score of 8,965.
The results are in the same ballpark as found by AppleInsider in its review of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Under the same tests, the MacBook Pro managed 1,928 in the single-core test and 8,990 in the multi-core.
While there is a minimal difference in results between the two chips, the benchmarks show that there should be very little difference in performance between the models, at least in terms of everyday use.
Tools like Geekbench are explicitly designed to introduce pauses in workflow, which give a closer simulation to day-to-day workflows than an extended processing run.
The active cooling in the MacBook Pro will mean it will win out over longer sustained processing sessions due to having better thermal management than the passively-cooled MacBook Air. At the same stroke, users who seek high performance with minimal throttling will tend to opt for more powerful systems to begin with.
For regular use on low-processing tasks, the MacBook Air still remains the better option of the two models.
Read on AppleInsider
The initial wave of M2-equipped Apple Silicon devices, the updated MacBook Air and the upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro have the potential to differ in performance due to variations in cooling. However, an initial benchmark of the M2 MacBook Air seems to indicate that the difference may not be felt that much by users.
According to the Geekbench 5 result spotted by Twitter user "Mr. Macintosh," the first M2 MacBook Air result has appeared in the benchmark tool's online browser. Performed on Friday, the result for the "Mac14,2" indicates a single-core score of 1,899 and a multi-core score of 8,965.
The results are in the same ballpark as found by AppleInsider in its review of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Under the same tests, the MacBook Pro managed 1,928 in the single-core test and 8,990 in the multi-core.
While there is a minimal difference in results between the two chips, the benchmarks show that there should be very little difference in performance between the models, at least in terms of everyday use.
Tools like Geekbench are explicitly designed to introduce pauses in workflow, which give a closer simulation to day-to-day workflows than an extended processing run.
The active cooling in the MacBook Pro will mean it will win out over longer sustained processing sessions due to having better thermal management than the passively-cooled MacBook Air. At the same stroke, users who seek high performance with minimal throttling will tend to opt for more powerful systems to begin with.
For regular use on low-processing tasks, the MacBook Air still remains the better option of the two models.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Price-wise and performance-wise the Air and 13" Pro are a wash when similarly equipped. The Air has some significant advantages for weight, and camera. The Pro really only is for those who absolutely must have the Touch Bar. As this technology is being phased out by Apple and few developers support it, this is a vanishingly small number. The other issue is active cooling. Once again very few people really will use their system under heavy load for long periods. Most of us will do things that push our system for a few seconds to a minute, and then be done. Most of the time the chip will be working just above idle. What's more if you are going to be really hammering on your system, you'll almost certainly want to upgrade storage and RAM raising the price significantly. At that point the larger MacBook Pro is a reasonable alternative that gives you a bigger and brighter screen, more ports, a better camera, in a more powerful system.
For a few the 13" Pro is the best solution. For most though it will come down to the Air or the 14" Pro.
how much performance you’ll lose in the long term anyway? Depending on the application, I doubt it can make more than 10% (that and we can always make it run cooler). Then you got a complete silent design & better peripherals.
If you want to use a laptop for production work then get a 14" or 16" MBP. Yes, the MBA can do production work and can do it much better than the old Intel versions but it's really not made for this market so I wish people would understand that (@DAalseth mentions this above and is absolutely correct). The MBA would serve as a very good business travel laptop, especially when used with an iPhone with a cellular plan that gives you plenty of hotspot data. The entry level, M1 or M2, would also be fine for most educational users although some would definitely benefit from the power of the larger MBPs. As for heat, I've never liked having an Intel Mac laptop on my lap except in the winter. They were always hot. My MBA has never even been warm with anything I've done on it.
https://wccftech.com/m2-macbook-air-benchmarks-are-out-beats-the-base-model-of-the-mac-pro-tower/
Granted, the Geekbench benchmark is heavily flawed: its runtime is too short to expose thermal throttling over sustained workloads and doesn't capture many other important system measurements well. There are newer metrics -- most importantly machine learning performance -- that aren't being assessed at all by current benchmark suites.
Regardless this Geekbench result reframes the value of the Mac Pro...
If current production M1 devices are also using a single 256 GB NAND, then the speed advantage disappears.
Despite Apple's legendary logistics acumen, even Apple's production is susceptible to market realities.
Certainly machines in warehouses or currently in the product pipeline probably still have the dual NAND setup, but Apple's production has traditionally been pretty JIT - and currently sold M1s will probably have to deal with the same market realities as new M2 production.
With the Chinese COVID lockdowns, market realities between now and a year and a half ago may be quite different.
For the average consumer - Harry in accounting or Sally doing general office work or Sam in legal - the M2 will probably be a better choice than even the higher tier MacBook Pros, exclusive of price.
For the average user who doesn't use heavily multithreaded workloads, the M2's higher single core clock speed will make the computer feel snappier than M1-based machines.
If you're doing heavily multithreaded tasks like video editing or transcoding, the MacBook Pros are better due to their higher core counts (not to mentionable the goodies like the XDR display, heavier cooling system, and superior speakers and mics). It just doesn't make sense to really start loading the lower end models with RAM and storage because when you do that you're pushing up into MacBook Pro price territory. As you push up the capabilities, you'll find RAM and SSD storage are the price drivers and when you pile on this stuff you're driving the price up into Pro territory.
Heck, even the Pros start to look similar at higher levels - when you spec up the 14" and 16", you'll find only a $200 difference between the two, and the 16" gets much more screen real estate, beefier cooling, and the M1 Max in the 16" isn't clock locked.
Despite all the admonitions about the high price of the upper tier pros, I found that my 2021 16" M1 Max 32 GPU Pro with 32 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD wasn't really more expensive than the 2019 16" I purchased with similar top-of-the-line specs - it's just that machines at the low end are becoming much more capable. Before you had to buy at the upper end to achieve decent performance - now you can get that aspirational performance much lower in the product line.
OTOH, I expect the 2021 16" will exceed my needs for quite some time, and the quality-of-life improvements over the 2019 16" are really astounding. No longer do I have to venture out with dongles and a power brick (and a backpack to contain them all) - now I can just leave the house with a sleeve and expect the laptop to last the entire day with superior multimedia capabilities.
I added a thermal pad to my M1 MBA and immediately got sustained CineBench results better than the M1 MBP.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-air-with-thermal-pad-mod.2272939/
I believe the 13" MBP is totally redundant and should be kindly culled.
It's likely that less than 1 out of 1000 computer users render. And the pros who do will execute the lion's share of the workload on render farms, not their notebook computers. Michael Bay's next blockbuster isn't going to be rendered on a MacBook Air.
Remember that Apple's computer sales are >85% notebooks and the low end models dominate unit sales. Those are people not using them in a professional content creation environment. It's the high end models that would be favored by creators. That's why Apple (and other PC manufacturers) offer a wide range of notebook models for different target audiences.
My octogenarian family members don't need a 2-ton pickup truck although I understand such vehicles are useful in the construction industry. Hauling 2x4s and sheets of drywall isn't uncommon but many people don't do that.
For a lot of people a Honda Civic is enough automobile.
My current notebook PC is an inexpensive Acer Swift 3. Is the MacBook Air a better computer? Absolutely. But I don't need what the Air offers in my mobile computing usage case.
Bigger than that you are surely going to access to an in-house render farm that would still beat any single machine you have.
* the better ones have learnt this means that can roll improvements continuously.
Custom MBA-M2 to up memory to 24 doesn't seem like it would be worth the wait against the stock MBP14 you buy in-store today.