An early benchmark result for the new MacBook Air has surfaced, giving a closer look at the performance of the M2 chip inside the laptop.
In a Geekbench 5 result spotted by “Mr. Macintosh” on Twitter, the MacBook Air with the M2 chip and 16GB of combined memory achieved a single-core score of 1899 and a multi-core score of 8965. These scores are roughly the same as those achieved by the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 chip, confirming that the notebooks have virtually identical performance in synthetic tests as was the case with the M1 models.
Although the M2 chip performs equally well in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in Geekbench testing, the MacBook Pro may still fare better in real-world use during sustained, demanding workloads because, unlike the MacBook Air, there is a fan.
The previous generation MacBook Air with the M1 chip had an average single-core score of 1706 and an average multi-core score of 7420, meaning the M2 MacBook Air delivers up to 20% faster multi-core performance than the M1 model.
The result also confirms that the M2 MacBook Air outperforms the base model Mac Pro tower with an 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, despite costing almost $5,000 less. While this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, it’s still a testament to the impressive performance of Apple’s silicon chips in more affordable Macs.
It remains to be seen if the base model M2 MacBook Air with 256GB SSD is equipped with only one NAND storage chip. Last month, it was discovered that the base model M2 MacBook Pro has significantly slower SSD speeds than the equivalent M1 model due to the presence of a single 256GB storage chip instead of two 128GB chips. Due to virtual memory swapping, slower SSD speeds can sometimes affect overall system performance.
Apple began accepting pre-orders for the new MacBook Air on Friday, July 8, and first customer shipments and in-store availability will begin on Friday, July 15. The price of the new MacBook Air starts at $1,199 in the United States, while the previous generation MacBook Air with the M1 chip remains available for $999.
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