The upcoming iPad Air has popped up on benchmarking site Geekbench – and because it uses the same A14 chip tipped to be powering the iPhone 12, it tells us quite a bit about the performance of Apple’s upcoming handset.
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The benchmark was first spotted by renowned leaker Ice Universe, who posted the scores to Twitter. As you can see from the tweet below, the new iPad Air achieved a single-core score of 1,583 with a multi-core performance rating of 4,198.
A14's first Geekbench 5 results appeared, single-core 1583, multi-core 4198, still the king. pic.twitter.com/HXMgEfjSuWOctober 3, 2020
So, how does that compare to the current batch of iPhones and iPads? Well, Apple’s boast that the new iPad Air would be 40% faster than the current model seems to be, if anything, underselling it a little. A quick search of the Geekbench browser shows that third-generation iPad Airs tend to score around 1,115 for single-core performance and 2,800 for multi-core.
That’s perhaps not too surprising, given the current iPad Air uses the same Apple A12 Bionic chip found in the iPhone XS and iPhone XR, so how do these figures compare to the iPhone 11? Searching the Geekbench browser for iPhone 11 performance shows single-core figures of around 1,350 and multi-core performance in the 3,300-3,600 range.
For further comparison’s sake, a Samsung Galaxy S20 gets around 800-950 on single-core tests and 2,800-3,000 on multi-core, but it’s important to remember that different benchmarking software will offer different verdicts. Last month, leaked AnTuTu benchmarking showed the iPhone 12 Pro Max lagging behind devices with the Snapdragon 865+ chipset.
We won’t know for sure how the iPhone 12 rates until we have it in our hands, and hopefully we don’t have too long to wait. Disruption to supply chains thanks to coronavirus means this is the first time Apple hasn’t unveiled a handset in September since 2011, but we’re expecting confirmation of the launch any day now. Watch this space.
