The M4 MacBook Air’s performance scores just leaked – and they suggest it’ll be a solid upgrade

(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

A Metal benchmark for the M4 MacBook Air has just leaked
It’s in line with the M4 chip in the iPad Pro, which makes a lot of sense
The laptop is anticipated to launch within the next few weeks

The M4 MacBook Air is widely expected to launch imminently, with the new chip touted to bring performance and efficiency improvements to one of Apple’s best MacBooks. And it looks like we won’t even have to wait until its release to find out its performance.

That’s because a benchmark has just leaked on the Geekbench website. The test results were published on February 19 and show a device running macOS 15.2 and bearing a ten-core M4 chip and 24GB of memory.

In terms of performance, the M4 chip in this MacBook scored 54,806 in the Metal graphics benchmark. Compare that to the 13-inch iPad Pro with M4 chip, which scored a very similar 54,064. Considering both devices are known for their thinness and fanless cooling, the slim margins between them make sense.

A believable benchmark

15-inch MacBook Air on wooden table at home — (Image credit: Future)

It’s possible that this benchmark was faked to give the appearance of belonging to an unannounced piece of Apple hardware. That seems unlikely, though, as it’s broadly in line with what we’ve come to expect from the M4 chip.

We mentioned the iPad Pro score above as a comparison point, but we can also see how this leaked benchmark does against the M4 MacBook Pro. On Geekbench, a sample Metal test scored 57,596, an improved result versus the MacBook Air that shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the MacBook Pro has active cooling that can help boost its performance.

So, all things point towards this leak being a believable, perhaps genuine result for the upcoming M4 MacBook Air.

Aside from the new M4 chip, the next MacBook Air could get an improved LCD display (sadly an OLED panel is still a few years away), a better webcam, and stronger support for connecting multiple monitors.

It’s widely expected to launch this Spring (sometime between now and June), with Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman claiming it will be on sale “by March at the latest.”

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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as TechRadar, Alex writes for iMore, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at MacFormat magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.