On November 10 we were finally introduced to the first lineup of highly anticipated ARM-powered MacBooks and Mac minis. Bold promises were made off the bat for the new chipset, claiming that the M1 silicon would have the world's highest performance per watt. Though we were initially skeptical, the latest benchmarking results have revealed that the claims made at the event may actually hold some weight.
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Not just bold claims?
We can get a glimpse into the performance for the new M1 chip thanks to benchmarking results for the new MacBook Air (2020) that appeared on Geekbench on November 11. The machine features 8GB RAM, runs at 3.2 GHz, and has a single-core score of 1,687 and a multi-core score of 7,433.
Both of these scores outperform the existing 16-inch MacBook Pro that features an Intel Core i9 processor, which by contract achieved a score of 1,096 on the single-core test and 6,870 on the multi-core test. This effectively means that the single-core performance seen in the new ARM-powered MacBook Air is better than any other available Mac, and places it firmly on the top results page for Geekbench.
While the Geekbench results are interesting, they should be taken with a grain of salt. It's certainly exciting to see this kind of performance in a fanless machine, but these scores don’t tell a full story when comparing across incredibly differing tech. We will have to see if these benchmarks actually translate into noticeable performance when they are released into the wild.
New MacBook Air (2020) release date and price
At Apple's new MacBook Air (2020) launch event, the company stated that its revamped thin and light laptop is now available to buy, with units shipping out from November 16.
Prices for the new MacBook Air (2020) start at $999 / £999 / AU$1,599. As usual, there are a number of specifications available at launch, and you can further customize these to get the MacBook Air (2020) that best suits your needs and budget.
Here are the configurations we know about so far, and their prices:
- $999 / £999: 8GB/256GB, 7-core GPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD
- $1,249 / £1,249: 8GB/512GB, 8-core GPU, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD
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