The new iPad Pros stole the spotlight during the “Let Loose” event. They pack several improvements over their predecessors, including a tandem OLED screen, and an M4 chip (skipping M3), and is the thinnest Apple product ever.
One thing that is still unknown about the M4 chip is how well it stacks up against its predecessor, the M2 iPad Pro, or the M3 chips. Apple has yet to ship the new iPads, and we might not see them until May 15 at the earliest.
Although pre-release units generally reach reviewers earlier than customers, which also means they are supposed to follow the embargo, some have allegedly performed benchmark tests with Geekbench on pre-release units.
One of these devices, likely the 2024 iPad Pro with the M4 chip boasting 10 cores, scores well on the Geekbench test: 3,767 for single-core performance and 14,677 for multi-core performance. For context, that’s about 1.5 times faster than the previous 12.9-inch M2 iPad Pro, which scored 2,590 for single-core and 10,919 for multi-core.
Shortly after, another benchmark surfaced for the iPad16,6, revealing a metal score of 53,792 for its GPU. For comparison, the M2 iPad Pro scored 46,575. In addition, a machine learning score for the M4’s Neural Engine came around, achieving 9,234, surpassing M3’s Neural Engine but falling short of the M3 Max.
That said, the accuracy of Neural Engine benchmark tests remains a question because it displays running iOS 18, which hasn’t been leaked, unlike the other benchmarks that show iOS 17.5, which is currently in beta. In any case, if these benchmark tests hold weight, Apple’s wide claims about the M4 chip and its performance might be true.