Apple M4 MacBook Air Breaks Cover With Interesting Geekbench Scores
Thin and light laptops have surged in popularity during the last several years. Improvements in performance and thermals are one key factor, both of which Apple has focused on extensively. Apple's in-house designed silicon chips have been impressive since the initial release, and the latest M4 family seems to be no exception.
The new MacBook Air is packing an M4 chip, and some Geekbench 6 benchmark numbers are very surprising for its $999 starting price. It achieved a single-core score of 3,680 points, and a multi-core score of 14,924. For reference, the more expensive MacBook Pro M4 Max, which starts at $3,199 for this chip, achieved a single-core score of 3,925 and multi-core score of 23,052. The MacBook Air also achieved a Metal score of 54,864, which is a GPU benchmark. This would put the M4 close to the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT desktop GPU, for example.
The new MacBook Air is packing an M4 chip, and some Geekbench 6 benchmark numbers are very surprising for its $999 starting price. It achieved a single-core score of 3,680 points, and a multi-core score of 14,924. For reference, the more expensive MacBook Pro M4 Max, which starts at $3,199 for this chip, achieved a single-core score of 3,925 and multi-core score of 23,052. The MacBook Air also achieved a Metal score of 54,864, which is a GPU benchmark. This would put the M4 close to the AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT desktop GPU, for example.
As an entry level model, these GeekBench 6 scores are certainly impressive. The MacBook Air is passively cooled, meaning that there are no fans for extra noise and complexity. It seems to handle it fine, but in a long stress test it is likely a fan-equipped MacBook Pro with its larger chassis would win out in theory.
For power users, Apple also released the M3 Ultra Mac mini, which will have considerably more CPU and GPU performance. The MacBook Air is a tightly constructed package, and unfortunately that means that no user-upgradable RAM or storage is possible. Due to the design of its M4 chip, everything is integrated and therefore permanent out-of-the-box.
While 16B of the Apple unified memory is typically enough for most users, storage options are still lacking with a 256GB starting point. In 2025, it'd be nice to see a minimum of 512GB or 1TB since storage costs have averaged down. Still, an impressive thin and light laptop that is putting up desktop performance from just a few short years ago.
For power users, Apple also released the M3 Ultra Mac mini, which will have considerably more CPU and GPU performance. The MacBook Air is a tightly constructed package, and unfortunately that means that no user-upgradable RAM or storage is possible. Due to the design of its M4 chip, everything is integrated and therefore permanent out-of-the-box.
While 16B of the Apple unified memory is typically enough for most users, storage options are still lacking with a 256GB starting point. In 2025, it'd be nice to see a minimum of 512GB or 1TB since storage costs have averaged down. Still, an impressive thin and light laptop that is putting up desktop performance from just a few short years ago.
