Apple M1 Macbook Air DESTROYS older model in latest benchmark numbers


With the new Macs with Apple's 'M1' chip now releasing to the masses, the embargo's for the reviews have now been lifted, praising the speed and battery tests of these new models.

It's been long-awaited to see how Apple's CPU chips would fare in a Mac, after years of being exclusively to their iOS devices. We are now seeing the reality of this, with some incredible statistics coming out from many reviews this week.

While these are first-generation chips for the Macs, they hold very promising potential for what it could bring to games on their lower-cost computers, compared to the Macs that have Intel chips.

With that, lets look at what the benchmarks are showing to these 'M1' Macs so far, and what they could bring to future models.

What's in an M1?

The ‘M1’ is a variant of the chips that have powered Apple’s iOS devices for the last ten years. In one chip, it includes the RAM, an integrated GPU, and everything else that processes the features you use every day on an iOS device.

With the M1, the cores and clock speed are turned up even further, and as macOS Big Sur runs on this new version, it has resulted in some huge gains compared to the Macs using the Intel chips for the last fifteen years.

Apple aim to replace their entire Intel Mac line by 2022 with the M1 chip, and with the release of the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, they’re already halfway there.

It’s an intriguing thought to wonder how the desktop line of Macs will fare with their own ‘M1’ or ‘M2’ chips next year, especially with how the benchmarks fare on these M1 Macs so far.

READ MORE: New MacBooks, Mac Mini unveiled for the 'M1' chip.

What do the Benchmarks say?

By just visiting some forums where users have already received their new M1 Macs, the results are simply incredible.

Users have reported opening up to 400 tabs in Safari, editing 4K video in Final Cut, and editing an image in Pixelmator Pro all at once, with no slowdown.

Even the results below are something to be seen.

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Single Core Benchmark.
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Multi-Core Benchmark.

Already they are rivalling recently-released desktop Macs; not laptop Macs. This means that an iMac Pro you may have bought a year ago for £3999, has now been trounced in speed by a £999 MacBook Air.

When undertaking a transition such as this, there’s huge opportunities for this to go wrong, but Apple have seemingly achieved a transition with the Mac overnight.

Of course, this is thanks to the last ten years of their chips being in iOS devices, but the question now is, what will an M1 variant achieve for the desktop Macs? There’s a good chance we will see these in the top of the above tables this time next year, and that’s an exciting proposition to anyone who is thinking of upgrading.

READ MORE: Apple 'M1' chip unveiled; details, release dates, and more.

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