The M4 MacBook Air looks a lot like the M4 iPad Pro in early tests

The M4 MacBook Air is set to be released within the next few weeks, and as usual, early benchmark results are starting to appear online. The GPU results that have popped up unsurprisingly show that the new laptop offers GPU performance similar to that of the M4 iPad Pro.

Geekbench 6 is a popular benchmark tool (we use it for our reviews), and its results browser has GPU benchmarks for a computer labeled as Mac16,12, which MacRumors reported as the code name for the upcoming M4 MacBook Air. One result shows a Metal score of 55516, while another has a score of 54806; these scores are similar to that of the M4 iPad Pro’s 54231. For comparison, the M4 MacBook Pro’s GPU posted a Metal score of 57082 in our review.

The MacBook Air, like the iPad Pro, doesn’t have a fan to cool down the chip, so it has to throttle down to maintain a proper temperature. The MacBook Pro does have a fan, so its chip can run faster. It’s also possible that the M4 tested has fewer GPU cores (8 or 9) than the M4 in the MacBook Pro, which has 10 cores.

But the difference is imperceptible to general users and only those who do heavy-duty GPU-intensive tasks will notice. If you want a hard number to gauge the difference, the MacBook Pro is 3 percent faster. It’s not much.

The Mac16,12 GPU entries state that the M4 Mac had a 10-core CPU, the same as the M4 MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro with 1TB or 2TB of storage, though the Geekbench browser does not show any Multi-Core scores recorded for Mac16,12 as of this writing. The M4 MacBook Pro had a Geekbench Multi CPU score of 14763, while the iPad Pro’s score was 13709. The M4 MacBook Air’s score will probably be closer to the iPad Pro’s. But again, the difference won’t necessarily be noticeable.

On Monday, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple is preparing for the M4 MacBook Air’s release in March. He did not specify a date for the announcement, but because Apple currently offers the M3 MacBook Air in a back-to-school promotion that ends on March 13, we expect the M4 MacBook Air to be released sometime after then. For more information about the upcoming release, check out our M4 MacBook Air rumor guide.