The new iPad professionals skipped straight to M4, and initial benchmarks show that the potential performance improvements match Apple's claims.
Apple's M4 processor won't do that be available in the wild until devices arrive in customer hands on May 15. But that may not have stopped some reviewers with pre-release units from running benchmarks with Geekbench.
A device called iPad16,6, which appears to be the latest iPad Pro with 10-core M4 shows a 3,767 single-core and 14,677 multi-core scores. For context, that's almost an exact 1.5x CPU performance increase over a 12.9-inch iPad Pro of M2which scored 2,590 single-core and 10,019 multi-core.
Geekbench scores for the iPad16.6
Another benchmark for iPad16.6 came with a metal score of 53,792 for the GPU. That's a more modest improvement over the M2 iPad Pro, which scored 46,575 points.
The new benchmarks arrived a few hours after an ML score for the M4's Neural Engine had been discovered with a 9.234. It defeated the M3s Neural Engine, but not the M3 Max.
The Neural Engine test is suspicious because it shows iOS 18, which has not been leaked. The other new benchmarks are all visible iOS 17.5which is in beta.
The data is current and unverifiable at this time, but appears to point to Apple's claims during the “Let goannouncement is accurate. The base M-series processor makes small gains with each generation, but the major upgrades have not been tested by Geekbench.
Real-world wins will be easier to determine when users can compare workflows such as exporting a file or running a game. Benchmark instruments provide a good basis for comparison, but are not intended as a definitive instrument.
More testing will need to be done once the M4 iPad Pro models launch in a week. Expect early reviews to also touch on workflows and benchmarks.