Here’s How Much Faster the MacBook Air Gets with the M5 Chip vs. M4 Chip
Now we know how fast the new MacBook Air with the M5 chip is compared to the previous model with the M4 chip, courtesy of the Geekbench 6 result shared by. TechRadarLance Ulanoff. However, given that the 14-inch MacBook Pro and iPad Pro were already updated with the M5 chip last year, the result is not too surprising.
Ulanoff ran Geekbench on a MacBook Air with an M5 chip, which has a 10-core CPU. The laptop received 17,073 points in various CPU performance, while the MacBook Air with M4 chip has an average of 14,731 points, so the new model is up to 15% faster than the previous generation. This is in line with what Apple advertised when it announced the M5 chip in October, so it was completely expected.
With the M5 chip, the Geekbench database shows that the MacBook Air is 16% faster than the MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip from a few years ago, but it’s still slower than the newer MacBook Pro models with the M4 Pro chip.
The table below provides a comparison of Geekbench 6 scores for various Macs. Each chip has a maximum number of CPU cores available to it.
| Mac model | Multi-Core CPU Score |
|---|---|
| MacBook Pro (M5 Max) | 29,233 |
| Mac Studio (M3 Ultra) | 27,726 |
| MacBook Pro (M4 Max) | 25,702 |
| MacBook Pro (M4 Pro) | 22,490 |
| MacBook Pro (M3 Max) | 20,960 |
| MacBook Air (M5) | 17,073 |
| MacBook Pro (M3 Pro) | 15,260 |
| MacBook Pro (M2 Max) | 14,740 |
| MacBook Air (M4) | 14,731 |
| MacBook Pro (M2 Pro) | 14,451 |
| MacBook Pro (M1 Max) | 12,345 |
| MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) | 12,345 |
| MacBook Air (M3) | 12,020 |
| MacBook Air (M2) | 9,709 |
| MacBook Neo (A18 Pro) | 8,668 |
| MacBook Air (M1) | 8,342 |
The new MacBook Air is available for pre-order now and launches on Wednesday, March 11.
For more benchmarks, check out our coverage of Geekbench results for the MacBook Pro with the M5 Max chip and the MacBook Neo with the A18 Pro chip.
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