Here Are Benchmark Results for Apple's New iPad Air With the M3 Chip

We are eagerly awaiting benchmarks for Apple's fastest-ever M3 Ultra chip in the Mac Studio, but we will have to settle with the first results for the new iPad Air for now.

M3 iPad Air
The first Geekbench 6 results for the new iPad Air with the M3 chip are entirely unsurprising, but sometimes no news is good news. Given there were already Macs with the M3 chip, we know that it is around 20% faster than the M2 chip in terms of multi-core CPU performance, and the new iPad Air has similar gains as expected.

There are currently three Geekbench 6 results for the new iPad Air, and the device has achieved an average multi-core CPU score of 11,605 so far. The previous-generation iPad Air with the M2 chip has an average multi-core CPU score of 9,817, so the M3 chip is around 18% faster than the M2 chip in the iPad Air based on these early results.

This is all good confirmation to have, but as mentioned, it will be more interesting to find out how much faster the M3 Ultra chip is compared to the M4 Max chip. Those benchmarks should surface in the coming days, so stay tuned for that.

Related Roundup: iPad Air
Buyer's Guide: iPad Air (Buy Now)
Related Forum: iPad

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Top Rated Comments

darkelipse04 Avatar
15 weeks ago
All this power for a device that can’t take full advantage of it. I’ll stick with my M2 iPad which is still overkill for day to day usage.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
joeblow7777 Avatar
15 weeks ago

All this power for a device that can’t take full advantage of it. I’ll stick with my M2 iPad which is still overkill for day to day usage.
I have an A14 iPad and I don't think I'm pushing it to its limit.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
klasma Avatar
15 weeks ago

I’d like to know what percentage of people using a m1/m2 iPad actually hit the processing limits.
It’s relevant for tasks like searching in large PDFs and rendering heavy web pages. It’s not that you “hit the limits”, it’s that things go a bit faster.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
diamond3 Avatar
15 weeks ago
I’d like to know what percentage of people using a m1/m2 iPad actually hit the processing limits.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rappr Avatar
15 weeks ago

You mean iPad Air I think.
I’d argue it’s true for both
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Plerf Avatar
15 weeks ago

This is all good confirmation to have, but as mentioned, it will be more interesting to find out how much faster the M3 Ultra chip is compared to the M4 Max chip. Those benchmarks should surface in the coming days, so stay tuned for that.
I’m gonna go with M4 Max is faster in single core and M3 Ultra is faster for multi core.

A controversial take, I’m sure. :p
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)