Macworld - USA (2019-12-B)

92 MACWORLD DECEMBER 2019

FEATURE REVIEW: 10.2-INCH iPA D

performs about the same on iPadOS 13.1.1.
On the charts, they’re virtually identical,
and in fact, by sheer numbers the 9.7-inch
had a (minuscule) edge in both single-
core and graphical performance, which
I’m tempted to attribute to its smaller
screen size.
If you’re going for raw power (and
future-proofing), the A12 Bionic chips in
both the new iPad
Air and iPad mini
will serve you
better and for
longer. That’s not
to say the 10.2-
inch iPad is a
clunker: I played
several graphically
intensive Apple
Arcade games on
the new model
(such as Sayonara
Wild Hearts) and
never noticed a
dip in
performance. I
don’t think an iPad
like this will be
adept at handling
the full iPad
version of Adobe
Photoshop—if it
ever comes
out—but for

almost every app it should serve you fine

for a few more years to come.

A recent iFixit teardown showed that

Apple increased the RAM from 2GB to

3GB, but as you can see from the

benchmarks, I can’t see where that

translated into a noticeable spike in

performance. On the other hand, the iPad

Air also only has 3GB of RAM, so this

Next verse, same as the first.

0 2,500 7,500 10,000

10.2-inch iPad

(2019)

GEEKBENCH 5 (iPadOS 13.1.1)

Higher scores are better

5,000

CPU - Single-Core CPU - Multi-Core Compute (graphics performance)

9.7-inch iPad

(2018)

iPad Air

(2019)

iPad mini

(2019)

12.9-inch iPad

Pro (2018)