MAY 2021 • TECH ADVISOR 2758.2-watt-hourlithium-polymerbattery,
anda 61-wattUSB-Cpoweradapter.
Asthetestswillshow,thisMacis an
astoundingmachine.
PERFORMANCEBENCHMARKS
Applemadeboldclaimsduringlast
year’s‘Onemorething’event.The
companysaiditsnew13inMacBook
Pro’sM1CPUis upto2.8timesfaster
thanthe1.7GHzquad-coreIntelCore
i7 in a same-sizedMacBookPro.
(ThisIntelCorei7 wasavailableasa
built-to-orderoptionfortheprevious
£1,29913inMacBookPro,a machine
thatcamestandardwitha 1.4GHz
quad-coreCorei5 whenit wasreleased
earlierthisyear.)
We don’t have this specificlaptop
thatAppleusesforitsperformance
comparison.Butwedohavethree
otherMacBookPromodelsthatcan
helpusdrawsomeconclusionsaswe
testthemagainstthe13inMacBook
ProM1. Specifically:
- The£1,79913inMacBookProwith
a 2GHzquad-coreCorei5 (it’sstill
availableforpurchase) - The 2019 13inMacBookProwitha
1.4GHzquad-coreCorei5 (it originally
soldfor£1,299) - The beefed-up 16in MacBook Pro with
a 2.4GHz 8-core Core i9 (with its 32GB
of RAM and 2TB SSD, it sells right now
for £3,799)So what did we find out? Well,
we might not have been able to
replicate Apple’s 2.8 times increase in
performance, but what we did see was
exciting nonetheless. Sometimes the
results left us awestruck.
We first turn to Geekbench 5, where
the new M1 delivered awesome results.
In the benchmark’s Single Core test, the
MacBook Pro (M1) left all of the other
laptops in the dust, showing an 85 per
centimprovementoverthe1.4GHz
MacBookPro; 34 percent over the 2GHz
Corei5 MacBookPro;and 40 percent
overthe 16in model.
It gets even better with Geekbench
5’s Multi-Core test, where the 8-core
MacBook Pro (M1) was faster than the
16in MacBook Pro with its 8-core Core i9
chip. And the M1 laptop blew past the
other 13in models we tested, posting
a 68 per cent improvement over the
2.0GHz quad core Core i5 MacBook Pro,
and a 91 per cent improvement over the
1.4GHz quad core Core i5 MacBook Pro.Geekbench 5 (single-core)
13in MacBook Pro 8-core M1 (2020):
1,724
13in MacBook Pro 2GHz quad-core Core
i5 (2020): 1,282