The next generation of Apple Silicon has arrived. In our review of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, we got our first look at Apple’s latest Silicon, and it’s a nice upgrade, even if it might be desirable. The M2 MacBook Air is just around the corner and more models are definitely on the way, let’s see how Apple’s new chip M1 improves.
GeekBench is the best way to project speed improvements on the M1. Since this is a new chip, the M2 represents the first single-core boost since the M1 launched in 2020. From M1 to M1 Ultra, Geekbench’s single-core score was steadily close to 1750, but M2 raised it below 2000. That’s a nice increase of about 13 percent, which should show decent gains in daily routine tasks.
In the case of multi-core performance, this gap becomes even larger. Although the M2 is clearly pale in performance on top-end M1 chips, it posted a neat 18 percent increase over the M1 and reduced the gap between it and the 10-core M1 Pro by about 10 percent, despite the $ 800 price difference.
Using the Cinebench test, you can see the benefits more clearly. Compared to M1, M2 boasts about 30 percent better performance. And that’s within the screaming distance of the M1 Pro.
The M2’s media encoders work better with audio and video, and the speed features are easy to see. Thanks to ProRes Video Accelerator, we’ve gotten a big boost when exporting a 4K video of the best (ProRes) quality. The M2 exported the video in about half the time of the M1 chip, shaving for about a minute. This minute will be added.
The M1 MacBook Pro has remarkable SSD read / write speeds, and the M2 model improves on that. While write speeds are still not close to the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, they did post a nice improvement over the M1 model, which should also be seen on the MacBook Air.
And last but not least, we have graphics. Apple has promised a 35 percent increase in speed with the M2’s new GPU, and our GeekBench 5 metal tests actually exceeded those demands with a 37 percent boost. And using Geekbench 5’s OpenCL test, the M2 MacBook Pro grew 41 percent more than the previous generation chip. Graphics is a big deal with the M2, and our tests here point to the M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra, which already have huge GPUs.