Apple MacBook Air brings its M2 silicon to Geekbench

It seems that reviewers with early access to the new Apple MacBook Air are busy evaluating the performance of its new M2 processor, as evidenced by the avalanche of Mac 14.2 scores on Geekbench.

Unsurprisingly, the fanless MacBook Air M2 has the same score as the M2 in the MacBook Pro 13, which only has one fan. Geekbench is a quick benchmark and doesn’t stress the chipset and in turn doesn’t generate enough heat to cause throttling.

However, some early reviews of the M2 showed that the new processor runs hotter than the M1, which can lead to lower sustained performance. These tests are based on the single fan MacBook Pro 13 and will likely give the same result on the fanless MacBook Air.

But we expect the MacBook Pro 14 and 16 laptops to be well-equipped to handle the new chip, once it arrives.

The new MacBook Air on the left, the new MacBook Pro 13 on the right

The MacBook Air was pre-ordered on July 8 and will ship starting July 15, a few weeks after the older M2-equipped MacBook Pro 13. Along with the improved CPU (which has an 18% faster CPU and 35% faster GPU), the Air is thinner, comes with a new 13.6-inch 2560 x 1664 px IPS LCD display with 500 nits of brightness, MagSafe and two USB-C ports, and a new 1080p webcam.

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