New M4 iPad Pro benchmarks confirm it's faster than your M3 Max MacBook Pro

When Apple announced the M4 iPad Pro earlier this week we were already expecting the tablet to be the fastest that Apple had ever offered, and it doesn't look like we are going to be disappointed. But early benchmarks confirm that while the iPad Pro is the fastest yet, it's also competing with Apple's high-end MacBook Pro as well.

In fact, the M4 chip used in the iPad Pro is so fast that its single-core performance is faster than the M3 Max found in Apple's very best laptops, while the multi-core performance is comparable to that of the M2 Max that was used in the previous generation MacBook Pro.

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This is all based on new Geekbench results that have been spotted and shared by MacRumors, and it makes for interesting reading. The 10-core version of the M4 chip which is found in the 1TB and 2TB iPad Pro managed an average single-core score of 3,695 while it managed an average multi-core score of 14,550 across a total of 10 different benchmarks. It's those figures that put the MacBook Pro to the sword; the M3 Max manages 3,128 in single-core performance while the M2 Max scores 14,800 in multi-core tests. The M3 Max manages a much improved multi-core score of 10,957 however, so there's no suggestion that the M4 can compete with that just yet. We can expect good things from future M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, though.

This all means that the new M4 is around 46% faster than the M2 when single-core tests are run. That figure increased to 55% when we look at multi-core scores. The M2 is what was used in the previous 2022 iPad Pro so is a comparable chip, while Apple never used the M3 in any of its tablet lineups.

The iPad Pro is the first device to use an M4 family chip which means that we can look forward to the entire Mac lineup following suit. We've been told by previous reports to expect that some M4-powered Macs will debut later this year while the rest will arrive in 2025. The Mac Pro, the machine likely to be the fastest of the bunch and powered by the M4 Ultra, will likely arrive towards the end of 2025 which suggests that might also be when the Mac Studio receives the same chips. If these benchmarks are any indication, we can look forward to some stellar results from both of those two devices.