Apple's new A18 Pro for iPhone 16: fastest mobile chip in CPU, GPU: only just behind M4, M2

Apple has debuted its upgraded A18 Pro SoC inside of its new iPhone 16 family of handsets -- inside of the higher-end iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max handsets -- and now we've got some benchmarks that show it's the fastest mobile SoC in the world.

The new Apple A18 Pro is fabbed on TSMC's newer 3nm process node (N3B) with reviewer "Geekerwan" posting some ranking charts showing how the new A18 Pro fares against some of the most powerful mobile SoCs on the market including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen3, Dimensity 9300, and Apple's more powerful M2, and M4 SoCs inside of new MacBook laptops.

In CPU rankings, the new A18 beats the previous-gen A17 Pro, while the new A18 Pro beats out the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 and Dimensity 9300, while losing to the M2 inside of the iPad Pro, and the M4 (3+6) and M4 (4+6) by a larger margin. Still, it's impressive to see the new A18 Pro getting closer to the much higher-end M2 and M4 processors.

• Read more: Apple iPhone 16 Pro teardown: A18 Pro smaller logic board, densely packed
• Read more: Apple's new A18 Pro in iPhone 16 Pro, Pro Max: TSMC 3nm, CPU, GPU faster
• Read more: Apple to use in-house 5G chips in new ultra-slim iPhone 17
• Read more: Apple is TSMC's first 2nm client of 2025: new iPhone 17, SoIC advanced packaging for M5 chips

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In the newer Geekbench 6 run, the new Apple A18 Pro and A18 processors stomp all over everything: beating out the previous-gen A17 Pro easily, and enjoying a rather hefty lead over Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen3, and the Dimsensity 9300+ processors.

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Geekbench 6 sees the new A18 Pro beating the A17 Pro by over 12% while nudging out the Snapdragon 8 Gen3, and losing (just) to the Dimensity 9300+ processor. The A18 (non-Pro) isn't too far behind the A18 Pro, while also beating the A17 Pro in Geekbench 5.

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In gaming tests, the benchmarks show that Apple continues being one of the leaders in SoC efficiency, with its new A18 Pro inside of the flagship iPhone 16 Pro Max pumps out 56FPS in gaming while using just 5.4W of power. In other tests, you can see that it's lower than the 8.4W that the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 uses, and the 7.3W that the Dimensity 9300+ uses.

That might not sound like a lot, but every single bit of power that can be squeezed out of the processor while offering the best efficiency, is key to a flagship smartphone SoC, and Apple shows that in spades here.