In a Geekbench 5 result spotted by “Mr. Macintosh” on Twitter, the MacBook Air with the M2 chip and 16GB of integrated memory achieved a single-core score of 1,899 and a multi-core score of 8,965. These scores are roughly the same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro with the M2 chip, confirming that the notebooks perform almost identically in synthetic tests as they did with the M1 models. While the M2 chip performs equally well in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro tests on Geekbench, the MacBook Pro could perform better in the real world during extended, demanding workloads because, unlike the MacBook Air, it has a fan . The result also confirms that the M2 MacBook Air outperforms the base model Mac Pro Tower with an 8-core Intel Xeon W processor, despite costing nearly $5,000 less. While this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, it’s nonetheless a testament to the impressive performance of Apple’s silicon chips in more affordable Macs. It remains to be seen whether the base model M2 MacBook Air with 256GB SSD is equipped with only one NAND storage chip. Last month, it was discovered that the base model M2 MacBook Pro has significantly slower SSD speeds compared to its M1 counterpart due to having a single 256GB storage chip instead of two 128GB chips. Due to virtual memory switching, slower SSD speeds can affect overall system performance at times. Apple began accepting pre-orders for the new MacBook Air on Friday, July 8, and the first customer deliveries and in-store availability will begin on Friday, July 15. Pricing for the new MacBook Air starts at $1,199 in the United States, while the previous-generation MacBook Air with the M1 chip remains available for $999.
