iPhone 16’s A18 Pro chip outperforms the M1 chip in new benchmarks [Updated]

We got our first look at a Geekbench result from the iPhone 16 earlier this week, with somewhat disappointing results. There was a decent improvement in single core performance, but the multi-core score was abnormal. However, newer results paint a much more promising picture.

A18 Pro results

The Geekbench result uploaded today comes from an iPhone17,1 – a model identifier that corresponds with the iPhone 16 Pro. This means we’re looking at Apple’s A18 Pro chip. The A18 and A18 Pro are mostly the same when it comes to CPU performance, although the Pro chip has an extra GPU core and a USB 3 controller.

In this benchmark, we see much higher results than prior, with a single-core score of 3429, and a multi-core score of 8790. That’s around 15-20% faster than iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 Pro chip, and 30-35% faster than the iPhone 15’s A16 Bionic chip. These results align with Apple’s keynote claims from Monday.

A18 Pro vs Apple M1

Interestingly enough, the A18 Pro chip is actually starting to catch up with the M1 chip, the first Apple Silicon chip for the Mac, which was later brought to iPads. The A18 Pro outperforms the M1 chip in the vast majority of Geekbench results. Obviously, a benchmark is a benchmark – and might not always be truly indicative of real world performance. However, it’s still fun to look at.

We looked at 10 latest Geekbench results for M1 iPad Air, and excluding anomalies, we’ve found that the M1 chip on average gets a multi-core score of 8351. This one result from A18 Pro is 5% faster than M1, at 8790.

Obviously, thats just one result compared to an average of ten, but it does truly highlight the marvels of Apple’s chip design team. We’re at a point where we can have M1 levels of performance in our pocket, just four years after that chip debuted.

Wrap up

It sure is a shame that we can’t do more with this power. I think it’d be really cool to be able to plug in your iPhone to an external USB-C monitor and run Stage Manager with an external mouse and keyboard. Maybe one year.

Apple unveiled the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro on Monday at their “It’s Glowtime” keynote, featuring the brand new A18 and A18 Pro chips. These chips are based on a 2nd generation 3nm process, similar to the M4 chip that debuted in the iPad Pro earlier this year. The phones are available to preorder, and will start arriving to customers on September 20th.

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