In-depth iPad Pro benchmarks are in – and it's fast

12 November 2015, 00:59



Ars Technica has run pretty much every benchmark there is. The results are simply astonishing considering this is an ARM processor boasting 9-10 hours of battery life.

Even five years ago ARM chips were massively and frustratingly underpowered, focussing more on battery than performance. I remember using my Nokia N800 tablet computer in 2008 and thinking that surely mobile computing could be better than this.

Kudos to Apple – one of the companies without whom ARM wouldn’t exist, of course – for showing what can be done. I imagine there are some very anxious people at Intel HQ right now.

The A9X can’t quite get up to the level of a modern U-series Core i5 based on Broadwell or Skylake (see the 2015 MacBook Air and Surface Pro 4 results), but it’s roughly on the same level as a Core i5 from 2013 or so and it’s well ahead of Core M. And despite the fact that it lacks a fan, the A9X shows little sign of throttling in the Geekbench thermal test, which bodes well for the iPad Pro’s ability to run professional-caliber apps for extended periods of time.

[Via Daring Fireball]

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