The MacBook Air unveiled this week offers performance up to 73% faster than the version of this Mac laptop released in 2018, according to benchmark tests done by a reviewer.
The speed boost comes from the new model‘s 10th-generation Intel Core processor. Its predecessor has a slower, 8th-gen chip.
2020 MacBook Air benchmark performance vs. 2018 MacBook Air
Apple offers a range of configurations for the 2020 MacBook Air unveiled earlier this week. Tests with the Geekbench 5 app done by SixColors on the 1.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 version of this laptop found that it scored a 2658 in a multi-core performance test.
According to Primate Labs, the maker of Geekbench 5, the 2018 MacBook Air with a 1.6 GHz dual-core Core i5-8210Y chip scored a 1534 on that same test. The change from two cores to four cores in the newer model likely explains much of the 73% increase on performance shown by the benchmark test.
Apple offers the 2020 MacBook Air in a range of configurations, some slower and some faster than the one tested by SixColors. The $999 base model has a 1.1GHz dual-core 10th-gen Intel Core i3 processor. Or for an extra $500 the latest mobile Mac can be configured with a 1.2GHz quad-core 10th-gen Core i7 chip.
The 2018 model comes only in the 1.6 GHz dual-core i5 configuration mentioned earlier. Apple says its new 2020 laptop configured with the i7 version offers “two times faster CPU performance” than the earlier one. There are no independent tests to back up this claim yet.
