While some speculated that Apple might underclock its blazing-fast M1 SoC in the new 5th generation iPad Air, first benchmark entries in Geekbench 5 prove that this is not the case. The M1 powering the new iPad Air 5 matches the performance of the M1 iPad Pro at it runs at the full 3.2 GHz clock speed.
Joe Rossignol for MacRumors:
The M1 chip in the fifth-generation iPad Air has the same 3.2GHz operating frequency as it does in the iPad Pro, according to Geekbench 5 results. As such, the M1 iPad Air has virtually identical performance as the M1 iPad Pro.
Specifically, the M1 iPad Air has average single-core and multi-core scores of around 1,700 and 7,200, respectively. These scores confirm that the M1 iPad Air has performance on par with the M1 iPad Pro, while having around 60% to 70% faster CPU performance than the fourth-generation iPad Air with the A14 Bionic chip.
The chip provides the new iPad Air with access to 8GB of unified memory.
Apple’s decision not to downclock the M1 chip in the iPad Air is notable given that the A15 Bionic chip is downclocked to 2.9GHz in the sixth-generation iPad mini, compared to 3.2GHz for other devices like the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro Max. The downclocked chip results in the iPad mini being around 2% to 8% slower than iPhone 13 models.