Apple unveiled the iPhone 16 earlier this week, confirming most of the rumors that preceded the announcement. The star of the show in the iPhone 16 might be the brand-new chips. The A18 powers the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, while the A18 Pro is reserved for the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max.
Both chips are based on a new 3nm process, and they will offer impressive speed and efficiency gains. Apple dedicated plenty of time on stage to each A18 version to highlight its novelties. But Apple didn’t hold back during the iPhone 16 Pro segment, saying that the A18 Pro is the fastest chip in any smartphone.
After so many years of dominating the mobile chip industry without a real challenger, that claim made complete sense. And we now have the first A18 Pro benchmarks that prove Apple’s claim is accurate. The A18 Pro smoked its competitors in Geekbench 6 testing. In fact, it even tops Apple’s MacBook Air and Pro models with older M-series chips.
A Geekbech 6 listing for “iPhone17,2” has been found. That’s Apple’s identifier for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, one of the two phones running the A18 Pro chip.
The CPU scores 3,409 in single-core tests and 8,492 in multi-core benchmarks. That’s an improvement of about 18% over last year’s A17 Pro chip that powers the iPhone 15 Pro models. The iPhone 15 Pro Max scored 2,884 and 7,476 in a recent test:
The Galaxy S24 Ultra, with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, can’t match the iPhone 15 Pro, let alone the iPhone 16 Pro models. Samsung’s best 2024 phones only hit 2,283 and 6,417 in a recent test:
As for Google’s Pixel 9 phones that feature Google’s latest Tensor G4 chip, they can’t even match the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The Pixel 9 Pro XL is almost 50% slower than the A18 Pro in these tests. It scors 1,974 and 4,749:
Moving on to Apple’s Macs, the A18 Pro outscores the M1 processor that Apple launched in 2020 with the MacBook Air and Pro. An M1 air only reaches 2,340 in single-core tests. Its multi-core score is much better at 8,255, but that’s only because Mac chips let Apple include more powerful cores in its custom silicon:
What’s interesting is that the iPhone 16 Pro Max beats the M3 Pro MacBook Pro in single-core tests as well. But the MacBook crushes the A18 Pro in multi-core scores:
Finally, I’ll also show you the M4 iPad Pro benchmark scores from a few months ago. As you can see below, the M4 does much better than the A18 Pro in both single-core and multi-core tests. However, the M4 is a tablet/laptop chip, so Apple has more freedom to push performance:
The first M4 Macs should launch next month. The M4 Pro and M4 Max options that will power the 2024 MacBook Pro laptops and other computers should be even faster than the A18 Pro chip.
Obviously, benchmarks do not tell the whole story. The Galaxy S24 and Pixel 9 are still great phones, and you probably won’t have any performance issues during everyday use. On that note, you might not always take advantage of the A18 Pro’s top power if you buy an iPhone 16 Pro. However, the benchmark proves that Apple’s rivals are still far from matching the iPhone when it comes to chip performance.
