Apple A14 Bionic Performance Differences

In the CPU benchmark Geekbench 5.2 all three devices are performing at the same level in single-core performance. The iPhone 12 falls behind in multi-core performance and trails 6 % behind the iPhone 12 Pro and even 11 % behind the iPad Air.

The differences are even more pronounced in the GPU benchmarks. Once again, the iPad Air takes the lead and runs between 9 to 39 % faster in our off-screen tests than both iPhones. In the new 3DMark Wild Life, the iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Air take the lead and peform around 11 % faster than the iPhone 12.

The reasons for this are numerous. Surely, the iPad Air 4’s GPU will be more powerful considering that it has to push around more pixels than the iPhones. 3,870,000 to be precise, compared to just 2,962,440 for the iPhones. However, the improved GPU performance does not manage to make up for this difference entirely, and both smartphones are clearly faster in the on-screen benchmarks than the iPad.

Another factor is cooling. The iPad Air, for example, returned consistent scores when running 3DMark Wild Life. The iPhone 12 Pro, however, only managed to return its initial high score on the first one, then dropped significantly, and returned to an around 10 % lower performance than before.

In other words: processor-intensive tasks will run much smoother on the iPad Air. This makes sense considering the different use cases for iPad and iPhone. What does not make any sense though is the iPad’s limitation to just 4 GB of RAM.