Apple M1 in the iPad Air 5 runs at full 3.2 GHz clock speed, matches performance of more expensive iPad Pro

Apple has presented numerous new products during its "Peek Performance" keynote last Tuesday, and as usual, the Cupertino-based company has not disclosed certain technical details that might be of interest for enthusiasts. These include details about the amount of RAM in the new iPhone SE 3, as well as the clock speed of Apple's usually blazing-fast M1 processor in the new 2022 iPad Air 5.

Some potential buyers anticipated that the Apple M1 SoC in the iPad Air 5 might be throttled in comparison to the more expensive 11-inch iPad Pro, since Apple for example opted to downclock the A15 Bionic in the latest iPad mini 6. However, according to a report by MacRumors, this is not the case as first benchmark results in the Geekbench 5 database confirm that the Apple M1 processor in the 2022 iPad Air runs at its regular clock frequency of 3.2 GHz.

Therefore, the iPad Air 5 delivers virtually identical performance as the more expensive iPad Pro. It manages to score around 1,700 points in the single-core benchmark, while it outpaces the Android competition with around 7,200 points in the multi-core benchmark. Compared to the Apple A14 Bionic in the fourth-generation Apple tablet, the iPad Air 5 indeed provides a remarkable performance boost of 60 to 70 percent, at least when it comes to CPU performance in synthetic benchmarks like Geekbench 5.

Preorder the 2022 Apple iPad Air (10.9-inch, 5th generation) on Amazon