Apple’s big week of Mac announcements may be over, but the real work starts now.
By that, I mean people are going to poke and prod at these new devices until every single facet has been tested. That starts with benchmarking, and the first Geekbench 6 benchmarking scores for the new Mac devices have been published. In multi-core testing, the M4 Pro inside the Mac mini delivered an average of about 22,000.
You might be wondering what that means. The actual testing and calculations for Geekbench scoring are too technical to get into here, but the main thing to know is that a higher number means better performance. According to MacRumors, the 14-core M4 Pro beat out the 24-core M2 Ultra in the Mac Studio, which got an average score of 21,351.
The M4 Pro beating the M2 Ultra is impressive because the Mac mini housing the former starts at $1,599, while the Mac Studio housing the latter is a staggering $3,999. In other words, Apple is offering nearly the same level of performance from a very recent high-end desktop computer in a much smaller device that costs just over half as much.
Mashable Light Speed
M4 Max benchmarks
After reports of the M4 Pro’s high benchmark scores came in, Geekbench’s database was updated with scores from the even more powerful M4 Max chip.
Stunningly, the 16-core M4 Max chip in a MacBook Pro comes in at around 26,500 if you average out the handful of scores on the site at the time of writing. This is now the most powerful Apple device recorded by GeekBench. However, if you want that one, you’ll have to pay; as MacRumors pointed out, you’ll have to shell out $3,999 for a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M4 Max chip inside of it.
But if you don’t need a laptop and have $1,599 to spare, it seems like the M4 Pro Mac mini will do the trick just fine, too.
With these M4 Pro and M4 Max benchmarks landing on Geekbench, we’re getting a sneak peek of the new MacBook Pro’s capabilities — and competitors should be shaking in their boots. The only Windows laptop we’ve tested that comes close to the M4 Pro chip’s score is the 2023 Lenovo Legion 9i that runs on the Intel Core i9-13980HX — and that will set you back nearly $3,500.
