If you were worried that Apple’s cheaper M4 iPad Air would feel sluggish compared to its flagship sibling, you can officially breathe easy. Newly discovered Geekbench results confirm that the new Air goes toe-to-toe with the much pricier M4 iPad Pro in single-core speeds. It’s a clear look at exactly what you're getting ahead of the tablet's retail launch.

The Core Architecture Difference

The near-identical single-core performance proves both tablets are pulling from the exact same M4 silicon playbook for everyday tasks. The only real divergence happens in multi-core workloads, and that comes down to simple math.

Apple gave the M4 iPad Air an 8-core CPU, while the iPad Pro packs a 10-core chip. That two-core deficit is exactly why the Air lags slightly behind in multi-core benchmarks, but the underlying architecture pushing those standard operations remains identical.

Practical Impact on Daily Usage

Then there's the elephant in the room: iPadOS. The operating system still heavily restricts how much of Apple's desktop-class silicon developers can actually use, rendering that multi-core gap basically theoretical for the average user. While Apple steadily expands its roster of professional apps, software capable of truly redlining an M-series chip on an iPad remains scarce. Unless your daily workflow involves intensely specific edge cases, you won't miss those two extra CPU cores at all.

Pricing and Market Availability

These benchmarks position the new tablet as a brutally competitive entry point for anyone who wants M4 power. The 11-inch iPad Air with the M4 chip officially opens for pre-order today, March 4, with initial shipments arriving to customers next week on March 11.