Mar 17, 2025 19:00:00

Does the MacBook Air (2025 model) have different performance depending on the M4 chip it is equipped with? We compared the benchmark results

The MacBook Air released by Apple on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 is a model equipped with the M4 chip. However, there are two models of the M4 chip: '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' and '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU', each with a slightly different configuration. For that reason, I got both the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model and the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model of the M4-equipped MacBook Air, so I checked what kind of difference there was in the benchmark.

13-inch MacBook Air and 15-inch MacBook Air - Apple (Japan)
https://www.apple.com/jp/macbook-air/

Below is the purchase screen for Apple's MacBook Air (13 inches). Of the three models lined up, the one on the left is the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model, and the ones in the center and on the right are the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' models. For some reason, the output of the included power adapter is different for both models, with the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model being 30W and the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model being 35W.

In fact, the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model only has a 256GB SSD capacity, and if you want to set it to 512GB or more, you need to change the configuration to the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model. Therefore, I thought, 'If the power adapter output is different, it's not just the core configuration of the M4 chip, but also the performance of the SSD itself.'

That's why I purchased both the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' and '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' models. The following is the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model, with 32GB of unified memory and 512GB SSD. The main body color is sky blue.

The left is the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model, and the right is the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model. They look exactly the same.

In addition, the appearance and key pitch of the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model are checked in more detail in the following article.

MacBook Air quick photo review with M4 installed and less than 170,000 yen including tax - GIGAZINE

On the left is the 35W USB-C power adapter that came with the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model, and on the right is the 30W USB-C power adapter that came with the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model. By comparison, you can see that the 35W USB-C power adapter is one size smaller.

And the 35W USB-C power adapter has two USB-C ports.

Output is 20V x 1.75A, 15.0V x 2.33A, 9.0V x 3.0A, 5.0V x 3.0A.

◆Check the read/write speed of the SSD
First, we checked the read and write speeds to the SSD using the disk storage speed measurement tool '

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test ' provided by Blackmagic Design, the developer of the video editing software 'DaVinci Resolve.' First, we checked five times on the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model, and the results are below. The write speed was 1917.4MB/s, and the read speed was 2883.5MB/s. Also, writing 12K DCI 60 (fps) ProRes 422 HQ video failed even after five reads and writes.

The '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model has a write speed of 3437.5MB/s and a read speed of 3031.2MB/s, which is faster than the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model. In addition, 12K DCI 60 (fps) ProRes 422 HQ video writing was also successful.

Next, I used

AmorphousDiskMark to measure data size of 1GiB, five times. The results for the 10-core CPU + 8-core GPU model are as follows. The top two rows show the results of the sequential access test, the bottom two rows show the results of the random access test, the left column shows the read speed, and the right column shows the write speed.

The results for the 10-core CPU + 10-core GPU model are shown below, clearly showing that the 10-core CPU + 10-core GPU model has a higher disk access speed. It turns out that the higher-end M4 chip in the MacBook Air not only increases the number of GPU cores, but also improves the read/write speed to the SSD.

◆Memory performance measurement
We measured the performance of memory modules using

AmorphousMemoryMark . The 10-core CPU + 8-core GPU model is as follows:

And here are the results for the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model. There is almost no difference in memory access speed between the two models.

◆Check CPU and GPU performance with Geekbench 6
We checked the performance of the CPU and GPU with

Geekbench 6. Since the number of CPU cores is the same and the number of GPU cores is different, the CPU test results are almost the same for single and multi, and the GPU is expected to be slightly better for the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model.

In fact, the CPU benchmark results for the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model were a single-core performance of 3767 and a multi-core performance of 14812.

For the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model, the single-core performance is 3739 and the multi-core performance is 14777, which is almost the same. For reference, when we ran the GeekBench 6 CPU benchmark on the Windows PC '

ASUS Zenbook SORA (UX3407) ' which is equipped with the same Arm-based architecture Snapdragon X X1-26-100 and is in the same price range, the single-core performance was 2120 and the multi-core performance was 10434.

The GPU benchmark results were done in two types: OpenCL and Metal. The OpenCL benchmark score for the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model was 30990.

The Metal benchmark score was 48313.

The '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model has an OpenCL benchmark score of 35,995.

The Metal benchmark score was 54665. This means that the 10-core CPU + 10-core GPU score is about 15% higher than the 10-core CPU + 8-core GPU score. The OpenCL benchmark score for the ASUS Zenbook SORA (UX3407) was 9686, so the MacBook Air has better GPU performance.

The results of GeekBench 6 are summarized as follows. For reference, the scores of the previous generation MacBook Air with M2 and the MacBook Pro with M4 Pro are listed alongside those published by GeekBench .

		MacBook Air (2025)		MacBook Air (with M2)	MacBook Pro (with M4 Pro)
Core Configuration		10-core CPU + 8-core GPU	10-core CPU + 10-core GPU	8-core CPU + 10-core GPU	12-core CPU + 16-core GPU
CPU Single Core		3767	3739	2596	3846
CPU Multicore		14812	14777	9728	20163
GPU	OpenCL	30990	35995	28451	60544
	Metal	48313	54665	46089	99026

In conclusion, if you are buying a MacBook Air and you think that 'faster read/write speeds to the SSD are better' or 'you want higher GPU performance,' the '10-core CPU + 10-core GPU' model is recommended. However, if that is not the case, the performance other than the SSD and GPU is the same, so the cheaper '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model should be fine. However, it should be noted that the '10-core CPU + 8-core GPU' model only has a 256GB SSD capacity.