Benchmark Shootout: 2017 iPad Pro Vs. 2017 MacBook Pro

We’ve already seen a teardown of Apple’s all new iPad Pro released earlier this month at WWDC, as well as its unboxing and first impressions revealing that the performance of the new A10X Fusion chip is extraordinarily fast. Now, the folks over at BareFeats have published a bunch of performance benchmarks, comparing the 2017 iPad Pro models with the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pros with 13-inch display, and the results are quite striking.

Ipp2017 geekm

The 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro with Touch Bar models were pitted against four different iPad Pro models, in a series of GeekBench and GFXBench performance tests. Below are the specs of all the MacBook Pro and iPad Pro models compared:

  • 2017 MacBook Retina 13-inch, 3.5GHz Dual-Core i7 processor, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 GPU, 16GB of 2133 MHz LPDDR3 memory, 1TB PCIe based flash storage
  • 2016 MacBook Retina 13-inch, 3.1GHz Dual-Core i7 processor, Intel Iris Graphics 550 GPU, 16GB of 2133 MHz LPDDR3 memory, 1TB PCIe based flash storage
  • 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 inch (iPad7,2), 2.39GHz A10X processor, 512GB flash storage, 4GB of memory
  • 2017 iPad Pro 10.5 inch (iPad7,4), 2.39GHz A10X processor, 512GB flash storage, 4GB of memory
  • 2015 iPad Pro 12.9 inch (iPad6,8), 2.26GHz A9X processor, 128GB flash storage, 4GB of memory
  • 2016 iPad Pro 9.7 inch (iPad6,4), 2.24GHz A9X, 256GB flash storage, 2GB of memory

In single-core CPU performance, the MacBook Pro came out on top, with the 2016 and 2017 models beating out all other iPad Pro models. For multi-core CPU performance however, the 2017 MacBook Pro came in at the top while in second place, was the 10.5-inch iPad Pro followed by the 2017 12.9-inch model. The 2017 iPad Pros both beat out the 2016 MacBook Pro.

Ipp2017 geekmt

Most impressive were the Geekbench metal GPU tests, where the 10.5-inch iPad Pro beat out all other devices, including the MacBook Pro. The newest 12.9-inch model came in second, followed by the 2016 MacBook Pro, whereas the 2017 MacBook Pro came in at fourth.

Here’s what the testers wrote:

The top configured 2017 MacBook Pro 13-inch costs roughly 3 times more than the top configured 2017 iPad Pro. Yet the laptop is only slightly faster running CPU intensive apps and slower running the GPU intensive apps.

I am not implying that the iPad Pro can replace the MacBook Pro. They are two different animals, though there is clearly some overlap in capability. It’s just encouraging to know that the iPad Pro development has brought it up to laptop level performance.

So who’s selling his MacBook Pro to get the latest iPad Pro?

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