Apple M1-based MacBook Air with x86 emulation is still faster than every other Mac

When Geekbench scores of Apple's new M1-based MacBook Air hit the web, there was some controversy as some folks pointed out that Geekbench scores aren't always useful to compare the performance of different platforms. Now there's another leak that shows how well the new fanless MacBook Air performs when you emulate x86 via Rosetta 2. While the score took a hit due to the performance cost of emulation, the system is still faster in the single-core department than every other Mac model out there! Quite impressive and we can't wait to see more scores from other tests.

These differences translate into an 21-22 percent performance drop. Still, if you check out the single-core results from every other Mac model released so far below, the M1 MacBook Air outperforms them, which is nothing short of impressive. Also, keep in mind that the M1 MacBook Air features a fanless cooling design while the M1 MacBook Pro and M1 Mac mini sport an active cooling solution. The remaining new Macs' results might be different, so it will be interesting to see how these two perform under the same circumstance.