iPad Pro Is the Fastest Tablet Ever The A10X Fusion is the most powerful processor we've ever tested; it's significantly faster than Qualcomm's latest chipset.
By Ajay Kumar
This story originally appeared on PCMag
It goes without saying that the iPad Pro is the fastest tablet Apple has ever made. That's to be expected; it's the latest and greatest slate powered by the powerful new A10X Fusion processor.
The question is how much more powerful is it?
We benchmarked the 10.5-inch iPad Pro against the other iPads in Apple's lineup as well as Android rivals, and according to results, the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro's A10X chip is a third faster than most other tablets on the market, though only 10 percent faster than its predecessor.
AnTuTu
On the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system performance, the new iPad Pro scores 205,223, the highest score we've ever seen on any device, not just tablets. It's higher than the 2016 12.9-inch iPad Pro, with its A9X processor (187,411), the A9-powered iPad (126,384), and the aging iPad mini 4 (84,841).
That means the new iPad Pro is 9 percent faster than the older model, 38 percent faster than the iPad and a staggering 59 percent faster than the mini 4. Compared with the Snapdragon 820-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 (139,783) -- the most powerful Android tablet on the market -- it's 32 percent faster.
The only Android device that comes close is the HTC U11 with a Snapdragon 835 processor (175,241), but the iPad Pro is still 15 percent faster.
Geekbench
We also tested the iPad Pro using Geekbench, a measure of single-core and multi-core CPU performance. Apple has typically excelled at having fewer, faster processor cores, while Qualcomm loads its chipsets with more cores and multiple low-power cores to improve multitasking and battery life.
With the iPad Pro, it doesn't matter; the slate blows all other comers out of the water, scoring 3929 single core and 9348 multi-core. Again, it's the best result we've seen on any device, including the 12.9-inch 2016 iPad Pro (3119/5247), the iPad (2522/4369), the mini 4 (1709/2901) and the Galaxy Tab S3 (1609/3963).
Graphics performance and web browsing
Graphics performance is also improved. On the PCMark suite, the iPad Pro scores 3263 for graphics performance, a small improvement compared with last year's 12.9-inch iPad Pro (3163).
The bigger gap is with the iPad (1994) and mini 4 (1086). On GFXBench suite, this translates to 208fps on the T-Rex offscreen test, again a modest improvement over the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (170fps), but a big jump over the iPad (82fps) and mini 4 (48fps). The Tab S3 does no better than the iPad in this test (83fps), making the iPad Pro 60 percent faster than its primary Android competitor. On the iPad Pro, demanding games will be smoother and provide sharper graphics and better textures.
When it comes to web browsing, the iPad Pro again excels in the Jetstream and Browsermark tests (203.5 and 472.7, respectively). It's quite a bit faster and more efficient than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (150 and 300.7), iPad (130 and 250) and mini 4 (80.5 and 187.5).
What all this boils down to is that the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro's A10X Fusion processor will be slightly faster than the A9X in speed, graphic performance and web browsing, but the gap between the two isn't big enough that the average user will notice.
Where the iPad Pro really excels is compared with A9 and Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered tablets. There, the new iPad Pro is between 30 to 50 percent faster, showing how far Apple's new chipset has come compared with the previous generations. If you own an older, non-Pro Apple device or an Android slate, you may want to give some serious thought to an upgrade.
