Apple M2 Release Date, Specifications, Price, and Benchmarks

Up until 2020, Apple partnered with Intel to deliver lightweight and powerful laptops. However, they could never compare to the performance of other laptops on the market rocking high-powered Intel or AMD CPUs.

Apple’s decision to make a change led to the development of an in-house ARM processor named M1. The M1 brought colossal performance and efficiency improvements.

Given that success, Apple introduced M2, the next generation.

This article will showcase everything we know so far about Apple’s M2 chip, including its release date, specifications, price, and benchmarks.

Let’s jump right into it!

Release Date

At WWDC22, Apple finally announced and released the first devices with an M2 processor, and it’s the 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

In January 2023, they also announced the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro with M2 Max and M2 Pro options. The Mac mini is also updated with the M2 Pro.

These devices are now available for purchase!

There are talks about a new MacBook Air, however, the possibility the Air might get an M2 Pro or Max are low. That laptop simply can’t cool such high TDP laptops.

But, what is likely that the new MacBook Air might get an M3 upgrade soon! Our Apple M3 article will cover everything related Apple’s new devices!

Price

We hoped that Apple wouldn’t increase the base prices for the M2 devices, but certain devices did end up being a bit more expensive than their predecessor.

Check out the pricing of the new M2 devices:

• iPad Pro M2 – starting at $799 (up to $2,399)
• 13-inch MacBook Air M2 – starting at $1,199 (up to $2,049) – new price $1,049
• 13-inch MacBook Pro M2– starting at$1,299 (up to $2,499)
• 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 Pro/Max – starting at $1,999 with M2 Pro / $3,099 with M2 Max
• 16-inch MacBook Pro M2 Pro/Max – starting at $2,499 with M2 Pro / $3,499 with M2 Max
• Mac mini M2/Pro – starting at $599 with M2 / $1,299 with M2 Pro

Specifications

Based on Apple’s announcement at WWDC, the next-gen processor M2 is 18% faster than the M1.

This fast CPU also has a 35% more powerful graphics card. We also see up to a 50% increase in memory bandwidth and 24GB of Unified Memory (RAM).

These upgrades were possible thanks to the TSMC’s second-generation 5nm process (N5P). With this move, Apple can cram 25% more transistors (20 billion) on the M2 than the M1.

Here’s a table comparing the M1 and M2:

	Apple M2	Apple M1
Process node	N5P (2nd gen 5nm)	5nm
CPU Cores	8	8
GPU Cores	8/10	7/8
Neural Engine	15.8 TOPS	11 TOPS
Memory	LPDDR5	LPDDR4X
Unified Memory	up to 24GB	up to 16GB
Memory Bandwidth	100GBps	68GBps
TDP	20-24W	20-24W

Considering the differences in the specifications and the third-party benchmark we’ve seen by now, these claims by Apple are mostly correct. So if you have an M1 device, expect 15 to 20% all-around performance improvement.

M2 Max And M2 Pro

The M2 Pro and Max CPUs are also TSMC’s 5nm process node, but still bring considerable performance improvements over the basic M2 chip.

The M2 Pro processor is an (up to) 12-core CPU paired with an (up to) 38-core GPU, which should deliver significant performance gains over the M1 Pro.

The M2 Pro offers up to 32GB of Unified Memory and has double the memory bandwidth (200GB/s) compared to the M2.

M2 Pro also has double the transistor count!

The M2 Max also goes up to 12 CPU cores and 38 GPU cores, but it has substantially more transistors (67 billion), so it’s quite bigger than the M2 Pro.

Because of this, the chip can deliver up to 400GB/s memory bandwidth and up to 96GB of Unified Memory.

Both of these CPUs are currently available only for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro and the Mac mini.

M2 Ultra

While the M1 Ultra isn’t exactly part of the new M2 lineup, it can still give us an insight into M2 Ultra.

The M1 Ultra is a 20-core CPU with a 64-core GPU, 800GB/s of memory bandwidth, 128GB of unified memory, and more.

Already, the M2 chip has a faster memory bandwidth, and we imagine that the future M2 Ultra chip may be able to pack more than 20 cores by implementing Apple’s “UltraFusion” architecture which pairs two CPUs to work as one.

With a TDP of just 60W, the M1 Ultra performs almost as well as desktop processor’s like Intel’s Alder Lake flagship, the i9-12900K.

So, if the M2 Ultra follows in the same steps as the M1 Ultra, Apple’s flagship will certainly maintain its laptop performance crown and might even compete against the Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake.

A new iMac Pro is also in talks that may feature a 32-core M2 chip, which is probably the M2 Ultra.

Benchmarks

Finally, we get the information we were looking for. How does the new M2 processor fare against AMD’s, Intel’s, and even Apple’s laptops?

M2 Max

Apple didn’t provide any kind of slides/benchmarks regarding the performance of the M2 Max, but they did claim 30% faster graphics speeds compared to the M1 Max.

But relying on a brand’s benchmark is never a good idea, so let’s see what third-party benchmarks can show us.

In a 16″ Macbook Pro the M2 Max processor (right) is about 11% faster than the M1 Max in Cinebench R23. But, what about real workloads?

In this (Tom’s Hardware) Handbrake Video Transcoding test, the M2 Max is about 17% faster than the M1 Max. So, that’s a decent generational uplift.

However, the M2 Max is only about 2.5% faster than the M2 Pro, so not a whole lot of difference between these two GPUs.

But, keep in mind that we’ve seen some users sharing their own testing in DaVinci Resolve at 4K with results about 25% faster than an M1 Max MacBook Pro.

However, shortly after the release of M2 Max and M2 Pro, Intel released 13th Gen laptop CPUs like the i9-13900HX and i9-13900H, which overtook the M2 Max and M2 Pro in various benchmarks.

M2 Pro

Apple still hasn’t officially launched these CPUs (for sale), so third-party benchmarks are still not available. For now, we’ll have to rely on Apple’s performance claims.

For image processing in Photoshop, the 16-inch M2 Pro MacBook will supposedly be 40% faster than the M1 Pro. That’s a pretty significant jump in performance, considering that Apple still has not transitioned to the 3nm process node.

Arstechnica tested the CPU Cinebench R23 and came up with some pretty impressive results.

A Mac mini with an M2 Pro chip gives about a 20% better score than the M1 Max Mac Studio. So, it’s probably about 30-35% faster in Cinebench than the M1 Pro.

M2

To get a clear image of the performance difference, we’ll use some of Hardware Unboxed’s benchmarks/charts. Here’s the video:

First, let’s start with power consumption which is one of Apple’s strongest points. While running Cinebench R23, the sustained power is just 23 watts. That is very efficient, especially when compared to CPUs like the 6800U (25W), i7-1260P, and others.

But, for good power efficiency, we also need to see some performance. Let’s have a look at some Blender benchmarks:

In Blender 3.X, with GPU encoding, the M2 clearly outperforms AMD’s mobile GPUs, and that’s expected since AMD’s GPUs were never very powerful in these kinds of tasks.

When CPU encoding in Blender, the M2 outperforms the Ryzen 7 6800U and the i7-1260P. It might be by a small margin, but it’s definitely faster.

We also see the new M2 MacBook Pro beating AMD’s and Intel’s 15W counterparts in a large number crunching test on Microsoft Excel with up to 20% better score.

However, it’s not always a win for Apple. For a 3-minute track export in FL Studio, the M2 is around 10% slower than the 6800U and the i7-1260P.

Other than FL Studio, 7-Zip decompression, and Matlabs benchmarks, there aren’t any other apps where the M2 doesn’t perform.

In Adobe Premiere Pro, the new Apple chip gets its biggest win yet, outperforming not just low-powered CPUs like the 6800U and i7-1260P, but also outperforming the i9-12900HK, Ryzen 9 6900HS, Ryzen 7 6800H, and more.

The M2 is almost at the top of this chart, beating all 45W mobile CPUs. That is a tremendous performance increase, and it may be the reason why a lot of Windows users might switch over to a MacBook.

With Apple’s ProRes codecs and proper hardware acceleration for these codecs, the M2 creates such a performance gap.

Finally, even though the MacBook Pro isn’t exactly made for these kinds of tasks, we will still have a glance at some gaming benchmarks. Hardware Unboxed decided to do a Shadow of the Tomb Raider test.

Weirdly enough, the M2 CPU surpasses AMD’s counterpart. This is a bit unexpected, mostly because macOS isn’t exactly famous for good gaming performance, and the fact that the RDNA 2 GPUs are pretty fast.

So, even if you feel like gaming on your new M2 MacBook Pro, you can comfortably do that and with the satisfaction that you’ll have a better experience than many other Windows laptops.

Overall, the M2 processor is extraordinarily efficient and absurdly fast, tackling even some of the fastest mobile CPUs from AMD and Intel.

All of these benchmarks definitely got us excited for the future of Apple’s silicon, and we are now waiting for new M2-powered devices or higher-core M2 CPUs. Once we get our hands on that information, be sure we’ll share it with you!