iPhone Air Performance Tested: Is It Good Enough for Pro Tasks?

Apple just dropped a bombshell! This week, the iPhone 17 family arrived: the standard iPhone 17, the impossibly thin iPhone Air, the powerhouse iPhone 17 Pro, and the monstrous iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Intrigued by the svelte iPhone Air? You’re probably wondering if its ultra-thin design sacrifices raw power compared to its "Pro" siblings, packing the A19 Pro chip (standard across all but the vanilla 17).

Early Geekbench results are in, and the news is good: the performance gulf between the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro is surprisingly small. Prepare for flagship performance in a ridiculously thin package.

Two chips, one bloodline, but a world of difference lies within. The iPhone 17 Pro’s A19 Pro flexes its muscles with a 6-core GPU, while the iPhone Air’s sibling makes do with a 5-core variant. But here’s the kicker: does losing that lone core actually matter? Prepare to be surprised.

iPhone Air shows 8-10% performance gap with iPhone 17 Pro on benchmarks

Think of the iPhone Air and the iPhone 17 Pro as twins separated by a price tag. For your daily digital dance – the social scrolls, the friendly chats, the intuitive taps – they move in perfect sync. Under the hood, the single-core CPU hums the same tune in both. Choose either, and your experience will be a mirror image of speed and smoothness. For most of us, that’s the whole story.

But here’s where the pavement ends and the race begins. While both phones are speed demons, throw a truly Herculean task at them think wrangling 8K video, training a neural network, or juggling a dozen demanding apps and the iPhone 17 Pro flexes its extra muscle. That additional GPU core translates to an 8-10% performance boost, enough to leave the competition panting in the dust when the workload gets real.

The iPhone Air just aced its AnTuTu exams, blowing past expectations! While Android and iPhone scores aren’t exactly apples to apples, comparing it to its siblings tells a fascinating story. The iPhone Air smashed the 2 million barrier, leaving the iPhone 16 Pro, which clocked in around 1.8 million, in the dust. These numbers mirror the performance gap we’re already seeing in Geekbench, hinting at a new speed king in the iPhone family.

iPhone 17 Pro is cooler than ever

Forget everything you know about phone chips. The real game-changer isn’t raw power, it’s endurance. The iPhone 17 Pro’s secret weapon? A revolutionary vapor chamber cooling system. Imagine unleashing peak performance for marathon gaming sessions or crushing complex creative projects, all without your phone turning into a hot potato. The 17 Pro keeps its cool, so you can stay in the zone.

The iPhone Air boasts a revolutionary design: an impossibly thin 5.6mm profile. Imagine slipping a razor-thin sliver of technology into your pocket. However, this extreme sleekness comes at a cost. To achieve such a slim physique, a dedicated internal cooling system was sacrificed. Prepare for blistering performance, but be aware: push it too hard, and the iPhone Air might "throttle" – intelligently reducing its power to prevent overheating. Think of it as a race car driver easing off the gas to protect the engine from blowing.

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