Apple M2 Release Date, Specifications, Price, and Benchmarks

Right up until 2020, Apple was 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.

Understandably, given that success, Apple is already taking the step to develop M2.

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

Let’s jump right into it!

Release Date

Finding the release date of a processor that is still in development is never easy. With no official information provided by Apple, it is impossible to know when exactly we can get our hands on M2-based devices.

What we do know is that M2 is not going to be ready for 2021. Instead, we see should expect it later in 2022.

Fortunately, while waiting for M2, we have the M1 Pro and M1 Max replacing M1 devices. Currently, the only Apple devices with these chips are the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros.

On the other hand, M2 will be on a completely different performance level since it is supposed to come on a 4nm process or an updated 5nm node (5-nanometer plus or 5NP).

However, there’s still some time until we see M2 powering a new MacBook Pro. Although new information suggests that Apple has an 18-month cycle in mind which means that Macbook Airs with M2 chips could see the light of day in mid-2022.

That’s earlier than expected!

The currently available M1 MacBook Pro 13 will be replaced with a MacBook Pro 14 with an M2 chip in the 2H of 2022. It will receive a slight price increase over the previous generation. Alongside this release time frame, we will receive the redesigned M2 MacBook (Air).

— Dylan (@dylandkt) January 17, 2022

As seen in this tweet above, the new MacBook Pros will have an M2 chip which should release in 2H of 2022.

Specifications

It is a little early to talk about specifications considering that neither Apple nor TSMC have spoken publicly on this matter. Even so, there are some leaks we can share.

Certain leaks state that the 4nm gold 5NP process could bring an increase of GPU cores (from 8 to 32+), and a new maximum memory (64GB RAM).

Those are just the improvements for the GPU. In fact, the M1 Max has already met these limits. It supports 64GB RAM and has 32 cores, so it seems entirely possible for M2 to go even beyond that.

The M1 Max comes with 10 cores which is already better than the 8 cores in the M1, so the M2 could probably reach 12 cores or more.

With 12 cores, the split could look like this: 4 efficiency cores combined with 8 performance cores, similar to Intel’s Alder Lake series. This will help Macbooks preserve their battery, but also provide power when needed with the addition of 4 more performance cores.

More cores can also mean a larger power draw, but considering the power-efficiency improvements of a new architecture, it should not be an issue.

It will be interesting to see how high-performance chips handle. Something like a 32-core processor that will end up inside of an iMac Pro.

AT sample also appeared on CPU-Monkey promising the 12 CPU cores that we talked about previously. This sample has 10 high-performance cores and only 2 efficiency cores (clocked at 3.35 GHz).

This might just be a pre-sample that Apple is testing, or it could simply be a fake sample.

However, the M1X chips in the 2021 MacBook Pros hint toward large improvements in performance, so it isn’t impossible for the sample to be true.

Let’s take a closer look at the MacBook Pros to understand the potential of M2.

Apple has named these two chips M1 Pro and M1 Max. Allegedly, Apple claims a 70% increase in CPU performance and twice the power in the GPU compared to the original M1 CPU. This sounds very impressive, but keep in mind that Apple’s numbers are not always consistent with third-party benchmarks. Thankfully, we will have those benchmarks soon enough.

These numbers might also be valid because the M1 Pro comes with 4 more performance cores. That brings us to a total of 10 cores: 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores.

These 10 cores are combined with a 16-core GPU with 2,048 EUs.

The M1 Pro has support for 32GB of RAM, an upgrade to the M1’s 16GB maximum, and the memory bandwidth is boosted up to 200GB/s. Keep in mind that the memory is not upgradable because it is directly integrated into the chip and shared with the GPU. The M1 Pro also features 33.7 trillion transistorsabout two times more than the 2020 M1.

The M1 Max is the biggest one yet with 57 trillion transistors. The M1 Max gets the same core configuration: 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores. The RAM capacity goes up to 64GBdouble the memory bandwidth (400GB/s), et un 32-core GPU with 4,096 EUs.

Both of these chips should also considerably improve performance and battery life, given the much better performance per watt.

Performance Guesses

If the M2 processors are based on the 5NP architecture process, the same one used for the A15 Bionic chips in the iPhone 13, we can make some estimates about the performance.

So, if the A14 Bionic is on a 5nm process and the A15 is on an upgraded 5nm architecture with a performance difference of up to 20%, it’s possible that we’ll see a similar story between the M1 and M2 processors.

Many other tech websites are making this comparison because the M1 chip is on the same architecture the A14 chip is based on.

Let’s put that into real numbers! To do that, we’ll use this benchmark from XDA-Developers:

Strictly looking at single-core performance, we see that Intel flagship CPU, the i9-12900HK is at a 1,833 single-core score. The M1 Pro and M1 Max have a score of about 1530. That puts Intel 20% faster.

If the M2 processors do get a 20% improvement over its predecessor that means it will be comparable to Intel’s 14-core, 20-thread processor. That’s quite the generational leap!

Price

What does all of this mean for the pricing of future Apple devices? Well, it is impossible to know with certainty as it depends on Apple’s architecture. If M2 is going to be on the 5NP architecture, the pricing probably won’t change too much from the last generation of MacBooks, iMacs, and iPad Pros.

Here is the pricing of last-generation (M1) devices:

• MacBook Air M1 – $999 (up to $2,049)
• MacBook Pro 13-Inch M1- $1,299 (up to $2,299)
• iPad Pro 11-Inch M1- $799 (up to $2,099)
• Mac Mini M1- $699 (up to $1,699)

It is clear that Apple is following some type of pattern with its pricing. The basic options offer a much more attractive price, but they usually come with a smaller storage drive and less RAM. If you want a 2TB SSDyou will have to fork over $2,000.

We can assume the same price pattern for the M2 generation. However, it also wouldn’t be unexpected for Apple to push for higher pricing for all devices equipped with M2.

Here is the pricing of M1X devices:

• MacBook Pro 14-Inch M1X – $1,999 (up to $5,899 with M1 Max)
• MacBook Pro 16-Inch M1X – $2,499 (up to $6,099 with M1 Max)

Tea 14-inch MacBook Pro starts at $1,999 and comes with the M1 Pro chip. However, if you use the M1 Max chip for those extra cores in the GPU, you can upgrade the 14-inch for $500. That’s only the 24-core GPU variant, however. For the 32-core GPU, you will need to pay $700 extra.

Tea 16-inch MacBook Pro is also available with both the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.

If Apple continues this trend, getting the high-end M2 chips in the 2022 MacBook Air could cost more than $1000.

Keep in mind that these are only assumptions. We need to wait and see what Apple has planned for the 2022 MacBook Airs for more information.

Benchmarks

Third-party benchmarks all display the same results. The M1 Pro (or Max) performs exceptionally well in productivity-related programs.

Whether it is Photoshop, Excel, Code Compile, Blender, or almost any other software, it outperforms Intel’s and AMD’s flagship mobile CPUs.

Here is a screenshot of Cinebench R23, a synthetic benchmark in which AMD often beats all other contenders.

This time, it doesn’t! Instead, the M1 Pro laptop outperforms even the 5900HX, making the M1 Pro CPU the fastest on the market right now.

To make it even more impressive, we will share some details about its efficiency.

In the video below by Hardware Unboxed, you can see that the M1 Pro chip has a considerably lower power draw when compared to any other processor.

Overall, the M1 Pro/Max processors are very powerful and can make anyone reconsider planning to buy a Windows machine. Remember, these CPUs are also packed in a light, sleek, and high-quality laptop.