Apple’s iPad Air and Pro have lots of computing power thanks to the M1 chip inside them, but it can be hard to see just how powerful they are in day-to-day use.
But thanks to ETA Prime’s testing of game emulation on an M1 iPad Air, we can see exactly how far ahead of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon competition the M1 is. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot.
ETA Prime tested a handful of games in a couple of PSP and Nintendo GameCube emulators and was able to run games at 1440p resolution better than Samsung’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1-equipped Tab S8 could run them at a measly 720p.
Of course, thanks to the way iPadOS works, actually getting game emulators on it is a huge pain compared to Android or Windows, so take this for what it is: a demonstration of how capable the iPad could be if iPadOS got out of your way.
