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Rumors of an A-series-based MacBook are still swirling, months after I first covered the possibility of a new low-cost version of the Apple MacBook Air. Based on early reporting, we could see a $599 MacBook powered by Apple's A-series iPhone processors instead of the M-series chips currently used in Mac laptops. But the idea of a budget-friendly MacBook laptop with iPhone hardware inside gets even more interesting now that the more powerful A19 and A19 Pro processors have arrived in the latest iPhones.
Of course, we don't know for sure which phone chip Apple might use for a laptop—if the company uses a phone chip at all, or if the mooted "budget MacBook" is really even a thing. Most Apple rumors, after all, are notoriously inaccurate. But a phone chip is the strongest bet for a budget MacBook. The bigger question is whether either of Apple's new A19 smartphone processors can provide sufficient performance for a laptop experience.
To answer this question, I've looked at our iPhone, MacBook, and other laptop test results to settle the score. While you won't find much overlap between our laptop performance tests and our smartphone testing, the few shared tests reveal that an entry-level Mac laptop with an iPhone chip inside is entirely possible. Here's why.
Setting the Stage: Testing Phones and Laptops
Obviously, we test laptops and phones rather differently. We evaluate laptops based on almost every performance-focused metric we can, and raw output is always in focus. Meanwhile, our phone testing focuses more on the interface, usability, connectivity, and cellular performance. Battery life and display quality are crucial to both, but our performance testing is far more granular for laptops than smartphones, since it plays a significant role in how those products are used. However, the lines are blurring, and a small but growing overlap in measurement tools reflects the convergence of these two product categories.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Of the many benchmarks we run on laptops and phones, only three serve up truly cross-platform-comparable results: the general-performance metric Geekbench (counting both its single- and multi-core tests) and the graphics test 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. But these tests give us three distinct insights into the A-series chips as potential laptop processors, letting us compare CPU core performance, overall productivity muscle (thanks to the various scenarios that the Geekbench test simulates off-screen), and graphics rendering capabilities.
Because we don't know what chips would be used in a supposed A-series-powered budget MacBook, we're looking at the performance of four different recent chips: the Apple A18 (as used in the iPhone 16), the A18 Pro (as used in the iPhone 16 Pro), the A19 (from the iPhone 17), and the A19 Pro (as tested in the iPhone 17 Pro, Pro Max, and iPhone Air).
I'm comparing these against a handful of laptops, starting with the Apple MacBook Air 13-Inch (2025, M4) and the Apple MacBook Pro 14-Inch (2024, M4), the two base models of current Mac laptops. We also looked at the Acer Aspire 14 AI, an Intel Core Ultra-powered budget laptop, and the Microsoft Surface Laptop (2025, 13-Inch), a midrange ultraportable with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor. (This is an Arm-based chip, just like all of Apple's processors today, running on an Arm-native version of Windows that can emulate a traditional x86 environment for legacy apps.)
Chip-for-Chip: The A Series Matches Laptop Cores
The first bits of data I looked at were the single-core performance scores from Geekbench 6. This test gauges the speed of each processor's single fastest core while doing realistic everyday tasks, like launching apps, UI navigation, and simple computations. It makes comparing phones and laptops somewhat more straightforward because it filters out differences in core count or multi-threading architectures and deals solely with realistic workloads instead of purely synthetic tasks.
Looking at the numbers, you can see some favorable comparisons. The A18 and A19 variants all reported at least 3,000 points, and the top-end A19 models approached the single-core speeds seen in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, which use the M4 laptop chip (also seen in the latest iPad Pro). More important, perhaps, all of the iPhone chips drove faster single-core speeds than either Windows laptop processor.
In terms of single-core performance, the A-series chips are definitely competitive with their laptop counterparts.
Productivity Benchmarks: Why the M4 Pulls Ahead (and Why It Doesn't Matter)
The Geekbench 6 multi-core test, on the other hand, compares how the chips handle more complex simulated real-world tasks, like PDF rendering, image compression, HTML rendering, speech recognition, and other demanding applications. These results are also much closer to real-world results because they leverage multiple cores at a time, as you would in laptop use. This test gives us a decent measure of actual performance, with a higher score indicating a faster and smoother device in daily use.
As expected, multi-core testing performance sees a stark difference between the A-series phone processors and the M-series laptop chips in multi-core testing. The best scores from Apple's most current A19 Pro chips didn't crack the 10,000-point barrier, and the older A18 chips peaked at less than 8,000. That's a noticeable difference compared with all the laptops we saw. Our budget Windows machines exceeded 10,000 points, while the base M4 models of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro exceeded 15,000 points.
The performance difference between current entry-level MacBooks and the A-series chip is noticeable. But if the savings are deep enough, consumers might readily accept that deficiency. The comparisons against Windows machines are more encouraging, with the A19 Pro coming just a few hundred points below the budget Windows laptops we compared it with.
If you're looking for a machine primarily used for web browsing, working in documents, posting to social media, or streaming shows from Netflix, a lower-powered model can still meet your performance needs just fine. The difference will likely be apparent in tasks any more intense than these, supported by the testing results available to us. Still, a competent and reliable machine for keeping up with bills and the folks across the world, sold at an affordable price, will always be acceptable to many shoppers, because it does what it needs to do, and isn't expected to do more.
Also, bear in mind that the A-series chips are being tested within the thermal confines of smartphones. A clamshell laptop has a lot more space and flexibility for cooling a chip. That could mean an A-series chip could be clocked higher in a laptop and potentially deliver better multi-core performance than what we see here, based on thermal factors alone.
3DMark Wild Life Extreme: Good Enough for Basic Graphics, Not Really for Games
The only graphics test that runs on both phones and laptops that we use at PC Labs is 3DMark's Wild Life Extreme. It's excellent for cross-platform comparison because it renders offscreen in 4K, regardless of the size or resolution of the device display. That means that all of the geometry and particle effects are handled at that higher resolution, stressing both phones and laptops with the same comparable test.
Apple's A-series chips trailed Apple's M-series processors in this graphics test by a long stride, with scores from the A18 and A19 models being roughly half of what the base M4 chip scored.
It's a different story when we look at the Intel Core Ultra 5 and Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs used in our Windows competitors. The gap narrowed considerably, with the Intel chip scoring less than 1,000 points ahead of the top Apple phone chips, and the Snapdragon processor falling farther behind, with the lowest score of the bunch.
The A-series' competitive showing against lower-end Windows systems illustrates that it's well-suited to budget models. Where the Apple M series has fairly robust graphics capability, outpacing most integrated-graphics competitors, a cheaper A-series chip would still produce a smooth and capable experience. For a student, home user, or even an office worker, the just-satisfactory graphics support can easily meet their daily needs. The Wild Life Extreme score comparability with the Windows systems shows, though, that very basic gaming at low resolutions and detail settings would be the likely limit of the A-series in a laptop (apart from possible driver and compatibility issues that we don't have insight into).
Why a Hypothetical Budget MacBook Could Succeed
The data paints a pretty interesting picture: A MacBook built on the A-series platform wouldn't replace any of the M-series Macs, but it could create a new first rung on the ladder of Mac laptops. With potent single-core performance, decent productivity chops, and enough graphics punch to display the essentials, all wrapped up in Apple's high-quality design and materials, running the intuitive macOS, such a laptop could be a masterstroke in the budget market. Apple's days of losing shoppers at the low end to cheap Chromebooks and inexpensive Windows machines could be over.
In an earlier story, I suggested that Apple might need to add a touch screen or ditch the standard webcam to lower costs and make a new budget MacBook a hit. But I'm rethinking that wishlist now that I have the numbers in front of me. Do I still want all of those features? Of course!
But the compelling performance-per-dollar ratio demonstrated by the A19 Pro suggests that Apple can deliver a competent, affordable MacBook without missing crucial features. If Apple can serve up this sort of capability in a $599 laptop, giving people an affordable on-ramp to the Mac platform, it could be a massive win for Apple in the computer market, even if it doesn't deliver the touch-friendly, OS-merging experience I once hoped for.