Apple A16 Bionic phones: benchmarks, gaming & which to buy
What the Apple A16 Bionic delivers in real phones: benchmark scores, gaming performance, battery efficiency and the phones that ship with it.
What the A16 Bionic is
Apple's 2022 flagship chip and the first 4 nm iPhone silicon — a Pro-only part in the iPhone 14 Pro generation, then carried over to the standard iPhone 15 a year later. It ranks #21 of 79 chipsets in our catalog (AnTuTu about 1.63 million), but the number undersells it: 2,631 Geekbench single-core was the best of any 2022-era mobile chip, Apple or Android. Benchmark details on the A16 Bionic page.
Performance and gaming
Our gaming scale puts A16 phones around 45/100 — ahead of every 2022 Android flagship and within reach of 2023's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in graphics, with the usual Apple pattern: class-leading single-core, slightly lower peak GPU throughput, better sustained behavior and efficiency. It decodes and drives ProRes video pipelines the way Android rivals of the era simply could not.
Phones that ship with it
| Phone | Year | Used band |
|---|---|---|
| Apple iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max | 2022 | $440–490 |
| Apple iPhone 15 / 15 Plus | 2023 | $410–430 |
Buying advice
The A16 is the value core of the 2026 used-iPhone market: every phone built on it trades in a tight $410–490 band, from the big-screen iPhone 15 Plus to the 14 Pro Max. Our iPhone 15 review and its comparison with the Galaxy S24 cover the default pick; photographers should read the 14 Pro review first — same money, telephoto and always-on display. Down a generation, the A15 Bionic is 90% of the experience for roughly $100–180 less; up, the A17 Pro guide explains what the 3 nm jump actually bought.
Benchmarks
| Geekbench 6 single-core | 2,631 #11 of 80 SoCs |
|---|---|
| Geekbench 6 multi-core | 6,602 #15 of 80 SoCs |
| AnTuTu benchmark | 1,626,008 #21 of 80 SoCs |