benchmark
n. countablen. a standard or point of reference that you use to judge how good other things are. It helps you compare different products or performances fairly.
n. a standard or reference point against which things may be compared or assessed. In technical contexts, it refers to a standardized test used to evaluate the performance of hardware or software.
This new phone sets a high benchmark for battery life.
The company uses last year's sales figures as a benchmark for measuring the success of the current marketing campaign.
The software engineers ran a series of rigorous benchmarks to determine whether the recent kernel update improved processing speeds across the server cluster.
From bench + mark. First use appears c. 1842. Originally a mark cut into a stone by land surveyors to secure a bench (from land surveying jargon in the 19th century, meaning a type of bracket), to mount measuring equipment. The figurative sense first appears c. 1884.
Often used with the verbs 'set', 'establish', or 'meet'.