Best Thin and Light Laptop in 23/24 ➡ APPLE MacBook Air M2 vs ASUS Zenbook S 13 vs HP Dragonfly G4

[@javiej]

I am happy to see how many people accept to pay double for a certain model just because it is "more beautiful" or "razor thin". Thanks to them the rest of us can get excellent quality / price options in terms of specs ( performance, storage size, RAM, upgradeability, etc). So I hope marketing departments keep focusing the high end differentiation on aesthetics rather than specs. However, if we are talking about ultra portables I'm missing the real deal: The 2 in 1 ultra books with 360 hinges and OLED touch screen that can be used both as a laptop or as a tablet. At least in the windows arena that is what most of us expect for a modern ultra portable device. In this aspect probably Microsoft and Lenovo are probably ahead of the competition, and maybe Asus.

[@Gem-Ex]

You churn out great content ! Would love some low latency ie low buffer setting DAW stress tests on the Mac's. Most of the tests focus on amount of tracks, but that is not a good indicator of real world use tracking audio with effects for instance quickly leads to audible artifacts much like how you need to go to half resolution, you'd set the buffer size larger so the computer has time to work - but that is a no-go for low latency audio, and this is where most poorly performing computers fail pretty quickly under load. I rarely see anyone test that.

[@YouGotPropofol]

No matter how amazing the mobile chips in Macs, the battery life, the speakers, the trackpad, etc etc … they don’t make up for the poor user interface and miserable user experience of macOS. I have a surface laptop 5 13” and I recently got my 15” mba 16gb. Yes the mba hardware is much better, but I find myself reaching for my SL pretty much all the time. Just so much easier to do things quickly, snap screens using finger, open close windows and apps, navigate the OS, etc. I am an avid tech guy and always have the latest stuff and I can say apples hardware has to be top notch to make up for its macOS. Don’t get my wrong windows has issues too and its fair share of annoyances, but it’s far more pleasurable to use. For me anyway. I can say the same for iPhone hardware at best neutralizing the disaster which is iOS.

[@GlobalWave1]

We hear you but there are those of us that love macOS. Maybe because we used it for awhile. Coming from someone that can from the 90’s windows up until the mid 2000’s. I always found pros and cons to either but I’ve found music production on the Mac has been so solid. As for laptops the Apple silicon has been insane for my music productions. I never hear the fans.

[@CycleDoc675]

I picked up an HP Dragonfly G4 with the standard IPS screen, 32 gb, and 1 Tb storage from Costco for only $1,100 over a week ago. My wife and daughter both have Macbook Air M2 and M1 respetively and I think they are outstanding laptops (I even bought the Mac Mini M1 in 2021 and still use it at work). But I agree with how you feel about MacOs! I hate having to click twice to paste content from 1 window into another, the lack of native window management, the useless dock, and the lack of touchscreens on Macbooks. There are trade offs to each, but overall, I enjoy using Windows more. I have really enjoyed using the HP.

[@YouGotPropofol]

@@CycleDoc675 did you know the click twice thing, click once to select the window then click again to enter text … wasn’t always that way. They actually introduced that “feature” a few years back and named it “click through”. lol. Windows of course does it better and as you would expect. Apple has a tendency to do things differently just to be different but in doing so makes it more annoying. But hey…it’s different. Sort of like a bent knife.

[@Mindandsoul1996]

wow this is the best quality detailed laptop comparison i have ever seen in my life .....kudos to you sir .....looking forward to see similar content from a competent you touber like you

[@AlexanderBorshak]

@Tech Notice thank you for the video. It would be great (maybe in future tests) to see among the performance tests some compilation test - for example, medium size Rust project cross-compilation for different arch. Thank you one more time!

[@yagoa]

yeah it would be nice to have a task and see how far it gets on a charge, maybe even with the display off, I doubt am the only one who turns the display off, I mean it turns off automatically...

[@Vj-mi7fi]

Just for ms office / meetings / mail / movies / streaming / very light gaming - 300 to 500 dollars enough Only for photo or video editors mac is good but see for storage

[@gunta.]

Sure the Macbook has no fan noise at all, but what about the fan noise of the both Windows Intel Core i7 1355U? Do the fans spin up during Web Browsing like KZbin or Google Maps (in 3D view)?

[@computerenthusiast402]

Thats what most people are looking for Small Windows touch screen laptop to compete with iPad.

[@lasseberg7317]

intel is running 10nm and are slow. Please test amd laptops with the 780m igpu.

[@ujjaldas8775]

I don't get it... i mean windows thin 13 inch laptops could have used ryzen 7 7840U. Better performance, huge jump in GPU performance and better efficiency.

[@theTechNotice]

true.... :)

[@hermanthotan]

When the intel meteor laptop comes out, can you make the comparison again. Lately, I'm looking to upgrade a new one thinking to get macbook or Intel laptop.

[@TheDude50447]

For Windows/Linux Id recommend AMD 7x40 series atm. Meteor lake is decent but not good enough to justify the price increase. Currently in my region the Zenbook S13 goes for 1700€ with a 155U Intel and for 1300€ with a 7840u. Thing to note in this particular comparison is that the AMD version is the older slightly thicker S13 model. Unless you need specific Intel hardware accelerated features theres not a compelling reason to go with Intel.

[@TheMtBaldy]

Are you using the new intel processor?

[@lordwafflesthegreat]

What thermal camera is that? Some special phone?

[@bhargavpurohit1478]

S14 intel ultra 7 155h vs mac air m2 vs mac m3??

[@AssiAHMAD-w4k]

I already have gaming laptop, but i would like to buy a thin 13 inch laptop around the 1100 euros, i want to use the laptop for daily use in the university and also for trading sometime, so in terms of of future wise which laptop should i get ? (In the 1100 budget i can get the macbook m2 base model , is it worth it ? Or is add the 100 euros and get asus zenbook oled Plz help me in this

[@nodo8840]

If I were you I'd buy the Mac and upgrade it to your preferences

[@TheStopwatchGod]

I did not expect the M2 to smoke these two laptops. I'm sure AMD will do better though with 8 performance cores and a substantially better GPU

[@theTechNotice]

and it's got NO active cooling - now that's impressive!

[@reactorre]

what about the mba 8gb? there's a big difference

[@無名-n7g3g]

how about zenbooks with CPU end with P or H that wouldn't be much heaver.

[@theTechNotice]

Zenbooks are quite abit heavier and thicker apart from the 'S' (slim) lineup :)

[@NoName-zf6nr]

A very dedicated video with lots of good comments but I downvote nevertheless for one reason: the irresponsible praise of OLED without mentioning the flickering health risk. --robert jasiek

[@InnocentiusLacrimosa]

Very nice machines if they are powerful enough for one's workload. I personally have finally moved to gaming laptops for work also and not looking back for now: fully upgradeable (currently 32 GB RAM and 4TB storage), great screen, great performance, all the ports I could wish and dgpu for local machine learning tasks. Anyhow for thin and light, these look great.

[@nazigol289]

Not everyone is the fan of minimal design

[@rumirules5351]

I got an S13 oled 2023 and this kinda suprised me

[@nguyenhongtrang4505]

can you please review your experience with it

[@rongaistudios]

The video test....lower score score should be faster?

[@theTechNotice]

sorry, what do you mean, is there a mistake?

[@FLAXMS]

​@@theTechNoticehe means a lower score would be better, but that's not true, you want a higher score but lower time to completion. Keep up the good work!

[@zeldar5120]

2P CORE OH MY DAYS THAT A SHAME

[@rondobrondo]

some of your percentages are wrong.

[@NakormiteVasu]

Macbook wins for creators test on same budget. *also camera and mics are best in macbook.

[@theTechNotice]

I agree with the first part, for camera and mics, I think it wasn't the best in this comparison :)

[@yagoa]

funny how the m2 macBook had way higher brightness and still smoked them by more than 5 hours

[@Sheelsindhu77907]

And with less battery size

[@Doughnuts07]

With all fairness he should use amd laptop for performance and battery life. I believe gap would be much smaller. And if you take performance per $ windows would be slightly ahead.

[@yagoa]

Depends a lot of what you are talking about, in AI and VRAM terms pc is 5x more expensive @@Doughnuts07

[@josephle2381]

It’s using an IPS while the windows were using oled 🤦‍♂️

[@yagoa]

that makes it worse since OLed is supposed to be the energy efficient option LOL@@josephle2381

[@YouGotPropofol]

Windows is hamstrung by Intel.

[@theTechNotice]

There is some weight in this comment.... anyone else agree/disagree?

[@abregadoatseri4974]

I bet i9 13th or 14th with 4090 would beat m2

[@junechevalier]

On a macbook air? Of course. But when you go up that price, there's the M3 Max now. It depends on what you wanna do with them tho. Gaming: windows all the way. But productivity, definitely macbooks

[@sarunas8002]

This Zenbook is such a piece of t1rd that I can’t even begin to… how can you compare to a mac… just bought it and overheats on idle fan noise makes you think it is about to take off and this is with new “efficient” intel ultra… and the crapware on this thing on another level from windows to asus. i swear KZbin reviewers became a bunch of sellouts

[@XANDERSAudiofilo]

intel HD GRAFIS XD

[@lshaps46]

People may think they'äre getting a good deal by buying the cheaper model with all its great specs, until they found out how poorly the computer works and all the flaws of Windows. The Apple computers are so much better and well worth the extra cost-- you pay for what you get. I can open my 5-year-old MacBook and it starts immediately and runs smoothly hour after hour, unlike the PCs I have had.

[@pravibog7069]

Just get a windows laptop for the same price as a macbook. It'll work just as well, and you'll have more software options.

[@padsalt4739]

Wdym bruh, my 5 year olds windows gaming laptop is running smoothly minus the battery coz ofc its normal to have bad battery after using it for 5 years. Plus you have lots of software, editing, rendering more faster than macbook. So dont meat ride apple lil bro

[@mahamudmunna5000]

wow this is the worse comparison out there no name for what they comparing to you do know that the 7840u exist?