Does a MacBook Air "KILLER" really exist? [Intel vs AMD vs Snapdragon vs Apple]

[@Thetechchap]

Chaps! Macbook or Windows Laptop??

[@seungisanrin]

What is a window? 😂😂

[@kristen-johnshearman2696]

Macbook all day

[@kato1557]

I was a Windows user ever since getting my first laptop as a teenager. But in February this year I decided to change to a 13-inch M2 MacBook Air and I have not looked back since. Absolutely smooth performance with no overheating nor any technical glitches whatsoever in the 8 months I have had it. The beautiful midnight color is a cherry on top, absolutely gorgeously light and thin. I can see my MacBook lasting for years to come. My latest Windows laptop was an ASUS Zenbook which gave me problems as quickly as 3 weeks old. I had to go to the ASUS service centre no less than 6 times in my one year duration with the laptop and the technician would always not be able to explain what hardware is causing the issues I was facing like a randomly unresponsive touchpad, perpetual unadjustable screen dimming etc. They could only tell me to uninstall the latest Windows update every time I faced an issue.

[@miles_tails0511]

Windows because file explorer, multi-instance app tiling, maximize window not opening new desktops, and clipboard history. I had a MacBook for coding in internship, it’s decent for Unix & coding stuff, but once I do multitasking, files management & adobe, I simply can’t bring myself to relearn the whole Ctrl-Opt-Cmd scheme vs Ctrl-Win-Alt scheme. Also, windows always sports wackier hardware. I can live with the bugs, which are very few and far between since I switched to surface, no bloatware too :) Before 2016: whatever my fam had in the trash 2016-2023: Dell XPS 2024: Surface Laptop Studio 2

[@tonexbot]

I like what macOS offers but Windows is the only OS for me.

[@tbogdane]

If SD is this good now, I can't imagine what the next versions will be like.

[@MangoPickleGaming]

exactly, snapdragon is not on 3nm yet! it is going to be another nice jump next year.

[@Bhargav_Gadekar]

They just lack GPU that's it, if they fixed it in 2nd gen then it'll be dead end for apple

[@kubotite9168]

did you see the 8 gen 4 bench mark..its insane..if that chip using the next gen Oryon than the X Elite one..they seem have the performance to go head to head with M4..it just that windows on ARM holding the chip back

[@christianr.5868]

Hoping for a better gpu and better emulation. And especially better software support

[@MangoPickleGaming]

@@Bhargav_Gadekar their phone chips are going to come with a much better GPU this year and I think same will be true for next gen of laptop chips.

[@nikhilagarwal5295]

@11:30 tbf the surface and macbook roughly weigh the same. So I don't think the the size of battery should be given kudos. Same with iPhones, they come with smaller batteries but weigh significantly higher than other phones. It should ideally be weight/minutes rather than mAH/minute.

[@TroubleMakerLT]

ordered the Asus Zenbook S14 with new Intel chip, cant wait to use it, changing my old 2020 Lenovo Legion 5 laptop which cant hold more then 1.5hours on baterry.

[@Thetechchap]

Good choice!

[@handlemonium]

Good on you! I'm running drone footage frame extraction (FFMPEG) and photogrammetry (Metashape/RealityCapture) workloads on my laptop so Strix Halo in 6 months with RX 7600-class integrated graphics is what I'm going for.

[@_CharlieHarper]

... you know what ...? When Apple decided to leave the x86 processor architecture from Intel, it was the best time to start selling Intel shares.

[@Dog3D]

2:47 these companies need to stop putting stickers in such egregious spots like this. A lot of normies will leave it on and make the laptop look like shit and outdated Not only that, but the stickers are misaligned like what 😭

[@Thetechchap]

Agreed!

[@jia7833]

intel ultra 2 with 32gb memory. good luck with whatever you do on a macbook with 8gb memory.

[@sydguitar99]

All 3 of the windows laptop excel in 1 or 2 things but the MacBook is the only one that combines battery, performance and compatibility

[@ibraheem1224]

Yup... Will have to wait till next year to see if any Windows laptop perfectly blends all 3 like the MacBook.

[@Burbanana]

Macbook uses 60hz and not an OLED screen so they use much less battery. Most Windows laptops on here use OLED, except for the Surface Laptop.

[@Thetechchap]

that's a good point

[@Kai-qi6qe]

Thought I'll see a Samsung laptop

[@shabbarbukhari7200]

Not when they cost 2x as much as the Mac whilst having worse Battery life

[@BigPaco213]

Sold my macbook pro M1 and got the Macbook Air M3 and im super happy with the speed boost. i use lightroom to edit photos

[@serikazero128]

meanwhile in my country.... lunar lake, core ultra 2, it is around 1900-1950 euros while ryzen ai9 is around 1850euros Not 1000 to 1500. Since since many tech youtubers REFUSE TO TEST AI PERFORMANCE, I did it myself: Asus Zenbook s14 with Lunar Lake = around 10 tokens/s with Llama 3.1:8b model Asus Zenbook s16 with AMD Ryzen AI = around 12 tokens/s with Llama 3.1:8b model And as a comparison, Intel gen 10, I7 in a laptop scores around 5 tokens/s with the same model and same question. Meaning that in the last 4 years, we got a nice doubling in performance. As far as GenAI is considered in the CPU space. Also side note, current Llama CPP implementation doesn't Use the NPU on these laptops, meaning, its useless for genAI tasks. You're welcome, and sadly its like all laptop reviewers got together and said "LETS NOT TEST ANY AI STUFF". Tech Chap ain't the only one, its just sad to see all of them doing this tho :(

[@infochannel8705]

Thanks for testing, but I do understand why they don't want to test AI stuff, even Llama like you said does not use NPU in laptops that have it, so basically your test is CPU performance not NPU performance. Also for office work, AI tech that's useful is probably background blur, noise suppresion. It's nice to be AI ready but for average consumer that does not mean anything.

[@AceAku]

I'd love to see your methodology for the game testing considering I've seen tests where the Intel still can't even match a steam deck.

[@Thetechchap]

well, 1080p medium settings with Xess (where applicable) - and ran game benchmarks or used an average from a period of repeatable gameplay. The Arc Xe2 is a big improvement

[@polaris1985]

At this point I'm just going to buy the cheapest, all are almost same in performance

[@saminnippon]

M1 macbook air if sub $700

[@zzdi88]

Thanks for your help, and the videos, but I just got questions cz I’d like to know btw the Asus rog zephyrus 14 and this Asus zenbook you got what’s the best to choose ?

[@MShahzaibAli4076]

There's a mistake at 10:03 in labeling the laptops. Specs of Surface Laptop and MacBook are labeled in the opposite way 😅

[@tortysoft]

M4 air 15 inch if it exists please 16Gb. If not, the M3 Air low end and a Mac Mini as a base station M4 external storage. Access with RVNC+sound I think.

[@Yakuzichacha]

hey man, great review as always! I have a question, would really appreciate if you could answer that. How bad is the heating issue on the S16 Ryzen AI HX 370? I have heard and read reviews that quite a lot of people have returned their laptops due to overheating. I would be using it only for basic tasks like some Excel modelling, basic chrome stuff, youtube videos and occasionally watch a movie or two. Would that push it so much that it overheats? Thanks in advance :)

[@Lutan9u]

9:58 the surface has an M3

[@BirkAnders]

@Thetechchap thanks for this awesome comparison! How is the battery life when using teams? I currently have an M1 Pro Macbook Pro 14" that is due for an upgrade. Since I spend most of my workday in MS Teams which drains my battery in 4-5 hours, I was wondering which chip would handle that task the best. Apple M3, SD XE or Intel Core Ultra 2? Thanks

[@8aravindk]

Excellent video. The 14 inch variants of the Ryzen laptops seem like the sweet spot, especially in Canada.

[@duffyrides]

Hey Tech chap. Which windows laptop did you prefer in Davinci resolve ? Intel or AMD ? I’m running the MSI 16 AI Evo released in the beginning of this year and it’s great value but not quite as polished /fast in Davinci as my 2021 MacBook Pro 14 (M1 Pro). Curious on the windows performance on your side in Davinci. Thanks !

[@Techonsapevole]

Please do this test also with Linux

[@gunnersph]

Planning to buy the Series 1 Zenbook 14 or MSI Prestige 13 AI Evo...... the Series 2 will likely come next year here in the Philippines.... is it worth the wait?

[@infochannel8705]

Depends on your use cases, series 1 is better for multi-threaded performance because it's high TDP and cores (that can change with Arrow lake), series 2 is very optimized for ultrabook that demands good single thread performance. If battery life and iGPU performance are important, go with series 2, but if you want high performance multihreaded either go with AMD 370 or series 1

[@nhanNguyen-wo8fy]

Ultra 2xx are really expensive as expensive as aple M3 8 core. But much less multicore performance.

[@CarloRizzante]

In the end, as it already happened with mobile phones, tablets, memory managements, and so on... Apple always paves the way. Everyone else follows.

[@adeelabbasi7375]

10:50 laptops touching eachother is not fair. some may have side ways exhaust and middle onces done even get relative fresh air as sides ones, so more heat less efficiency

[@infochannel8705]

What the heck are you talking about, none of them have side exhaust AMD, Intel, SD, Mac doesn't have a fan). You can clearly see all angles in the first 5 minutes of the video. Maybe see first before commenting

[@RidwanGosal]

I think few macbook users had realized that Intel and SD had caught up, heck, Intel had caught up one year after M1 but it was on HP business notebook line.

[@fedef77]

0:59 the thick chap

[@alexbooyse9053]

I used to listen to the Corrs

[@lytonmuchenje7259]

the windows surface giveaway goes to me ... , lets cash it Tech Chap!

[@HMiah21]

Would love to see a review of the HP Omnibook Ultra Flip 14 when it comes out!

[@petehboy2]

It doesn't exist but they're approaching

[@Xenshen1]

Love your video. It's looking hard. I've tried Strix point. And Snapdragon. Waiting on Intel ultra 2 258

[@kylorokx1552]

CAN YOU EDIT VIDEOS ON LUNAR LAKE?

[@Thetechchap]

yep

[@jean-francois9350]

Merci !

[@AmanKumar-o8j7x]

Why did buddy still chooses mac 😶

[@themobogamer150]

Can someone please send me an iPhone 10😢

[@cutthebullshi]

Let me help you out. It doesn't exist.

[@itsruman03]

8:00 Lol 😂😂😂

[@truenetgmx]

video playback for battery test is most useless possible - you are testing idle power plus video decoder and not general computation....

[@Thetechchap]

it's one use case, i could make a whole video just on the battery

[@musik4u343]

Air has the m4 right now

[@AzVfL]

Right now? Are you from 2025? Only iPad Pro has M4 rn

[@vaggelisbasoukas7928]

DISLIKE for the Apple START !

[@cheeloc]

Notification gang we up!

[@Thetechchap]

👊

[@noisyboy87]

AMD, all day long....

[@infochannel8705]

For multithreaded performance for sure! Other than that eh probably Intel.

[@BidhanGajurel]

1st one 2 say "First''

[@normaneshuchi5474]

Drinking game idea: Take a shot every time he says "We'll come back to that in a bit"🤣🤣🤣

[@Thetechchap]

haha - there's so much to cover though!

[@alexbooyse9053]

Cheeyups!