MacBook Air M2 vs The Best Windows Laptops!

The new Apple MacBook Air with the M2 chip is supposed to be a battery life and performance leader in the thin and light laptop category. This MacBook Air is all new for 2022 and the M2 chip is crazy fast but how does it compare to the best Windows Laptops we've reviewed? Let's see how the Ryzen 7 6800U in the Zenbook S 13 OLED and Intel Alder Lake i7-1260P preform vs the Apple M2. So is the MacBook Air worth it?
Buy the MacBook Air M2 2022 - apple.co/3dkUebu
Buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2022 - lenovo.vzew.net/thinkx1gen10
Buy the ASUS Zenbook S 13 (AMD) - geni.us/yoo6FlB
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0:00 - The Apple MacBook Air M2 vs...EVERYTHING
0:46 - Specs
2:49 - Design and Build Quality
4:50 - All the Sizes & Weights
5:18 - Let's talk Power Cables
6:23 - Sponsor Spot
6:57 - The Best Keyboard?
9:26 - Are Trackpads Amazing?
10:46 - The Ports & IO
11:52 - Does the Apple Webcam Stack Up?
13:04 - Speakers...the Good, Bad & Ugly
14:05 - Who has the best Screen?
15:57 - Upgrade Options & SSD's
17:11 - Real-World Benchmarks
18:24 - Photo & Video Edition with the M2
19:45 - MacBook M2 Battery Life vs Windows
20:32 - Performance on Battery
21:08 - Noise Levels & Temperatures
21:52 - Final Thoughts
Review unit provided free of charge by Apple, ASUS and Lenovo. This video is sponsored by Corsair. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Gear list (Available on Amazon):
Main Camera (Dmitry) - geni.us/SONYA7III
Main Lens (Dmitry) - geni.us/Tamron2875
Main Camera (Eber) - geni.us/CanonEOS-R
Main Lens (Eber) - geni.us/dLL
Main 2nd Lens (Eber) - geni.us/Canon24-70MKII
Main Camera Mic (D & E) - geni.us/RODEMIC
Cheap 4K Camera (Panasonic G7) - geni.us/24nm
Awesome Slider - geni.us/1Hwt
Our Shotgun Mic - geni.us/Sennheiser-MKE600
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#macbookairm2 #hardwarecanucks

[@deejayrubio6915]

I have to say.. this is truly fun to watch.. that level of detail in comparing the three is absolutely clear. thanks!

[@buttattatt6738]

big props to apple for having a fanless device that is cooler than devices WITH fans, really shows the true power of the efficiency cores and the overall apple silicon architecture, also nice to see some windows laptops stepping up as competition

[@racerex340]

What I find interesting is that Intel did the same thing with their efficiency cores, while all 8 Ryzen cores are identical "performance" cores, yet the Ryzen power/battery efficiency trounces Intel in every case except the highest performance heavy load use, which tells me that Ryzen Zen3+ cores are not only faster than Intel's latest mobile performance cores, but also more efficient that Intel's latest mobile efficiency cores. That is nuts! I can't overlook what Apple is doing with their own silicon. I don't think it's really better in any real way than AMD or Ryzen, but having the onboard media engine is going to provide insane encode/decode performance being on-die, and the fact that Apple gets to engineer the rest of the platform around their own chip, while also coding the operating system gives them a level of control that Intel or AMD could never have. There are downsides to that approach as well, but few that matter when you're talking laptops.

[@Iinustechtips]

@@racerex340 I think intel will mature soon. alder lake is just their first attemp at the BIG.little architecture, amd also has the 7nm vs 10nm advantage

[@racerex340]

@@Iinustechtips oh, I'm sure they will, apple has showed that with the right optimization at the OS level, it clearly cna be extremely effective. I'm just surprised that AMD Zen3+ with its "last Gen" single core type architecture is able to perform as well as it does while being that efficient having no efficiency cores. At this rate, 5nm Zen might be capable of meeting or exceeding apple or Intel performance while possibly meeting Apple with efficiency, at least until M3 or whatever silicon ends up being apple's 3nm platform

[@ahappycoder2925]

The future of computers is bright, and I hope apple drives intel and AMD to do better.

[@aliefr2984]

@@Iinustechtips intel 10nm on alderlake is better than tiger lake 10nm, equal to 7nm tsmc.

[@BrianJones-wk8cx]

Great perspective on the question of competition between the platforms in thin and lights. While the M2 is the marquee entry, the field is pretty impressive all around. It’s a great time to be a consumer, thank you for your continued excellence in coverage!

[@thomaslystDK]

Really great and very detailed video, guys. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

[@tomis181]

Thanks. So many channels barely compare battery life of windows laptops with mac or fail to do different tasks while measuring. Your three tests on battery life are exactly what I was looking for. Makes the decision tougher but more informed. Hope you do the same with the 14" and 16" m2 pro/max/ whatever they call them with other top tier windows pcs when ryzen 7000 and 13 gen intel comes out.

[@pham3383]

Ryzen laptops have decent battery sonce laptop maker put in way bigger battery than mac

[@suntzu1409]

Battery life is extremely dependent on what you are doing

[@filbertmangiri9812]

@@suntzu1409 and how efficient is the cpu

[@akin242002]

Also, software compatibility is important for laptop selection. Macs don't get full features of Microsoft Excel. Therefore, Excel gurus on a Macbook either limit themselves to basic features or use Google sheets. Same for Azure, Powershell, C#, or Power BI. With Macs, they have unique software and CPU. Just factor in what works best for your career.

[@kieranlee9610]

@@pham3383 this is where i tell you that intel actually have better battery life the only issue is when it comes in full power because intel is all about the performance but these intel laptops outperform ryzen and at performance mode will only die half an hour ish before the ryzen

[@Ndumixo]

If Microsoft were to produce their own chips which would be tightly integrated with Windows performance, the game would change forever.

[@mowgli6345]

It's odd that they haven't even mentioned anything about trying it. I feel like if they were they'd be so far behind in development (especially because of the chip shortage) that we wouldn't even see comparable performance until 2-3 generations in.

[@Ndumixo]

@@mowgli6345 Indeed but better late than never

[@bigsean6045]

Imagine if Microsoft and Intel merged and optimized everything😮

[@ViiMarsik]

@PrAEdo For most people the worst part about MacBooks is the OS

[@rahultakroo919]

@@ViiMarsik I have to say I had been using windows for 13 years now and just switched over to mac, If you have an iphone and use the Apple ecosystem actively it is 1000% better than using a windows but the the windows OS is something apple can never beat with their overly complicated and weird user interface.

[@gethomeopathyonline]

I was planning to buy the Zenbook s13 for its weight, and it was in my Wishlist to compare these three laptops and looks like you answered it with an Amazing review. Your reviews are precise to the point and making it simple for us to decide👏

[@themightiness]

I actually just got the M2 MBA a few weeks ago. It's my first Mac ever and I love it. It'll never replace my desktop PC of course, but for a dedicated work machine I couldn't be happier. I get over 2 full days of work on one battery charge which is incredible and the experience is so smooth. It's really like a giant phone. I can close the lid and in sleep it still receives imessages and rings on the laptop... but it'll last in that state for days and days. I used to be a big Lenovo fan back in the day but the efficiency of the current Intel chips is just so disappointing, I wish they would offer a Ryzen version of the X1.

[@sergeyd2199]

Lenovo makes crap nowadays...

[@themightiness]

@@sergeyd2199 Lenovo kind of lost me with their baked in BIOS malware debacle back in 2015 or 2016... but I do miss my old T400, that thing was awesome.

[@sergeyd2199]

@@themightiness Loved my TP201i! But now they can’t even make their laptops sleep properly, so..

[@nandoolivetto]

I’m curious about your desktop pc: What are the specs of your set up? I’m asking that because the new Air with M2, 10 cores GPU, 512gb and 16gb is a beast.

[@alfredosalinas5188]

🤣🤣🤣

[@vishalpal1200]

A very decent comparison mate. Just wanted to point out since I own the S13 that Zenbook S13 has all 3 usb c ports compatible with Display Port and Charging capable. Maybe the review units sent earlier were different but mine has all 3 ports with full compatibility and interestingly they seem to be usb4 capable (with a BIOS update which might come later. A beta bios was available though which proved this). Also the lower performance on zenbook on battery is because of 18W power limit on battery power which you can bypass using any ryzenadj based tool like AMD APU tuning utility. It unlocks the full wattage like when plugged in and you get nearly same performance on battery (Maybe less battery life though so could be a tradeoff)

[@HammadWasti-en1ci]

Hows the battery life?

[@samisawani5289]

Really appreciate the splendid work! Been thinking about these three laptops recently actually and ur vid came in just at the right time!

[@lesserlogic9977]

very well put together video from beginning to end. I appreciate the approach while still keeping it, among three devices.

[@Jackson33oroToro]

Great job breaking down comparison of top laptops. I have been on the fence between MacBook Air and ZenBook.

[@sammyt3514]

Brilliant comparison that covered all the points of interest to give a complete picture of the strengths/weaknesses of each laptop/platform, thanks a lot! And of the 3 I'd pick the Lenovo; I've been using Lenovos since 2018 (was a Dell customer prior to that) and have been spoiled by their keyboards so won't be using anything else. Plus, other aspects of the Carbon like performance, screen, etc. are perfectly suitable for my use. Finally, the military grade durability gives me peace of mind; pouring coffee on the laptop, or dropping it, are not exactly unheard of when it comes to me, lol.

[@drishalballaney6590]

imho the x1 carbon series are not worth it, T series give a better vfm, and not only that it has an option for AMD APUs, which make it really good currently have the P14s gen 1 which is exactly like T14 gen 1 AMD but its absolutely fine (apart from a few quirks which was solved by lenovo warranty)

[@hishnash]

One thing to note when looking at TB ports it is very important to look at the systems internally to check if each port has its own dedicated controller and bandwidth or if the 2 ports are sharing a controller. It is not uncommon for laptops to ship with 2 ports being handled by a single controller and thus sharing the bandwidth, this is ok if you running 2 lower resolution displays from them but if you wanted to say run a 4k 60 display or higher you will commonly find that you cant use both ports at once as there is just no enough bandwidth,. The other limitation can be power delivery if the ports share a power backplane then you can find if you plug in 2 devices that both need to draw some power (like a larger external and charging a phone) that one of the devices might fail to get power or will get a very very small power provided that might not be enough. Another situation that can be very painful if the TB ports share bandwidth is if you want to use a high speed ethernet adaptor on one port and a display on the other.

[@uksteep]

100% true. Totally agree. For my work (not multimedia) macos is too smooth… but battery 🔋 life touchpad and sleep 💤 mode is far away from rivals. So a lot of fiches what sale mac for me but windows is still my best.

[@origosis]

Excellent touch with the colors and the 3 brands. You all always have such gorgeous color in your content!

[@vitusyu9583]

Good effort, admire your narration to be so smooth and clear!

[@Joshua_Uwadiae]

You guys have the cleanest and best sponsored segments I have ever seen

[@marekg9427]

Very good and interesting review. One thing to consider is that you cannot (without workarounds) connect two external displays to the Macbook Air M2 (or M1). I was about to buy one, but that really bugs me - not being able to connect two screens... Apple deliberatly upsells you into the 14/16 inch Macbook pros to allow to do that basic feature - nobody even thinks about that could be lacking. Quite annoying, for an otherwise awesome device at a very attractive pricepoint!

[@markojenicfilm]

So useful and concise. Thank you for making this

[@konradg9258]

Great review! I'm currently choosing laptop for programming and this was very helpful.

[@satishprasannan4605]

The USB Ports on the Zenbook S 13 OLED are USB 4 Ready (via firmware} and all of them support Power Delivery and display port.

[@JohnnyB43]

I moved by chance from DELL to ASUS over that last few years. I got a really great offer on a older 14" ZenBook - that was just supposed to be for web browsing and travel. But when my main laptop broke / became a brick [DELL XPS 15] I was reliant on the ASUS for everything. And it never let me down. [in contrast the DELL XPS was a replacement for a DELL Precision M that also became a useless brick a week or two after it was 1 year old and out of warranty] Now my main workhorse is an ASUS Zephyrus, and I am very happy with it. Anyway, not really the same category as what you have here in this video, but I am just putting across that on the reliability stand point in my experience ASUS are great and you do get offers where you can get them for a bargain price. cheers! JB

[@s.bamahfoodh]

I really enjoy your reviews.. keep it up :)

[@diegomarche]

Great video, I was wondering if anyone had made this kind of comparison. Thanks

[@vlkhvan]

I went with a base MBA M2. I don't do anything super-heavy on this machine. Most of my work is coding and accessing remote servers, and this is a perfect device for this type of workload. Great battery life, amazing screen, and awesome keyboard. Plus, fanless and super portable

[@anvaraminov9584]

What model and specs do you use (RAM and storage)? Do you recommend MBA for web development?

[@mihnea-um5gy]

Wow literally found the comment I ve been waiting for. Just wanted to see if it s enough for coding and accessing remote servers. Thanks!

[@adamstudios7884]

how about do editing like photoshop and illustrator on MBA M2 8gb Ram, 512 ssd?

[@DenzelHooke]

How is it with docker and front end development?

[@codeebebout-valentine6534]

I'd actually be very interested to see how the M2 MacBook performs with Windows 10 or 11 on it.... Those specs and that long battery life would be incredible with Windows!

[@dee_wade]

I believe the ARM64 ISO for windows 11 is available now, so I think it's safe to say that we will be seeing Mac w/ Windows 11 videos pretty soon...

[@davidkorcak]

@@dee_wade Windows blocks it from running bare-metal on devices that aren’t Qualcomm

[@dee_wade]

@@davidkorcak interesting.. dev previews included?

[@davidkorcak]

@@dee_wade Yes. They can be virtualized on Apple Silicon, but cannot run bare-metal (don’t have any way to boot or have drivers)

[@ishaankartick4653]

One of the reasons Mac's have great battery life is because of the optimisation, if I'm not wrong... If it were to run windows we probably wouldn't see as good battery life or performance from the speakers

[@awais105794]

Loved this video, man. Please keep making simple and nice videos like this one. Excellent job!

[@gene108]

Thank you for comparing similarly priced and spec-ed thin laptops. It makes evaluating choices easier.

[@seanwang9276]

Awesome comparison! Great details on where it matters for us non-techies. Confirmed my decision to buy the MacBook Air. Now I’m even more excited for my first Mac arriving in 2 weeks.

[@SaltyPenguin255]

You won't be disappointed. Mac OS takes a bit of time if you've been a windows user for many years. I switched over 12 years ago and will never go back. These M's are such a huge leap forward.

[@Driftuner]

Would have been interesting to showcase light gaming application, that Ryzen is a beast when it comes to graphic performance, it nearly rivals some discrete gpus

[@uksteep]

Super review, thank you!!! The most interesting which I saw…

[@abe4985]

Lot of effort was put in this video and it shows, very detailed and informative

[@drangertornado]

The Thinkpad has thunderbolt 4 so you can actually pair it with RTX 4090 through eGPU and gain more performance if you are into 3D Rendering. What is best again depends on the use case though.

[@DrTomWelsh]

Good unbiased sounding review, and nice coloured jumper matching the background PC! One note I have on using Photoshop with the Mac is for some reason holding spacebar doesn't allow you move around the image which is very infuriating. If there is a setting somewhere I'm missing I'd love to know but I assume it's to do with the version for the new Apple chips not being x86? I also don't really like the click in the touchpad for dragging things but that's probably just me, I don't like any touchpads.

[@papaandrey8597]

Thanx for the comparison! Very interesting details to consider choosing a laptop.

[@nick_merchant]

This was beautifully done. Thanks

[@Luffy2Y]

The Zenbook was a great choice. At the end it isn't about how good a machine is on paper or how it feels. It's about what software you need to run and if you want to game and at which level.

[@joeygarcia6783]

how cool didn't know that

[@smartlearning6390]

its also about build quality that macbook excels at

[@joeygarcia6783]

@@smartlearning6390 Amen

[@FightClass3]

Don't buy a laptop to play games, unless you have small brain...

[@Krieky]

Very clear outcomes. Thanks for the detailed review.

[@Brick100]

Excellent video as per usual. Unrelated question- what camera are you using for your talking head shots? Looks really good

[@the_emmo]

probably the best comparison of mac vs windows laptops I've seen. great job as usual 👏

[@jhamjt4981]

Given the ZenBook S13 OLED has touchscreen with higher resolutions than the M2 Air, Ryzen efficiency is on par with the Apple silicon. Although the M2 SoC manages to sustain its performance better than the Ryzen on battery. Forget Intel in 2022, their 12th gen P series is a mess. The battery life got hit. Would be good if you can test the Huawei MateBook 16 with Ryzen 7 (I'm using one atm). It has a good balance between screen real estate, performance and battery life. Hopefully, Windows on ARM can close the gap in 2023. Customers will benefit from the healthy competition.

[@torentmonkey]

That moment when laptops have a 30w charger and phones 120w 🤣🤣

[@Gc7788m]

just what i was looking for! ty!

[@DougWCosta]

I almost got out of this video to search for maintainability of this notebooks. But you got on point with this video scripts, and answered all my questions. Nice jop!

[@CaseOfBears]

It’s a perfect comparison, but you missed GPU benchmarks completely. Would be very interesting to see how the improved M2 GPU and the RDNA2 iGPU in the Zenbook compare against each other. And how much their lead is versus the Xe iGPU.

[@vmafarah9473]

I was hoping for that review. I think it's faster than 1050ti. More than double graphical performance than Alderlake.

[@Dede23j]

Just want to say that the Macbook Air M2 in the video config cost €2329 here in Europe. U can get the 14inch Macbook Pro basemodel for €2249 (But with 512GB storage)

[@chanceslaughter3237]

yep and the m1 pro would stomp both the Asus and the zenbook except in the portability sector, since asus and zenbook are already lighter

[@baclava69]

@@chanceslaughter3237 but you have to use mac and therefore support Apple. That's just horrible.

[@chanceslaughter3237]

@@baclava69 I used to agree because I thought they were a terrible non innovative over charging company, and they were... now with apple silicon mac's, although still overcharging a ridiculous amount for storage and ram, and the base model having too little, they are clearly innovating the field.. I don't mind supporting that... still won't buy an iphone--yuck... apple is clearly innovating and has superior products now, I'll buy them if I'm in the market... I have an m2 air on the way to replace my old gaming laptop(don't use it for gaming much as I have a desktop at home that's much better, no longer want a laptop for gaming).. also some of apples new software like global control or whatever to drag files between devices and stuff is super cool... I won't use it since I don't like other apple devices but still worth acknowledging... I think it's pretty shallow to hate apple products just because it's apple, if they make a better product I think as a consumer you should buy the product that best fits your needs for the best price

[@baclava69]

@@chanceslaughter3237 as a business they are abhorrent. I cannot support companies that do not care at all about consumers or value for money, right to repair etc. I use all Apple products through work onavery large scale, and it's a nightmare tbh. I seen appeal to any of their products apart from people who don't know how yo use a computer, they are simple. I'll say there record keeping, marketing and backup systems are extraordinary!!

[@chanceslaughter3237]

@@baclava69 I agree, I think a lot of their business practices are disgusting at best. Regardless, I want the best computer for the money, and for my needs the m2 air is that...

[@moicr96]

this was really fun to watch, thanks!

[@AhmedQais999]

Great and practical comparison, thank you

[@asaflevy1540]

Just heads up, X1 carbon has quality control issues (Gen9) I had to replace it with T14 Gen 3 because both camera, speakers and the microphone were all dead on arrival, brand new from box .

[@guptaanmol184]

Thanks for the update! How was your T14 Gen3 usage been ? Why did you pick it over the Macbook ?

[@TooManyWilliams]

Fantastic comparison guys! Loved the whole thing. I think its clear the Air is the right choice for me

[@mohammadmahdiyousefi4809]

thank you for this perfect review an thorough comparison.

[@ichsanichsan9987]

very clear explanation, Thanks!

[@UltraFighter18]

Regarding the screen brightness, LTT recently did a video and they showed how better contrast and color saturation changes the perception regarding brightness. The thing is Asus's OLED display can very well be perceived by our eyes as brighter because of the better brightness control, way better contrast and color saturation. It's overall a better screen. The same way OLED TVs aren;t as bright but HDR generally delivers a more impactfull images because of the element I mentioned above.

[@Pix256]

Its NOT about impact. When you are on the outside brightness matters ALOT even if you are at a coffee shop. 400nits is not enough for the screen to be let alone visible on a lot of situations. That's why mobile phoneS push up to 1750nits on their AMOLEDS screens, and visibility is still compromised when out in the open whenever the sun is free(s21 ultra-s22 owners know this from experience). 360 nits is certainly noticible worse than 431, to the point where in a bunch of situations you will be able to see content on the 431 while you will be barely able to distingish ui on the 360 nits screen.

[@jesusbarrera6916]

@@Pix256 those 1750nits are single second single pizel brightness.... they are never achieved due to heat concerns, most phones will only get as bright as 500nits

[@PSYCHOV3N0M]

@@Pix256 Up to 2,000 nits on AMOLED screens now (iPhone 14 Pro series thanks to Samsung Display).

[@STX1981]

@@PSYCHOV3N0M but only for few minutes

[@gibby3350]

I have been loving my M2 Air so far! I got the 16gb ram and 512gb storage at a heavy discount with the Apple student discount and I'm so happy! Coming from a mid-2015 Macbook Pro (maxed out apart from the storage fyi), the battery, feel, lightness, speed, and more is just so fantastic. Highly recommend whatever M-series Apple laptop you can afford, they are all super good!

[@supportyou10]

I literally had a 15 inch pro maxed out from 3 years ago. Just for a fanless thin and light laptop to beat it by twice the performance. Apple chips are no joke. Really loving my new Air

[@disadadi8958]

@@supportyou10 I like the Apple hardware. However, the OS is not to my liking and ARM simply doesn't fit my need (many of the software I use need x86). If it wasn't for those problems I would've seriously considered Apple. The display and SoC are so good.

[@supportyou10]

@@disadadi8958 ik it pisses me off that windows decided to end support for M chips

[@disadadi8958]

@@supportyou10 I mean yeah, but I wouldn't get it even with windows because most software I use needs x86. And that is more than enough reasoning for me to stay away from Apple.

[@supportyou10]

@@disadadi8958 understandable

[@hqtravel]

Good job man , great video !

[@ckvinod6746]

Thanks a lot bro... You cleared lot of doubts. I am gonna buy MBA M2 all because of your clear guidance.

[@TRXFRMR41-th7vd]

I went from windows to Mac when I bought a used intel MacBook Air and I loved it. I did a lot of reading on the the m2 air and decide to purchase the base model and I was blown away by its performance needless to say I love the M2 MacBook Air. I am now committed to to the Apple eco system with my M2 air my iPad Pro 11 my iPhone 13 and my Apple Watch 8.

[@ENB90]

I believe you can upgrade the network card(Mediatek) for the ASUS S13 OLED.

[@corey7219]

You can @16:25

[@stf3912]

what is better network card? is mediatek bad

[@ENB90]

@@stf3912 No but I believe most people prefer the intel wireless card.

[@djben928]

Thank you so much for your honest review. You're awesome and it is very fun to watch. It is very informative. I highly recommend this channel.

[@sudeepka3]

One of the most practical and in details review I have ever watched

[@naels91]

I have been using apple and windows (Lenovo) for years now and i am sad to say that the competition between windows and apple is almost non existing! Windows is obviously a better choice for some specific tasks, but overall its hard to beat an apple specially with their new M chips. Again it all depends on the kind of work you do. For me, as a researcher in the field of history of architecture, i use my computer mainly for writing, doing some presentation, reading, checking emails, bowsing the web and some light autocad and photoshop and the MacBook air does this perfectly! with a great battery life and its amazing portability. Really having an Macbook Air (I have the 2020 intel) gives you a great feeling of knowing that you can take your laptop everywhere, work on it for hours and it will never fail you. I would really love to have a windows laptop with the easy to use interface of apple and the reliability of IOS but until now there is nothing like it. I will hopefully be getting my M2 air soon. Thank you for a very good review.

[@TheoWerewolf]

Of course, it also depends one what software you're using and need and whether it runs on a Mac or not. Sidenote, the Asus Rog Flow Z13 comes in around the same price as the MBA and the X1, BUT, it's a full 2-1 tablet system, has an i9 12900 AND includes a discrete RTX3050 TI GPU. The Rog Flow X13 is similarly specced, but with a Ryzen 9 6900HS and is a laptop. And you reviewed both of them, so you can't have not been aware of them.

[@GraveUypo]

there is significant apple bias in this channel though.

[@rayrazor1913]

@20:15 10h58m of battery life on Zenbook was rounded off to 10 hours 😅

[@ThePolaris87]

This was a great video. Thanks!

[@jackronald3591]

Thanks for the great video I didn’t know I needed to see!! subscribed! 👍

[@tobiasstamenkovic9628]

Note: The Thinkpad is also available with a 2k OLED display. If your throwing that kinda money at a laptop, you probably spend the extra 200ish bucks for a nicer display too. Also, as it is the norm with Intel thin-and-lights, an i7 makes about as much sense as an ashtray ona motorcycle. In reality the i5 oftentimes even outperforms the i7, due to better thermals and thus less throttling. That and 12th gen isnt quite where it wants to be, yet. Im curious for 13th gen and schedulers that put e-cores to good use.

[@zaidulh]

Exactly the comparison I was looking for 🔥I think I'll go with the zenbook s13 as it's upgradable, repair cost will be much lower (as I'm a frequent traveler) and the base varient will be perfect not effecting much on the wallet. Thanks for the vid ❤

[@yahyashafqat7352]

Mate I would also recomend looking into the g14 2021 model, It can mostly be found on sale for 1100 bucks and you get a lot of laptop for that money. Its got a 144hz screen 100% srgb and p3 coverage. Also the newer refresh comes with a rtx 3060 paired with a 5800hs. Its also got better speakers with 4 of thhem in total. 2 bottom firing and 2 top firing. It also nets me incredible battery life at around 7-8 hours at 144hz and 70-80% brightness. It was the best purchase descision I've made yet. I would also onsider the 2022 model as for the same price of around 1400$, you get a better cpu, gpu, screen, speakers, trackpad and battery life.

[@sweetdreams5454]

also consider the acer swift x, i feel it's a very good deal

[@lars2894]

Good luck finding S13

[@Misael8924]

Hope Apple told y'all fools that big Security risk apple left open on purpose to their M chips that are imposible to patch. Nothing is for nothing. Google engineering warned found the Vulnerability an told them. Also, Apples is running at 5nm node. While Ryzen is running @ 6nm an catching each year. Better battery, efficiency, cooling, an higher score. Apple only advantage is their own, mobile Os implemention apps. TMC is doing most of the work. Something this dude filed to tell. AMD is catching in time pass them. Nothing last for ever.

[@santhoshsridhar5887]

@@yahyashafqat7352 Won't do well under load when disconnected from charger. The G15 is better in this regard though.

[@zaidulh]

Did you get your hands on the lenovo yoga 7 2022 with amd 6000 series processors? Would love to see a comparison or detailed review of that and how it compares with zenbook s13, m2 air. Looking forward ❤

[@mahmood1212]

Great comparison. Very informative.

[@yunuskadiralakus]

One of the best comparison I have ever seen indeed…

[@HardwareCanucks]

Thanks!

[@fretboardrunner]

This was an absolutely perfect comparison video between the ecosystems. I can't imagine any aspect that would be important to me missing. Nice! Sadly I really need 32 GB for work, so a lot of thin-and-light notebooks are just not an option.

[@Lee.S321]

The lenovo Z13 is configurable up to 32 GB, about 1.3 KG, but can get spendy if you max out the add-ons (OLED display, 1 TB SSD etc).

[@brandonspkhaw5528]

One of the best reviews out there thanks!

[@ebroheam]

thanks for the video

[@johnmartin8481]

Thank you for another informative video. I really enjoyed the comparison between AMD, Intel, and Apple laptops. This video demonstrated just how competitive laptops brands are today. It is a wonderful time to buy a new laptop. Depending on a buyer’s use case, Apple’s MacBook Air M2 results are impressive in its performance and battery life. And when I see the performance and battery life of the Intel and AMD laptops, all of them would meet my basic requirements today. That said, none of these laptops would meet my requirements as wonderful as they are, due to some features missing. I prefer a premium Ultra-Thin and Light Ultrabook convertible or 2 in1 laptop design, a 15-inch OLED display with multitouch and pen inking support. For me the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360, a convertible 2 in 1 laptop design, with a 15.6-inch AMOLED multitouch display with S Pen and Inking support weighing just 3.1 pounds. I cannot tell you how excited I was when I first picked up the Galaxy Book Pro 360 15.6 AMOLED laptop. It is amazing to hold it in your hands and even better to use it every day. Clearly Samsung is just one of several premium Windows laptops with these features. But there are few that compare to the portability of the Galaxy Book Pro 360 Ultra-Thin and Light design. And I reviewed several of them from HP, Dell and Lenovo ThinkPad and I concluded I could have been happy with any of them. As it stands today, only Windows PC brand laptops from Intel and AMD have the features I require. Apple does offer similar features when you combine the Apple iPad and MacBook Air M2 together. I am unclear why Apple does not offer these features on a MacBook model for a premium price. I hear Apple fears it may impact the Apple iPad sales. There may be truth to that if the pricing of a single MacBook Air M2, 2 in 1 convertible is less cost than a MacBook Air M2 and iPad with Apple Pencil support combined. I believe there is a market for Apple fans to appreciate a 2 in 1 convertible OLED Touch display with Apple Pencil support. Maybe in a future release, say Apple MacBook Air M3. Apple could offer this in 13- and 15-inch OLED display size for Apple fans who are looking for these features. I hope Apple offers these features sometime in a future MacBook.

[@Jopekos]

You guys will review a Linux Laptop ?? like System76, They are making amazing support products that are repair friendly.

[@racerex340]

while I find them interesting, I'm betting that 98% of the laptop community fit into the Windows or MacOS use case camps. Sure, programmers and some other systems engineers and analysts might get a benefit from a Linux laptop. but most of the programmers I know just carry a MacBook. Channels like this one survive and thrive by making content which covers large swaths of a potential target audience. I just don't think Linux laptops have enough of an audience for a channel this size to cover them. LTT has done a few linux laptop videos, but if I recall they are some of their least performing laptop review videos. Smaller niche channels, and specifically Linux oriented channels would be able to do Linux laptop reviews while actually doing Linux laptops justice.

[@kniinortey31]

That's a great comparison. I learned a lot. Certainly goin for MacBook air m2

[@alinadir7816]

Great video thank you

[@antonshynkaretskyi4077]

Did you not have Dell XPS 13, or did you consider it not good enough? Really interested in how you think it compares here.

[@darklyger64]

They probably don't have it at hand

[@ulamss5]

With Dell you'd spend more time with it on RMA than using it.

[@lars2894]

Considering the sheer amount of reported quality control issues, they probably deemed it was not a product worth even mentioning.

[@peterjansen4826]

I am impressed by how M2 handles Davinci Resolve and Adobe. I have done some quick reading on M2, I notice that it has double the memory throughput of Zen3 and also around double the transistors (not quite but close enough), but that is including the GPU for M2. I think that the much higher memory throughput helps M2 a lot with video-encoding, I know that it does not impact Blender and Cinebench much. I carefully speculate that the much higher memory throughput gives it an edge for video-encoding.

[@hishnash]

more than 1/2 of the die area is for stuff other than GPU or CPU. Video encoders, display controlers, rather large on die cache, NPU etc. CB is a really crap benchmark since even if your real world task is cpu rendering your never going to be doing that for a scene that small and how a system perfomance on a real large scenes (that is to large for the gpu) is very different in perticlare a system were the GPU has exactly the same memory as the cpu so any sense you can run on this cpu you an run on the GPU... so the CPU rendering then is relay null and void these days unless your using some ultra custom shader that does not support gpu shading but that again is a very long way from the CB performance.

[@peterjansen4826]

@@hishnash Video encoding on CPU's is great though, it strongly reduces the CPU-load for the same work. However, in practice power-wise the impact is a bit disappointing because it mostly is the graphics card which increase power-draw and heat for your system. I agree that Cinebench is not a good benchmark, the techtubers just use it because most of their viewers use Windows (I do not anymore). Blender with several projects (different specialization for each) would be better because you can test more varied (integer, floating point...). Even if you wouldn't run it on the CPU in practice it still is useful as a benchmark as long as you are aware that the winner depends on which project you use and that not all flaws (like cache-latency) will show up in Blender. There are more specific tests for all of that, the question is which weightfactors you should use for those, how much of what do you use in common tasks (gaming, rendering, compiling) so I am strongly in favor of both good synthetic tests (like Geebench) and applications. By the way, both Blender and Cinebench (via wine) perform better on Linux than on Windows, Blender performs even better on Apple than on Windows, allegedly it (for Blender) has to do with how fast the loads are divided over the threads before the rendering itself starts.

[@narendranathjagarlamudi3191]

@@hishnash yeah same goes for the even crappier Geekbench5

[@hishnash]

@@narendranathjagarlamudi3191 The issue with Geekbench is mostly down to runtime not workload. If you want an idea of general performance for short burst workloads GB is rather nice, remember to look at the resists for individual tests and compare the tests there are relevant for your workload. Unlike CB many of the GB tasks are relevant real world tasks your cpu would be doing, but most people are unlikely to do all of these tasks on their chips so its important to just look at the results for the tasks your likely to be doing. For light short lived workloads GB is thus rather good (not the aggregate score but the per task score). The main issue with GB is that people use this score to infer perofmance on other (typify sustained) tasks. Using some of the GB tests can provide extra info when comparing 2 systems as long as your main comparison is based on your main application/s of use. GB can fill in all the other fast little tasks that you do, mostly you can consider GB to be more of a responsiveness score rather than a sustained max capacity store. That is all with respect to CPU, GB GPU scores are a load of other issues due to the very small size of the tasks most real world applications dealing with such short workloads (less than 1ms for many of these workloads on modern gpus) would not bother to use the GPU if they were just running a few of them, the overhead of setting up the GPU, copying data etc is just not worth it and on some GPUs if your not providing it with enough work the GPU schedular will opt to down clock the GPU so if another app comes along in a few ms time and really asked for a LOT of work that the GPU has the thermal headroom to boost to max for that other application.

[@jesusbarrera6916]

in reality is the media engine APPLE made specifically for those applications

[@apostolis_23]

Great review!! Thank you!!

[@ThanhLe-qr5eo]

Very detailed information. I hope you can review on the Fujitsu UH-X

[@sethdbrown30]

You should've threw in the Asus Vivobook 14 Pro Oled. Ryzen 5800h with Nvidia Rtx 3050, 16gb Ram, 1TB ssd, all for around $1300

[@handlemonium]

Yeah that's a good one. Kinda in the similar class as the Thinkpad Extreme, Acer Swift X (but bigger), and other $700-$1,100 14/15-inchers with the the 3050 though. Ryzen and decent battery life with OLED is a really big plus tho.

[@brydonthunder]

Major problem with that laptop is its specs are too high performance and battery life is smaller than all 3 of the listed laptops. What you get is: a laptop that lasts 4 hours standby time. For work laptops if a laptop can last over atleast 7 hours its not good enough

[@airman.]

with 2 hours of battery life.

[@samb2166]

That's a desktop replacement laptop. not a real laptop which you are freely to use without plugging in power

[@oozly9291]

@@samb2166 that’s no where near a desktop replacement

[@shauryakalia3296]

Surprising that amd 6800U beat apple in almost every performance test, even with performance degradation after running for some time. The way everyone was praising apple's performance made it feel like it was worlds ahead compared to anything intel or amd. Also, 15 hrs of battery life for reading and browsing pages seems quite an achievement, even though battery is larger than macbook

[@ninjarrow07]

Great review and really appreciated the comparison. One suggestion - even if you're trying to remain unbiased for the review, but some ways you compared the laptops in performance make it seem so. Why not use percent difference instead to clearly show with your data how much better/worse something is? :)

[@rebel2809]

that doesnt change how biased it may have been

[@michaelgreen9640]

Awesome video this is for someone like who is trying to weigh there options

[@akin242002]

Just looking at the Asus Zenbook 13 specs and price, I would go with the Asus Zenbook. Great display, good CPU, good RAM, and good SSD at a significantly lower price.

[@nicoferrari8]

All of the x1 carbon problems would be solved if it had ryzen...

[@aaron1983]

Yes

[@bill_lee]

Useful information 🎉!

[@contrariangrin]

Great review

[@ginojap]

Macbook resale value is enough to ditch any other solution. And then there are many other reasons like how wonderful is to work with a machine always cold, fanless, long lasting battery and whose performance doesn't change when it works unplugged from the power.

[@AyoHues]

Interesting take - I expected the Windows laptops to do slightly better. It wouldn’t be difficult to find ones that would run the Mac much closer. Also no-one should buy this substantially upgraded version of the M2 Air but instead spend similar money on the entry level 14” M1 MacBook Pro. (And I’d challenge anyone to show a real world advantage for the 8c GPU vs the pricey 10c upgrade given the passive cooling.) I’ve gone over to Apple silicon after decades with Windows laptops but for those that still have to use Windows, I’d recommend you check out the AMD Advantage class for far, far superior efficiency & bang for your buck than anything with Intel parts.

[@BlendingWithHenry]

Perhaps the best laptop comparison on KZbin bar none! Enjoyable to watch and extremely fair.

[@davidAll5]

excellent ! thanx

[@dhilsiva]

My pick is the Zenbook S 13 OLED.

[@shremk9100]

20:46 the colouring on this chart might be a bit misleading. Sure the MacBook Air may maintain its performance on battery, but it still gets beaten by the ZenBook S13 in Cinebench and Blender. I get that the green text for the M2 is meant to show it's consistent performance, but that-along with the commentary-led me to believe it would also be the fastest in all tests.

[@tams805]

If Eber reads this, I know he'll dispute it, but it does seem like he's become *a little bit* of an Apple fanboy as of late.

[@lwahmanyoni6222]

Great video! Literally looking for a good laptop

[@krisnaive]

Great video!

[@JackLodestar]

Thanks for this review. I'm actually having a hard time deciding between MacBook Air M2 and Asus S13, but now it's clear to me I should choose the Air M2. Thanks man!

[@bartoszplo]

I don't get why they all decided to suddenly skip the SD card reader when these are definitely in an eye of content creators. When I'm trying to travel light a device that forces to carry additional readers is simply a straight no go. Was really close to order the Zenbook but had to cross it off the list because of that reason.

[@drchtct]

Apple leaves the SD card reader for the Pro versions, which are aimed at content creators. The Air is the Go To for students and casual users, every lecture room is full with these things, none fof these people use an SD card reader, hence they skip it and save the costs

[@bartoszplo]

@@drchtct My comment was focused on the non Apple machines

[@atorbtech]

Great video

[@mangallekthe7284]

Best comparison video 👍