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by Tuna-Fish 1404 days ago
That is, however, an artifact of how Apple is pricing the models. The price difference between 8GB and 16GB is $200. This is absurd -- there's no way the added cost in ram is more than $50 for them and due to their market position and massive volume, it's probably quite a bit below that.
2 comments
yakubin 1404 days ago
ThinkPad X13 Gen 3 starts at $1919. Macbook Air M2 with 8GB RAM is $1199. Macbook Air M2 with 16GB RAM is $1,399. So even at 16GB it's still a lot cheaper than the Lenovo laptop used. Price doesn't explain the disparity in the hardware used in the benchmarks.
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Macha 1404 days ago
The consumer edition of the same laptop is $1200 https://www.newegg.com/p/1TS-000E-10RU3

(the 6800u ~= 6850u unless you're deploying them en masse in the enterprise, in which case there's extra management features in the Ryzen pro that the Mac doesn't have)

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paulmd 1404 days ago
So, you're comparing a lower build quality on the Lenovo side against the Apple? Yeah, of course if you start cutting costs out of other places, the price comes down, that's not a particularly interesting or insightful point, you've just loaded the comparison.
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Macha 1404 days ago
Looks like they don't have pictures of the current consumer model yet, but looking at last gen:

https://p4-ofp.static.pub/fes/cms/2022/04/20/j7rnbsqww5svxas...

https://p2-ofp.static.pub/fes/cms/2022/03/17/14ph1afu8vmtli8...

The better build quality amounts to black paint, a trackball, and clicky buttons on the trackpad.

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yakubin 1404 days ago
Also seems to be 16:10 instead of 16:9, and have a different set of ports. Honestly I don't see what those two laptops have in common beyond both being Lenovo.
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deckard1 1404 days ago
no one is paying Lenovo listing price. In fact, there is a 40% off coupon right there on the page, bringing that $1919 down to $1151. You may even be able to get deeper discounts through your employer corporate discount plan.
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samatman 1404 days ago
The RAM on these chips is integrating, making your statement not-even-wrong.

Furthermore, price matters when comparing price to performance, not when, say, nerfing a benchmark by running one chip with twice as much RAM.

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Tuna-Fish 1404 days ago
> The RAM on these chips is integrating,

This statement is not even wrong, in the sense that it is nonsensical. If you intended to say that the RAM is integrated on chip, that is incorrect. Apple marketing made that statement early on, but teardowns very clearly show that the RAM is soldered on package, not on integrated on chip. This is still a leap forward in power from other common devices, but a much smaller one than integrating the RAM on the chip.

Furthermore, the RAM on M2 is bog-standard SK Hynix LPDDR5. 2x 32gbit chips for the 8GB model, 2x 64gbit for the 16GB model, and 2x 96gbit for the 24GB model. I can buy the exact same chips that are used in 16GB Macbook Air for ~$70 each, and I am not Apple.

If the SKUs had the same level of markup, the price difference between 8GB and 16GB would be less than $50.

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Marsymars 1404 days ago
> I can buy the exact same chips that are used in 16GB Macbook Air for ~$70 each, and I am not Apple.

Makes me think of licensed trades. Anything a plumber or electrician installs for me will be significantly marked up from what I could buy it for myself.

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