[nateb2022]

> Look at the price of the MacBook Air. Then tell me you can get anything that remotely approaches that level of performance from any other major vendor, at anything remotely close to the same price. Or the same battery life.

I will happily be the one to tell you.

For between $600-700 you can get a gaming laptop from MSI, HP, Acer, Lenovo, and the like with a 12th or 13th gen Intel CPU (e.g. i5 13420H), 8-16 GB of RAM, and a RTX 3050 or better, along with a 512GB-1TB SSD. Single-core performance is just shy of the M2, multi-core performance beats the M2, GPU performance is significantly better, and the only major shortfall is battery life.

As others have said, the M-series is great at power efficiency, but if performance is your only criteria there are significantly cheaper alternatives. Sure, you're going to have to keep your laptop plugged in most of the time and it will probably sound like a jet engine at times, however Apple is NOT the leader in value for performance as you believe.

Regarding battery life, you could approach Apple levels of usage time by undervolting your CPU. Depending on your configuration and hardware, you could gain a couple more hours of usage time by undervolting as well as using integrated graphics and disabling the GPU in favor of integrated graphics.

[bradknowles]

So, what is the battery life on that device? One hour? Two hours?

Could you get twelve hours out of it? Eighteen?

And what is the resolution on that screen? Anywhere close to 2880 by 1864?

You have failed to deliver a system that actually meets the specs of the MacBook Air 15" that you are comparing against, and then declaring yourself the victor because your machine is marginally faster.

You fail to grasp that you have actually proven my point for me.

Apple is designing their machines for real people in the real world who may not be anywhere close to a power outlet for a long time. Or, who may not want to tie themselves down to needing to be close to a power outlet all the time.

[nateb2022]

> So, what is the battery life on that device? One hour? Two hours?

I'd put the average battery life of a $600-700 gaming laptop at ~4-6hr, although if you undervolt the CPU (getting maybe 80% of the performance) you could achieve 8+ hours on a charge. Screens vary, but they're typically 1280x1080 -- however at 120/144Hz. I'd say both are acceptable for most people.

And I am not claiming to compete against the MacBook Air 15" for $600-700. I am just pointing out that performance-wise, a $600-700 gaming laptop can equal a $1200 Macbook, and hence is a much better value.

If however you want me to find a challenger to your MacBook Air 15", I will.

With a $1200 base 15" M2 Macbook Air budget, you can get a Dell XPS 15 for $1,149 (https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/laptops/12th-gen-intel/spd/x...). The i7-12700H equals the M2 in single-core and beats the M2 in multi-core workloads. It comes with a RTX 3050, 16 GB of DDR5, and a 512GB SSD, and a 3456x2160 OLED touch display. You get 8GB more RAM, twice the storage, a better GPU and multi-core performance than the base model Mac Air for $50 less. Battery lasts up to 13 hours.

I am admittedly also an Apple fan, but that doesn't mean I have my eyes on the competition. While Apple has had its share of advances, and while it is still my go-to for my laptops, I will be the first to admit that there are plenty of alternatives depending on what you're looking for. And some of those alternatives are hands-down a better value depending on your criteria.

[bradknowles]

If you're looking for a gaming laptop, then I agree that Apple doesn't have good solutions in that space. That's primarily because there's not much in the way of good games that run on macOS. Hopefully, that will change with the new game porting kit that Apple has announced, but there's no way to tell right now.

But while 13 hours of battery runtime is quite good by Intel/Windows standards, it's still not the 18 hours you can get with the MacBook Air 15".

It's very clear that Apple has decided to optimize for certain things in their designs, and battery lifetime is one of them. They'll take a slight hit on CPU performance to get that. And most people won't notice the minor loss in CPU performance, but they will notice the significant increase in battery runtime.

[nateb2022]

There are Windows contenders that do offer comparable battery life to Macbooks, if that's your criteria. The $549 Acer Swift 3 (i7-1165G7, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) gets up to 16 hours, and the $799 Asus ZenBook 13 (i7-8565U, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) gets up to 15 hours.

Performance is close enough to Apple silicon that both laptops would be acceptable competitors for a general consumer's uses, RAM and storage are equal to if not better than Apple's base model Air's, and the price is unquestionably better.

Apple does strike a good balance, but it most definitely isn't leagues ahead of any other company no matter which way you look at it.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you want a display comparable to an MBA, the Dell XPS starts at $1449 (according to your link).

[nateb2022]

Indeed, although that extra display is optional. For a MacBook Air with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD (with the XPS still beating it for CPU & GPU), you'll pay $1,499 which again is a $50 savings. I personally don't place too much value in a screen but that's due to my workload, I'm sure that people who do video/graphics work would want the premium screen.

[seanmcdirmid]

I wouldn’t buy a 1X resolution screen in 2023. I’m surprised they are actually still sold, the quicker we move up to modern resolutions being standard the quicker we can just call them the new 1X and stop all the resolution hackery we have to do to support both at the same time these days.