**The Battle for Laptop Supremacy: A Comprehensive Review**

In recent years, the laptop market has become increasingly saturated with top-notch devices from various manufacturers. Among them, Apple's M3 chip has been making waves with its impressive performance and efficiency. But how does it stack up against other notable players like Intel and AMD? In this article, we'll delve into a detailed review of each device to determine which one comes out on top.

**The Snapdragon X Elite: A Powerhouse with Minimal Wattage**

In our single-core CPU tests, Apple's M3 chip took the lead, followed closely by the Snapdragon X Elite. This is no surprise, given the Snapdragon's reputation for efficiency and power management. The X Elite's ability to maintain its performance without a fan and even when running on battery-only mode is a significant advantage in terms of portability and silent operation. In our battery life tests, the Snapdragon X Elite performed admirably, maintaining its results even when plugged into the charger.

**The Intel Core Ultra Series 2: A Multicore Master**

While the M3 chip excelled in single-core tasks, the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 took center stage in multicore tests. With a significant lead over both the M3 and Snapdragon X Elite, the Core Ultra Series 2 proved itself to be a formidable force in terms of overall performance. However, its reduced core count meant that it fell behind in multicore workloads, with a notable 25% slowness compared to its Intel Core Ultra Series 1 counterpart.

**The Apple MacBook Air: A Masterclass in Design and Experience**

For those who value form factor, webcam quality, and overall user experience, the MacBook Air remains an excellent choice. With its sleek design, long battery life, and seamless integration with macOS, this laptop is a joy to use. Although it's not as competitively priced as some of its Windows counterparts, the MacBook Air's premium build quality and software ecosystem make it well worth considering for those who value ease of use and minimal distractions.

**The AMD Ryzen AI Chips: A Force to be Reckoned With**

In our review, we took note of the Ryzen AI chips in laptops like the Asus Zenbook S16. While they may not offer the same level of single-core performance as some other devices, their strong multicore capabilities make them an excellent choice for users who require processing power for demanding tasks. In terms of app compatibility and overall performance, AMD's offerings are hard to beat.

**The Verdict: Which Laptop Reigns Supreme?**

So, which laptop comes out on top in our review? While each device has its strengths and weaknesses, the answer ultimately depends on your specific needs and priorities. If you're looking for a balance of performance, efficiency, and portability, the Snapdragon X Elite is an excellent choice. However, if you prioritize single-core performance and don't mind sacrificing some power management efficiency, the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 may be the better option.

For those who value ease of use, design, and overall user experience, the Apple MacBook Air remains a top choice. And for users who require strong multicore capabilities, the AMD Ryzen AI chips are an excellent consideration. Ultimately, our recommendation would depend on individual preferences and requirements.

**The Bottom Line**

In conclusion, each laptop in our review has its strengths and weaknesses, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution. However, by considering your specific needs and priorities, you can make an informed decision about which device is right for you. Whether it's the power-hungry world of gaming or the demanding realm of professional work, there's a laptop out there to suit every need.

**Additional Tips and Recommendations**

* For those looking for a budget-friendly option with great performance, consider the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 in its lower-end model.

* If you're willing to sacrifice some power management efficiency for top-notch single-core performance, look no further than the Snapdragon X Elite.

* For users who require strong multicore capabilities and don't mind sacrificing some single-core performance, AMD's Ryzen AI chips are an excellent choice.

**Final Thoughts**

As we continue to navigate the ever-evolving world of laptops, it's essential to stay informed about the latest developments in CPU architecture, GPU performance, and power management. By considering these factors and doing your research, you can make an informed decision about which device is right for you.

Whether you're a gamer, content creator, or professional user, there's a laptop out there that meets your needs and exceeds your expectations. So, take the time to explore our review and discover the perfect device for you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you'd asked me this time last year or even six months ago what laptop should you buy without a question ad have said best allrounder as the screen goes off MacBook Air with the latest M3 chip right but now oh things have got a bit more interesting we've got Qualcomm Snapdragon chips we've got ryzen uh AI strick Point processors we've got the new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 and they are all giving the MacBook with its fantastic apple silicon some proper competition in performance in battery life and running cool and quietly you can't get a laptop now with these new chips and they're all fairly similarly priced we're talking between 1,000 and £1,500 is fairly expensive for these fancy new thin and light laptops but all this competition also means we're starting to get more affordable options trickling down like the recently announced Snapdragon Plus 8 core chip and also Intel's previous generation chips what they're now calling the core Ultra Series 1 and these are aiming for the sort of 700 to 1,000 range so for this video I'm going to break down the pros and cons of each and so hopefully by the end of the video if you're after a new laptop you've got a better idea of what you want so let's start with the brand new Intel chips the core Ultra Series 2 because Intel have well they're not doing very well genuinely speaking and quite frankly over the last couple of years they just haven't kept up and that's why we've seen such fantastic competition from C and snapd dragon and to be honest we've just seen Intel fall behind but the good news is they have finally caught up and actually maybe even taken over the rest of these guys I actually just reviewed this it's the Asus zuk S14 and it's a pretty huge overhaul they've moved the memory onto the chip itself they've actually halfed the number of cores from 16 down to eight they've got rid of hyperthreading which does have its downsides and we'll come to the results in a second but it's all in pursuit of efficiency and therefore also battery life so these new Intel laptops come with either 16 or 32 gigs of RAM which as I say is baked in so you can't upgrade it yourself we have the latest Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 up to three Thunderbolt 4 ports and 48 tops of AI compute performance via their new mpu I also roll my eyes a little bit when it comes to AI performance because there just isn't that much of a use case for these more powerful mpus just yet it's more about future proofing but we'll come back to that later to give you an idea of this efficiency the base TDP for this top end core Ultra 9 the 288 V is around 28 Watts or about 17 Watts on the core Ultra 7 versus 45 Watts on the equivalent previous gen core Ultra 9 but again they've hared the cause got rid of hyperthreading reduce the TDP surely there is a performance trade-off here in order to get this better efficiency in battery life and the answer is yes there is and we'll come to benchmarks in a second but you can argue this is a massive overhaul for Intel from an architecture point of view from a prioritization of what they think you want out of a thin light laptop like this it's exciting stuff if you're a nerd but what about AMD they are back with their new ryzen AI chips and my main problem with this is I haven't really seen a ton of laptops using these new Chips yet this is the Asus Zenbook s16 basically the bigger brother to this guy which runs uh Luna lake or call Series 2 uh the bigger brother here comes in both Intel and AMD configurations and actually when I reviewed this a couple months ago I called it the best laptop I've used so far because this was a real upgrade over the previous gen Intel properly comparative to Qualcomm and apple but now Intel's back in the game does this make sense so these ryzen AI 300 series are based on amd's new 4 nanomer zen5 architecture and as I say so far we've only seen a couple of higher end SKS were running 28 Watts with this guy boasting the 12 core ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and there's also a slightly cut down 10 core 365 although both up from eight cores on last gen Zen 4 and AMD say that we're getting about 16% faster IPC or instructions per clock than the previous generation although from my tests and other reviews I've seen we're mostly talking single digit improvements but we also have their new radon 890m integrated GPU which is based on their much more efficient rdna 3.5 Graphics Tech plus their mpu which offers a class leading 50 tops of AI compute so Intel is giving us fewer cores AMD is actually giving us more cores uh but they're both also massively pushing the integrated graphics and also the AI performance so we have Intel AMD and also now Qualcomm this is the Microsoft Surface laptop 7th edition and it is using the Snapdragon X Elite chip I've been very impressed with just how many laptops have been launched over the last couple of months since the summer really with these X+ or X Elite chips from Snapdragon there's I think there's like 20 or something there's a lot more certainly than we've seen from AMD and because this is brand new there's not a ton of these as well so there's actually a lot of different options from Dell and Asus and ASO and HP Lenovo all rocking these chips this new hardware really shook up the whole PC or particularly the laptop space this year and the big story really is that they're based on arm rather than the more traditional x86 architecture and both the X+ and the higher end ex Elite chips offer incredibly efficient designs with fantastic CPU performance and also the best battery life we've ever seen they run cool they run quiet they are Ultra responsive and with similar performance running on battery versus plugged in they are fantastic allr rounders and these Snapdragon power PCS were the first to launch with Windows co-pilot plus features like live translation co-creator tool the recall when they eventually un recall it and launch it to be honest though all this copala plus stuff feels like a bit of a marketing exercise because I don't think many people use a lot of these features regularly some are useful like Windows Studio Effects for the webcam and it's basically a proof of concept that with a powerful local mpu running AI accelerator tasks that can offload from the CPU or the GPU and either run it much faster or much more efficiently thereby giving you better battery life in theory fantastic but it's kind of a chicken orth the egg thing where there just isn't that many use cases for these mpus just yet but in terms of future proofing all these Windows laptops have at least 40 tops of AI performance which is windows's a minimum requirement for these c-al Plus features so hopefully we'll see more over time and also more applications utilize it but certainly there was a lot of excitement let's just say about these guys being the first out the gate with C- pallet Plus on Windows the Achilles heel of these otherwise fantastic Snapdragon chips though is that being arm-based they can't run x86 apps which are basically every Windows app ever made natively so to run an app or a game it has to be either a specific ARM version like Windows on arm or run via an emulator and most of the time it's completely seamless you may not even know the difference but there are still plenty of apps that have compatibility issues whether they don't run as well or they just simply don't run at all so it's definitely worth doing your research to see whether the apps that you use or your work uses will run on this however like the Intel and AMD Rivals at launch the Snapdragon laptops were also pretty pricey again in the 1 to 1.5k region although because some of these laptops have been out for a few months now we're starting to see some decent deals and discounts actually making them more affordable than the brand new Intel Rivals and especially with the new 8 core X+ chip coming out I think what we're going to see and this is a little bit of a spoiler for my conclusion uh is that these Snapdragon laptops become a bit more of an affordable choice because the GPU the graphics doesn't quite keep up with these guys uh and also obviously being armed rather than x86 we do have some app compatibility issues cuz I tell you what if I could get an 8 core Snapdragon X+ laptop for 750 800 quid I would definitely consider that over A500 Intel Core Ultra Series 2 laptop then we have the macb book this is the MacBook Air 13 with the M3 chip and there's a reason why this is arguably the Benchmark laptop it's incredibly popular you get fantastic performance battery life it runs cool it runs quiet silent in fact because it doesn't even have a fan every other one of these has fans to cool down the chip but despite that we're still getting comparable performance so apple with this design with their own Apple silicon have for a few years now since they introduced the M1 and M2 and M3 just blowing the competition out of the water and it's why those annoying YouTubers keep making those videos with titles like is is this a Macbook killer of course I wouldn't do such a thing and with apple making the hardware the silicon and the software running Mac OS that vertical integration gives them a massive advantage and with the M3 here we've got an 8 core CPU 10 core GPU with either 86 or 32 gigs of memory which like these new Intel chips is also baked onto the chip so you can't upgrade it yourself not that you can upgrade really anything about a Mac that is definitely one of the downsides the only area it falls behind a little bit is in terms of AI compute performance although we are going to get Apple intelligence soon an any M series laptop so if you've got an M1 M2 M3 or upcoming M4 that will support apple intelligence with new Macbook Pros expected in late October November time with new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips presumably giving us a massive boost in AI performance ahead of Apple intelligence as it stands though I don't think we're going to see updated MacBook airs this year we may have to wait a little bit longer for that we'll see it on the pros first however the latest iPad Pros the 11 and 13 do come with a new M4 chip obviously this is going to be a lower a power version also fanless like the airs but I ran a couple of quick tests on this versus the M3 in the air to sort of get a sense of how much faster it might be going to the Next Generation MacBook airs with an M4 and in Gig bench 6 the M4 single core processor speed was up 15% and the graphics were a ridiculous 82% faster and this is in an iPad the other issue is that if you spec up a MacBook Air with more RAM more storage then you're into MacBook Pro price territory and of course this does give you more options and because it's thicker and has a fan you're going to get better sustained performance but spec like for like it is a fair bit pricier and I would argue it's a different class of laptop and really if you're going to go with a MacBook Pro then it's worth bumping up to an M3 Pro or Max chip anyway with the M4 series just around the corner but I'm getting ahead of myself let's concentrate on the herin now and on this table with me as I say we've got the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M3 we've got the Zenbook S14 with the top spec Ultra 9 series 2 processor horrible naming scheme we've got the uh Snapdragon X Elite this is the x1e 80-100 which technically is not the highest end chip there is an x180 4 100 but that is only in as far as I know the galaxy book 4 Edge no other laptop no other Snapdragon laptop offers that chip so broadly speaking the performance you'll get from this is most likely what you actually get if you went out and bought one of these unless you got the Samsung one with the highest spec and paid extra for it then we've got the Zenbook s16 with the ryzen ai9 HX 370 honestly this video took forever to make I hope it's useful so enough waffling let's jump into some results and starting with battery life in my full screen video streaming test just running my own YouTube playlist because someone's going to watch my videos as you would expect the now rebranded first gen core Ultra 9 from last year dropped out first after just over 8 hours no surprises there then came the ryzen AI powered Zenbook s16 at 9 hour 44 the screen is bigger to be fair which draws more power but then the battery is also bigger as well the MacBook Air 13 lasted a little bit longer just over 10 and 1 half hours which is very impressive given its smaller battery but then the battle for second place and it goes to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 in the Zenbook S14 which kicked the bucket at 13 hours 23 with the Snapdragon X Elite in the surface laptop lasting a whopping 14 hours 41 but hats after the Snapdragon that was a clear win for battery life from this guy but I do want to give credit to this guy as well because it lasted 68% longer than the previous gen so this gets the first place Trophy this gets the second place and I think also the most improved TR Trophy and the MacBook deserves a trophy for lasting as long as it does on the battery it has inside it's not just the size it's what you can do with it but what about standby life well I charged them all up to 100% And then left them for 15 hours I came back and these two still had 100% charge left this guy actually dropped 4% down to 96 I thought he would do better than that actually and then the ryzen over here on the zembo 16 dropped 2% but well of course there are a lot of variables and these are all different laptops from different manufacturers with different screen sizes and battery sizes you know this is not a scientific experiment it was a win for these two in terms of standby time but let's move on to Performance and let's start with the processor the CPU and I'm using the Full Speed Max performance modes and all of these to see what they are capable of flat out and of course the MacBook Air will be a disadvantage here because it doesn't have a fan but despite that in my single core CPU tests Apple's M3 was out front with the Snapdragon X Elite and the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 just behind and pretty evenly matched I must say which is a big step up from Intel last gen chips but predictably because they've half the number of cores the new Intel chip doesn't do as well in multicore where it's around 25% slower than the equivalent last gen so quite a drop and it's outpaced by everything else on test here I am always amazed though by what Apple's chips can do with so little wattage and also without a fan and in my battery only test so not plugged into the charger only the Snapdragon X Elite maintain the same resultss as when pluged in and having identical on battery performance is definitely a great feature of these Snapdragon machines now moving from the CPU to the GPU in terms of Graphics in my 3D Mark Wildlife extreme Benchmark the core Ultra Series 2 chip and the Apple M3 came out on top but there was only a single digit percentage difference between all but the Snapdragon in the steel Nomad light test in fact the Snapdragon was significantly behind in both tests but then in games the new Intel Ultra 9 Series 2 absolutely took the lead across the board being anywhere from 20 to 33% faster than the previous gen and outpacing AMD in all but Hitman where Intel kind of falls apart for some reason and interestingly despite showing the same Arc 140v integrated Graphics the lower powerered core Ultra 7 was a fair bit slower than the same laptop with the higher TDP core Ultra 9 in both cases though the xcss and FSR upscaling are doing a lot of the heavy lifting getting us well into the playable TTP 30 or even 60 FPS territory depending on the game again though the Snapdragon really does struggle to keep up here but unlike the MacBook Air at least it can play games although not as many as the Intel or the AMD and breathe that was a lot to take in but which should you buy well I think the new Intel chips are very impressive we're getting great all round performance uh fantastic battery life really really good uh graphics performance particularly in games that can legitimately give us performance of a couple of year old dedicated GPU and while multicore is significant down I think they have been smart about optimizing efficiency single core battery uh GPU performance these new Intel laptops while not perfect are really really good however the Fairly significantly lower multi-core performance would lead me to say that the ryzen AI chips like we have in the Zenbook s16 let me get that out of the way are probably your best option if you are running more demanding tasks regularly even if this new chip isn't as impressive an upgrade versus the previous gen and also as I say there just aren't that many options as many options I should say compared to some of these other laptops using this chip or at least not yet but for the most demanding workloads running Windows and on x86 there's no app compatibility issues get yourself a ryzen laptop but this is where it gets tricky because for Pure battery life get yourself a Snapdragon laptop really really impressive there in terms of efficiency and just overall performance as well however unless this is significantly cheaper which it maybe not just because of discounts but also lower-end models I would probably just go with the Intel you're getting similar performance similar battery life although not quite as good but none of the app compatibility issues and a much faster GPU as for the MacBook well this is still incredibly easy to recommend I would argue it's still probably the best overall laptop in terms of uh form factor webcam battery life not having a fan so it's uh you know silent keyboard trackpad Mac OS is lovely as I say the fact that they design the chip the laptop and the software just means it's a lovely experience it's not going to be for everyone and there are advantages to Windows laptops of course but this is also du a refresh in a few months with an M4 chip which could make it even better and the base model of this can actually be a fair bit cheaper than these guys although once you upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM and maybe 512 storage which I would probably recommend then the pricing is actually pretty similar what would I buy out of these on balance I would probably get the air still but broadly speaking if I were to buy a new Windows laptop I would probably go with the Intel with the ultra 7 the combination of overall performance Graphics battery life I'd probably go for one of these but they're not cheap if you've got any other questions drop a comment below I'll do my best to answer it let me know out of these guys which one you go for if you did find this useful a cheeky like And subscribe would be fantastic and I will see you next time right here on the tech chatif you'd asked me this time last year or even six months ago what laptop should you buy without a question ad have said best allrounder as the screen goes off MacBook Air with the latest M3 chip right but now oh things have got a bit more interesting we've got Qualcomm Snapdragon chips we've got ryzen uh AI strick Point processors we've got the new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 and they are all giving the MacBook with its fantastic apple silicon some proper competition in performance in battery life and running cool and quietly you can't get a laptop now with these new chips and they're all fairly similarly priced we're talking between 1,000 and £1,500 is fairly expensive for these fancy new thin and light laptops but all this competition also means we're starting to get more affordable options trickling down like the recently announced Snapdragon Plus 8 core chip and also Intel's previous generation chips what they're now calling the core Ultra Series 1 and these are aiming for the sort of 700 to 1,000 range so for this video I'm going to break down the pros and cons of each and so hopefully by the end of the video if you're after a new laptop you've got a better idea of what you want so let's start with the brand new Intel chips the core Ultra Series 2 because Intel have well they're not doing very well genuinely speaking and quite frankly over the last couple of years they just haven't kept up and that's why we've seen such fantastic competition from C and snapd dragon and to be honest we've just seen Intel fall behind but the good news is they have finally caught up and actually maybe even taken over the rest of these guys I actually just reviewed this it's the Asus zuk S14 and it's a pretty huge overhaul they've moved the memory onto the chip itself they've actually halfed the number of cores from 16 down to eight they've got rid of hyperthreading which does have its downsides and we'll come to the results in a second but it's all in pursuit of efficiency and therefore also battery life so these new Intel laptops come with either 16 or 32 gigs of RAM which as I say is baked in so you can't upgrade it yourself we have the latest Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth 5.4 up to three Thunderbolt 4 ports and 48 tops of AI compute performance via their new mpu I also roll my eyes a little bit when it comes to AI performance because there just isn't that much of a use case for these more powerful mpus just yet it's more about future proofing but we'll come back to that later to give you an idea of this efficiency the base TDP for this top end core Ultra 9 the 288 V is around 28 Watts or about 17 Watts on the core Ultra 7 versus 45 Watts on the equivalent previous gen core Ultra 9 but again they've hared the cause got rid of hyperthreading reduce the TDP surely there is a performance trade-off here in order to get this better efficiency in battery life and the answer is yes there is and we'll come to benchmarks in a second but you can argue this is a massive overhaul for Intel from an architecture point of view from a prioritization of what they think you want out of a thin light laptop like this it's exciting stuff if you're a nerd but what about AMD they are back with their new ryzen AI chips and my main problem with this is I haven't really seen a ton of laptops using these new Chips yet this is the Asus Zenbook s16 basically the bigger brother to this guy which runs uh Luna lake or call Series 2 uh the bigger brother here comes in both Intel and AMD configurations and actually when I reviewed this a couple months ago I called it the best laptop I've used so far because this was a real upgrade over the previous gen Intel properly comparative to Qualcomm and apple but now Intel's back in the game does this make sense so these ryzen AI 300 series are based on amd's new 4 nanomer zen5 architecture and as I say so far we've only seen a couple of higher end SKS were running 28 Watts with this guy boasting the 12 core ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and there's also a slightly cut down 10 core 365 although both up from eight cores on last gen Zen 4 and AMD say that we're getting about 16% faster IPC or instructions per clock than the previous generation although from my tests and other reviews I've seen we're mostly talking single digit improvements but we also have their new radon 890m integrated GPU which is based on their much more efficient rdna 3.5 Graphics Tech plus their mpu which offers a class leading 50 tops of AI compute so Intel is giving us fewer cores AMD is actually giving us more cores uh but they're both also massively pushing the integrated graphics and also the AI performance so we have Intel AMD and also now Qualcomm this is the Microsoft Surface laptop 7th edition and it is using the Snapdragon X Elite chip I've been very impressed with just how many laptops have been launched over the last couple of months since the summer really with these X+ or X Elite chips from Snapdragon there's I think there's like 20 or something there's a lot more certainly than we've seen from AMD and because this is brand new there's not a ton of these as well so there's actually a lot of different options from Dell and Asus and ASO and HP Lenovo all rocking these chips this new hardware really shook up the whole PC or particularly the laptop space this year and the big story really is that they're based on arm rather than the more traditional x86 architecture and both the X+ and the higher end ex Elite chips offer incredibly efficient designs with fantastic CPU performance and also the best battery life we've ever seen they run cool they run quiet they are Ultra responsive and with similar performance running on battery versus plugged in they are fantastic allr rounders and these Snapdragon power PCS were the first to launch with Windows co-pilot plus features like live translation co-creator tool the recall when they eventually un recall it and launch it to be honest though all this copala plus stuff feels like a bit of a marketing exercise because I don't think many people use a lot of these features regularly some are useful like Windows Studio Effects for the webcam and it's basically a proof of concept that with a powerful local mpu running AI accelerator tasks that can offload from the CPU or the GPU and either run it much faster or much more efficiently thereby giving you better battery life in theory fantastic but it's kind of a chicken orth the egg thing where there just isn't that many use cases for these mpus just yet but in terms of future proofing all these Windows laptops have at least 40 tops of AI performance which is windows's a minimum requirement for these c-al Plus features so hopefully we'll see more over time and also more applications utilize it but certainly there was a lot of excitement let's just say about these guys being the first out the gate with C- pallet Plus on Windows the Achilles heel of these otherwise fantastic Snapdragon chips though is that being arm-based they can't run x86 apps which are basically every Windows app ever made natively so to run an app or a game it has to be either a specific ARM version like Windows on arm or run via an emulator and most of the time it's completely seamless you may not even know the difference but there are still plenty of apps that have compatibility issues whether they don't run as well or they just simply don't run at all so it's definitely worth doing your research to see whether the apps that you use or your work uses will run on this however like the Intel and AMD Rivals at launch the Snapdragon laptops were also pretty pricey again in the 1 to 1.5k region although because some of these laptops have been out for a few months now we're starting to see some decent deals and discounts actually making them more affordable than the brand new Intel Rivals and especially with the new 8 core X+ chip coming out I think what we're going to see and this is a little bit of a spoiler for my conclusion uh is that these Snapdragon laptops become a bit more of an affordable choice because the GPU the graphics doesn't quite keep up with these guys uh and also obviously being armed rather than x86 we do have some app compatibility issues cuz I tell you what if I could get an 8 core Snapdragon X+ laptop for 750 800 quid I would definitely consider that over A500 Intel Core Ultra Series 2 laptop then we have the macb book this is the MacBook Air 13 with the M3 chip and there's a reason why this is arguably the Benchmark laptop it's incredibly popular you get fantastic performance battery life it runs cool it runs quiet silent in fact because it doesn't even have a fan every other one of these has fans to cool down the chip but despite that we're still getting comparable performance so apple with this design with their own Apple silicon have for a few years now since they introduced the M1 and M2 and M3 just blowing the competition out of the water and it's why those annoying YouTubers keep making those videos with titles like is is this a Macbook killer of course I wouldn't do such a thing and with apple making the hardware the silicon and the software running Mac OS that vertical integration gives them a massive advantage and with the M3 here we've got an 8 core CPU 10 core GPU with either 86 or 32 gigs of memory which like these new Intel chips is also baked onto the chip so you can't upgrade it yourself not that you can upgrade really anything about a Mac that is definitely one of the downsides the only area it falls behind a little bit is in terms of AI compute performance although we are going to get Apple intelligence soon an any M series laptop so if you've got an M1 M2 M3 or upcoming M4 that will support apple intelligence with new Macbook Pros expected in late October November time with new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips presumably giving us a massive boost in AI performance ahead of Apple intelligence as it stands though I don't think we're going to see updated MacBook airs this year we may have to wait a little bit longer for that we'll see it on the pros first however the latest iPad Pros the 11 and 13 do come with a new M4 chip obviously this is going to be a lower a power version also fanless like the airs but I ran a couple of quick tests on this versus the M3 in the air to sort of get a sense of how much faster it might be going to the Next Generation MacBook airs with an M4 and in Gig bench 6 the M4 single core processor speed was up 15% and the graphics were a ridiculous 82% faster and this is in an iPad the other issue is that if you spec up a MacBook Air with more RAM more storage then you're into MacBook Pro price territory and of course this does give you more options and because it's thicker and has a fan you're going to get better sustained performance but spec like for like it is a fair bit pricier and I would argue it's a different class of laptop and really if you're going to go with a MacBook Pro then it's worth bumping up to an M3 Pro or Max chip anyway with the M4 series just around the corner but I'm getting ahead of myself let's concentrate on the herin now and on this table with me as I say we've got the 13-inch MacBook Air with the M3 we've got the Zenbook S14 with the top spec Ultra 9 series 2 processor horrible naming scheme we've got the uh Snapdragon X Elite this is the x1e 80-100 which technically is not the highest end chip there is an x180 4 100 but that is only in as far as I know the galaxy book 4 Edge no other laptop no other Snapdragon laptop offers that chip so broadly speaking the performance you'll get from this is most likely what you actually get if you went out and bought one of these unless you got the Samsung one with the highest spec and paid extra for it then we've got the Zenbook s16 with the ryzen ai9 HX 370 honestly this video took forever to make I hope it's useful so enough waffling let's jump into some results and starting with battery life in my full screen video streaming test just running my own YouTube playlist because someone's going to watch my videos as you would expect the now rebranded first gen core Ultra 9 from last year dropped out first after just over 8 hours no surprises there then came the ryzen AI powered Zenbook s16 at 9 hour 44 the screen is bigger to be fair which draws more power but then the battery is also bigger as well the MacBook Air 13 lasted a little bit longer just over 10 and 1 half hours which is very impressive given its smaller battery but then the battle for second place and it goes to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 in the Zenbook S14 which kicked the bucket at 13 hours 23 with the Snapdragon X Elite in the surface laptop lasting a whopping 14 hours 41 but hats after the Snapdragon that was a clear win for battery life from this guy but I do want to give credit to this guy as well because it lasted 68% longer than the previous gen so this gets the first place Trophy this gets the second place and I think also the most improved TR Trophy and the MacBook deserves a trophy for lasting as long as it does on the battery it has inside it's not just the size it's what you can do with it but what about standby life well I charged them all up to 100% And then left them for 15 hours I came back and these two still had 100% charge left this guy actually dropped 4% down to 96 I thought he would do better than that actually and then the ryzen over here on the zembo 16 dropped 2% but well of course there are a lot of variables and these are all different laptops from different manufacturers with different screen sizes and battery sizes you know this is not a scientific experiment it was a win for these two in terms of standby time but let's move on to Performance and let's start with the processor the CPU and I'm using the Full Speed Max performance modes and all of these to see what they are capable of flat out and of course the MacBook Air will be a disadvantage here because it doesn't have a fan but despite that in my single core CPU tests Apple's M3 was out front with the Snapdragon X Elite and the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 just behind and pretty evenly matched I must say which is a big step up from Intel last gen chips but predictably because they've half the number of cores the new Intel chip doesn't do as well in multicore where it's around 25% slower than the equivalent last gen so quite a drop and it's outpaced by everything else on test here I am always amazed though by what Apple's chips can do with so little wattage and also without a fan and in my battery only test so not plugged into the charger only the Snapdragon X Elite maintain the same resultss as when pluged in and having identical on battery performance is definitely a great feature of these Snapdragon machines now moving from the CPU to the GPU in terms of Graphics in my 3D Mark Wildlife extreme Benchmark the core Ultra Series 2 chip and the Apple M3 came out on top but there was only a single digit percentage difference between all but the Snapdragon in the steel Nomad light test in fact the Snapdragon was significantly behind in both tests but then in games the new Intel Ultra 9 Series 2 absolutely took the lead across the board being anywhere from 20 to 33% faster than the previous gen and outpacing AMD in all but Hitman where Intel kind of falls apart for some reason and interestingly despite showing the same Arc 140v integrated Graphics the lower powerered core Ultra 7 was a fair bit slower than the same laptop with the higher TDP core Ultra 9 in both cases though the xcss and FSR upscaling are doing a lot of the heavy lifting getting us well into the playable TTP 30 or even 60 FPS territory depending on the game again though the Snapdragon really does struggle to keep up here but unlike the MacBook Air at least it can play games although not as many as the Intel or the AMD and breathe that was a lot to take in but which should you buy well I think the new Intel chips are very impressive we're getting great all round performance uh fantastic battery life really really good uh graphics performance particularly in games that can legitimately give us performance of a couple of year old dedicated GPU and while multicore is significant down I think they have been smart about optimizing efficiency single core battery uh GPU performance these new Intel laptops while not perfect are really really good however the Fairly significantly lower multi-core performance would lead me to say that the ryzen AI chips like we have in the Zenbook s16 let me get that out of the way are probably your best option if you are running more demanding tasks regularly even if this new chip isn't as impressive an upgrade versus the previous gen and also as I say there just aren't that many options as many options I should say compared to some of these other laptops using this chip or at least not yet but for the most demanding workloads running Windows and on x86 there's no app compatibility issues get yourself a ryzen laptop but this is where it gets tricky because for Pure battery life get yourself a Snapdragon laptop really really impressive there in terms of efficiency and just overall performance as well however unless this is significantly cheaper which it maybe not just because of discounts but also lower-end models I would probably just go with the Intel you're getting similar performance similar battery life although not quite as good but none of the app compatibility issues and a much faster GPU as for the MacBook well this is still incredibly easy to recommend I would argue it's still probably the best overall laptop in terms of uh form factor webcam battery life not having a fan so it's uh you know silent keyboard trackpad Mac OS is lovely as I say the fact that they design the chip the laptop and the software just means it's a lovely experience it's not going to be for everyone and there are advantages to Windows laptops of course but this is also du a refresh in a few months with an M4 chip which could make it even better and the base model of this can actually be a fair bit cheaper than these guys although once you upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM and maybe 512 storage which I would probably recommend then the pricing is actually pretty similar what would I buy out of these on balance I would probably get the air still but broadly speaking if I were to buy a new Windows laptop I would probably go with the Intel with the ultra 7 the combination of overall performance Graphics battery life I'd probably go for one of these but they're not cheap if you've got any other questions drop a comment below I'll do my best to answer it let me know out of these guys which one you go for if you did find this useful a cheeky like And subscribe would be fantastic and I will see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"