The Inconvenient Truth About New Laptops
# The Current Landscape of High-End Laptops: A Comprehensive Overview
## Introduction
The world of laptops is currently at a pinnacle of innovation, with major manufacturers releasing devices that are not only powerful but also highly energy-efficient. This article delves into the intricacies of the current laptop market, highlighting the advancements in various components and addressing the challenges faced by budget-conscious consumers.
## Performance Benchmarks: A New Era of Computing
The discussion begins by showcasing the remarkable performance benchmarks achieved by recent high-end laptops. The video transcription highlights four key chip manufacturers: Apple's custom silicon, AMD's HX 300 series, Qualcomm's Snapdragon Exite, and Intel's Lunar Lake chips. Each of these chips offers superior performance, as demonstrated by cinebench tests, which are a standard for measuring processor capabilities. These benchmarks indicate that today's laptops are not only faster but also more efficient, setting new standards in the industry.
## Energy Efficiency: The Silent Game-Changer
A pivotal shift in laptop technology is the emphasis on energy efficiency. Traditionally, users sought faster processors, but now, the focus has shifted to how devices manage power consumption. This change is driven by the realization that most users perform light tasks like browsing, document editing, and email management, which do not require peak performance. The new chips excel in sipping battery life on these low-intensity tasks, making them ideal for prolonged use.
## Battery Life: A New Standard
Battery life has seen a significant leap with the advent of newer chips. Apple once held the crown for longest battery life, but now all major manufacturers have joined the race, offering devices that can last much longer than their predecessors. The transcription also touches on how different operating systems (Windows vs. macOS) handle battery drain when the laptop is in standby mode, with Apple leading the charge in optimizing this feature.
## Hardware Components: Innovations Across the Board
### GPUs: Enhanced Performance and Efficiency
Graphics Processing Units have undergone a transformation, with Intel's Lunar Lake chips standing out for their impressive frame rates without compromising on energy efficiency. This advancement makes even non-gaming laptops capable of handling visually intensive tasks, catering to users who might not explicitly need gaming laptops.
### RAM and Storage: Evolving Trends
The transcription discusses the shift towards soldered RAM in most Windows devices, limiting upgradeability but offering increased base memory (starting at 16GB). This change is partly due to Microsoft's requirements for Windows Co-Pilot. In contrast, Apple continues with 8GB on its entry-level MacBooks, which may be phased out soon.
### Displays: OLED vs IPS
The display technology has advanced significantly, with OLED panels in Windows devices offering superior image quality and higher refresh rates compared to Apple's IPS panels. This makes a noticeable difference for users engaged in visually intensive tasks or gaming.
## Pricing: A Barrier to Entry
Despite the advancements, the article paints a concerning picture regarding pricing. High-end laptops now start at $1200, making them inaccessible to many consumers who previously could have afforded older models. The gap between new and old devices is stark, with last year's models offering significantly worse performance in terms of battery life, thermal management, and GPU capabilities.
## Conclusion
The current state of laptop technology is commendable, with each manufacturer bringing unique strengths to the table. However, the high pricing creates a barrier for budget-conscious users, leaving them with limited options. As the market evolves, it is crucial for manufacturers to address these challenges to ensure that advancements in technology are accessible to a broader audience.
This overview provides a detailed look at the current landscape, highlighting both achievements and areas needing improvement, offering valuable insights for potential buyers looking to make informed decisions.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe are in a great spot with laptops right now because all the competitors in this space are making such good devices that if you're buying a new high-end laptop this year chances are you're buying something awesome cuz we have four completely different chips that are just excellent we have Apple's custom silicon we have new chips from AMD their HX 300 series uh we have new chips from Qualcomm the Snapdragon exite and we also have finally new chips from Intel that don't suck they're lunar L chips and all of them are competitive like they're truly energy efficient powerful devices and they're just they're awesome the thing is there is an inconvenience to this whole circumstance and to fully understand the problem at hand we have to kind of go into how good these devices actually are so you've probably seen a chart like this before it's showing cinebench performance across several devices and cinebench is a benchmarking program that's used by companies and by reviewers like myself to just like a quick and dirty way to show you the topend performance of the these chips it's neat but it's not a good representation of how we actually use laptops like typically when a person buys a thin and light laptop like something like this you're it's idling you're just using the laptop in a very chill and relaxed State you may be like typing a document or going through emails or browsing the web the truth is most people aren't looking for faster and faster laptops we just aren't what does matter though is Energy Efficiency and that is where these new devices really shine these new chips are so good at just sipping battery on very light tasks Now power consumption does go up a little bit if you're streaming videos but it's very rare if ever that an average user will take one of these thin and light devices and just go full blast on it but Energy Efficiency gives you something that's awesome battery life and the battery life on these devices just so much better than laptops of the past like it's something that Apple has had the crown for for four years at this point but today they're all really good in terms of battery life and in addition to battery life the other thing that Energy Efficiency gives you is battery health like if you aren't charging these things as frequently over the course of ownership of these things you're just the health of the battery pack is just going to be better if you're charging it half as often right and so also with Energy Efficiency you get an easier device to cool these things don't run as hot so there's less thermal strain on the components but also you get thinner heat sinks you get fewer fans quieter fans so these systems are quiet now they're not silent only the MacBook airs are a true fanless system all the windows devices still have fans but they're way better than before now if you're curious about battery drain when the devices are closed like when the lids are closed up uh it's it's inconsistent I've done a bunch of testing on this the anecdotal kind of uh conclusion that I'm going to draw is that it's nothing to do with the hardware from the manufacturers it's entirely to do with Windows I feel like sometimes the battery dra is acceptable it's like perfectly fine and other times it's awful with no Rhyme or Reason now I think Apple does it really well I think they control both the hardware and the software so they're able to tune that whole battery drain when the lid is closed way better uh but if that's really important to you Windows just sucks at that I I don't know if they'll ever fix it you also get really good gpus across the board now Apple M3 chips are capable in terms of Hardware but because there's not a lot of games you got to run like game porting toolkit to be able to pull it off uh so if games are really important to you obviously don't get the MacBook and sa with the Snapdragon chips they're it's got decent gaming performance but still there's some games that don't run all that well on the Arm based chips uh but the other two chips the new AMD and Intel ones get really good frame rates especially for devices that aren't even marketed as gaming laptops right like if you're a kid's trying to con your parents into buying you a gaming laptop you don't have to use that word you just these are just really good for doing that stuff the onboard GPU of the new Intel chips are particularly impressive to me like obviously great frame rates but the thing that's most interesting is just how little energy it uses to able to pull that off even on Intel's slides like when they first showed that stuff I was everyone was skeptical right it's like that's not possible for a company let alone Intel to pull off but it's legit I can only imagine that the next generation of gaming handhelds that use these gpus from Intel like I think there'll be something special but absolutely just very impressive GPU performance uh from Intel's lunar Lake now a quick note about RAM and storage so typically when it came to Windows laptops of the past one of the biggest advantages that they'd have is that you you have removable or upgradeable RAM and storage right and Apple devices didn't have that luxury but nowadays you still have removable storage on all the windows devices or most of the windows devices but almost all of them don't have removable Ram anymore all the new ones most of that Ram is now soldered onto the motherboard or the chip itself I don't think it's a deal breaker but it is unfortunate the Silver Lining though is that all the new windows devices start at 16 GB of RAM or more I think that was a requirement that Microsoft put out for their kind of uh Windows co-pilot programs that if any new device that is going to be part of this thing you got to have 16 GB or more which is good in that sense uh Apple still has her 8 GB MacBook Air models at the entry level which is it's continuously frustrating I think this is the last year that they do that they do it now Apple intelligence does run like their AI stuff does run at 8 gbes of RAM on their like systemwide AI stuff but if you're a developer and you want to use any of their AI like generative code so code complete or Swift assist you need 16 gigs of RAM so if you're a developer and you're looking at a Macbook and you want to use any of that generative AI code stuff 16 gigs or more now I only bring this up so that people who are looking for that feature in X code are aware of the ram requirements I am firmly in the camp of like do not buy a laptop or a change hardware for its AI capabilities like I I'm I'm still there if anything I think Windows co-pilot is a complete scam that's a whole separate conversation okay the last thing I want to talk about in terms of Hardware are the displays so MacBook airs the entry-level products from Apple have IPS panels they're okay in terms of image quality and they are energy efficient displays but when you compare them side by side with any of the OLED panels that are often available with the new windows devices OLED just looks so much better and a lot of them are running at higher refresh rates if you want to play fast-paced games they look awesome on these windows devices uh so if you're talking about like a my favorite pick if I had to choose like one of the four chips that I think is just like most interesting for me it's the lunar Lake chips they are so awesome this year like I think the Energy Efficiency is excellent uh and also the wider availability like as nice as the AMD stuff is they're just not a lot of devices and if you want you know Apple's chips like there's only one company that makes it with Windows uh or sorry with Intel's chips like there's just so many companies that have adopted this new second generation of core Ultra that it's like I like I like Choice that's really nice to be able to see that in terms of just like actual devices I like the S14 a lot from Asus I think this is like it's super thin super light but in terms of just like crazy battery life I did a dedicated video on this but the the Lenovo Yoga slim 7i this is like it's longer lasting than even a 15-inch MacBook a in terms of like just raw battery life so everything I've talked about so far paints these laptops in a really nice light right we have a lot of options to choose from they're all performant they're all energy efficient it's great but the one piece of this conversation that kind of guides this whole thing is pricing and the pricing for all these laptops is expensive these start at like 12,300 bucks and they go up and here's the thing if you have a huge budget and you can buy a $1,300 laptop that's awesome it's a great year to buy a device but for most people you have a more normal budget and let's say you want to buy a device that's like you know6 to maybe $800 in price so that's where things become inconvenient so typically when you have a smaller budget 6 800 bucks you would just buy a product that's like 2 years older or maybe last year's device right something that's previous generation that you know you get most of the good stuff you don't miss out on much buying the last the last year's product but now in the landscape of laptops we have right now the previous generation of product like last year's laptops especially in the windows space they suck in comparison to the new stuff and it almost doesn't even make sense to buy one of those things so typically let's say you buy like you know let's say you get like a 12th gen or 13th gen Intel Core i7 laptop that would run you8 n00 bucks maybe maybe a little bit cheaper than that but that is a significantly worse product than these things like you get much worse battery life you get a harder device that will probably have more thermal stress on its unit you'll have you know louder fans you have a worse GPU like it truly I would say that most people if you're going to buy a 12 gen or 13th gen Intel laptop right now you're going to regret it like you'll absolutely be like God damn it I just wasted this money buying a previous generation and it's because the new stuff is so much better so here's the weird thing I was asked very recently just a few my friends like what laptop should I buy right now 700 bucks and I looked at this the what options we have and the thing is I landed on a MacBook an M1 MacBook from 2020 it's crazy like never ever have I been like hey you want a budget option MacBook never has that been the thing but in the the way we have Windows laptops right now it just does not make sense to buy in that space it's super inconvenient for people that are budget limited like that which is a lot of right that's the most that's where the most purchasing happens in that range and you're just locked out if you if that's your budget if that's a hard limit of 800 bucks you are locked out from the good Tech and I just really do not recommend buying any of the older stuff it's just too big of a gap in terms of performance and just everything across the board okay there you have it that's my take on the current landscape of laptopwe are in a great spot with laptops right now because all the competitors in this space are making such good devices that if you're buying a new high-end laptop this year chances are you're buying something awesome cuz we have four completely different chips that are just excellent we have Apple's custom silicon we have new chips from AMD their HX 300 series uh we have new chips from Qualcomm the Snapdragon exite and we also have finally new chips from Intel that don't suck they're lunar L chips and all of them are competitive like they're truly energy efficient powerful devices and they're just they're awesome the thing is there is an inconvenience to this whole circumstance and to fully understand the problem at hand we have to kind of go into how good these devices actually are so you've probably seen a chart like this before it's showing cinebench performance across several devices and cinebench is a benchmarking program that's used by companies and by reviewers like myself to just like a quick and dirty way to show you the topend performance of the these chips it's neat but it's not a good representation of how we actually use laptops like typically when a person buys a thin and light laptop like something like this you're it's idling you're just using the laptop in a very chill and relaxed State you may be like typing a document or going through emails or browsing the web the truth is most people aren't looking for faster and faster laptops we just aren't what does matter though is Energy Efficiency and that is where these new devices really shine these new chips are so good at just sipping battery on very light tasks Now power consumption does go up a little bit if you're streaming videos but it's very rare if ever that an average user will take one of these thin and light devices and just go full blast on it but Energy Efficiency gives you something that's awesome battery life and the battery life on these devices just so much better than laptops of the past like it's something that Apple has had the crown for for four years at this point but today they're all really good in terms of battery life and in addition to battery life the other thing that Energy Efficiency gives you is battery health like if you aren't charging these things as frequently over the course of ownership of these things you're just the health of the battery pack is just going to be better if you're charging it half as often right and so also with Energy Efficiency you get an easier device to cool these things don't run as hot so there's less thermal strain on the components but also you get thinner heat sinks you get fewer fans quieter fans so these systems are quiet now they're not silent only the MacBook airs are a true fanless system all the windows devices still have fans but they're way better than before now if you're curious about battery drain when the devices are closed like when the lids are closed up uh it's it's inconsistent I've done a bunch of testing on this the anecdotal kind of uh conclusion that I'm going to draw is that it's nothing to do with the hardware from the manufacturers it's entirely to do with Windows I feel like sometimes the battery dra is acceptable it's like perfectly fine and other times it's awful with no Rhyme or Reason now I think Apple does it really well I think they control both the hardware and the software so they're able to tune that whole battery drain when the lid is closed way better uh but if that's really important to you Windows just sucks at that I I don't know if they'll ever fix it you also get really good gpus across the board now Apple M3 chips are capable in terms of Hardware but because there's not a lot of games you got to run like game porting toolkit to be able to pull it off uh so if games are really important to you obviously don't get the MacBook and sa with the Snapdragon chips they're it's got decent gaming performance but still there's some games that don't run all that well on the Arm based chips uh but the other two chips the new AMD and Intel ones get really good frame rates especially for devices that aren't even marketed as gaming laptops right like if you're a kid's trying to con your parents into buying you a gaming laptop you don't have to use that word you just these are just really good for doing that stuff the onboard GPU of the new Intel chips are particularly impressive to me like obviously great frame rates but the thing that's most interesting is just how little energy it uses to able to pull that off even on Intel's slides like when they first showed that stuff I was everyone was skeptical right it's like that's not possible for a company let alone Intel to pull off but it's legit I can only imagine that the next generation of gaming handhelds that use these gpus from Intel like I think there'll be something special but absolutely just very impressive GPU performance uh from Intel's lunar Lake now a quick note about RAM and storage so typically when it came to Windows laptops of the past one of the biggest advantages that they'd have is that you you have removable or upgradeable RAM and storage right and Apple devices didn't have that luxury but nowadays you still have removable storage on all the windows devices or most of the windows devices but almost all of them don't have removable Ram anymore all the new ones most of that Ram is now soldered onto the motherboard or the chip itself I don't think it's a deal breaker but it is unfortunate the Silver Lining though is that all the new windows devices start at 16 GB of RAM or more I think that was a requirement that Microsoft put out for their kind of uh Windows co-pilot programs that if any new device that is going to be part of this thing you got to have 16 GB or more which is good in that sense uh Apple still has her 8 GB MacBook Air models at the entry level which is it's continuously frustrating I think this is the last year that they do that they do it now Apple intelligence does run like their AI stuff does run at 8 gbes of RAM on their like systemwide AI stuff but if you're a developer and you want to use any of their AI like generative code so code complete or Swift assist you need 16 gigs of RAM so if you're a developer and you're looking at a Macbook and you want to use any of that generative AI code stuff 16 gigs or more now I only bring this up so that people who are looking for that feature in X code are aware of the ram requirements I am firmly in the camp of like do not buy a laptop or a change hardware for its AI capabilities like I I'm I'm still there if anything I think Windows co-pilot is a complete scam that's a whole separate conversation okay the last thing I want to talk about in terms of Hardware are the displays so MacBook airs the entry-level products from Apple have IPS panels they're okay in terms of image quality and they are energy efficient displays but when you compare them side by side with any of the OLED panels that are often available with the new windows devices OLED just looks so much better and a lot of them are running at higher refresh rates if you want to play fast-paced games they look awesome on these windows devices uh so if you're talking about like a my favorite pick if I had to choose like one of the four chips that I think is just like most interesting for me it's the lunar Lake chips they are so awesome this year like I think the Energy Efficiency is excellent uh and also the wider availability like as nice as the AMD stuff is they're just not a lot of devices and if you want you know Apple's chips like there's only one company that makes it with Windows uh or sorry with Intel's chips like there's just so many companies that have adopted this new second generation of core Ultra that it's like I like I like Choice that's really nice to be able to see that in terms of just like actual devices I like the S14 a lot from Asus I think this is like it's super thin super light but in terms of just like crazy battery life I did a dedicated video on this but the the Lenovo Yoga slim 7i this is like it's longer lasting than even a 15-inch MacBook a in terms of like just raw battery life so everything I've talked about so far paints these laptops in a really nice light right we have a lot of options to choose from they're all performant they're all energy efficient it's great but the one piece of this conversation that kind of guides this whole thing is pricing and the pricing for all these laptops is expensive these start at like 12,300 bucks and they go up and here's the thing if you have a huge budget and you can buy a $1,300 laptop that's awesome it's a great year to buy a device but for most people you have a more normal budget and let's say you want to buy a device that's like you know6 to maybe $800 in price so that's where things become inconvenient so typically when you have a smaller budget 6 800 bucks you would just buy a product that's like 2 years older or maybe last year's device right something that's previous generation that you know you get most of the good stuff you don't miss out on much buying the last the last year's product but now in the landscape of laptops we have right now the previous generation of product like last year's laptops especially in the windows space they suck in comparison to the new stuff and it almost doesn't even make sense to buy one of those things so typically let's say you buy like you know let's say you get like a 12th gen or 13th gen Intel Core i7 laptop that would run you8 n00 bucks maybe maybe a little bit cheaper than that but that is a significantly worse product than these things like you get much worse battery life you get a harder device that will probably have more thermal stress on its unit you'll have you know louder fans you have a worse GPU like it truly I would say that most people if you're going to buy a 12 gen or 13th gen Intel laptop right now you're going to regret it like you'll absolutely be like God damn it I just wasted this money buying a previous generation and it's because the new stuff is so much better so here's the weird thing I was asked very recently just a few my friends like what laptop should I buy right now 700 bucks and I looked at this the what options we have and the thing is I landed on a MacBook an M1 MacBook from 2020 it's crazy like never ever have I been like hey you want a budget option MacBook never has that been the thing but in the the way we have Windows laptops right now it just does not make sense to buy in that space it's super inconvenient for people that are budget limited like that which is a lot of right that's the most that's where the most purchasing happens in that range and you're just locked out if you if that's your budget if that's a hard limit of 800 bucks you are locked out from the good Tech and I just really do not recommend buying any of the older stuff it's just too big of a gap in terms of performance and just everything across the board okay there you have it that's my take on the current landscape of laptop\n"