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00:00If you'd asked me this time last year or even six months ago
00:03What laptop should you buy?
00:05Without a question I'd have said best all-rounder, as the screen goes off, MacBook Air with the latest M3 chip, right?
00:10But now, ooh, things have got a bit more interesting. We've got Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. We've got Ryzen AI Strix point processors
00:18We've got the new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 and they are all giving the MacBook with its fantastic Apple Silicon
00:24some proper competition in performance, in battery life, in running cool and quietly
00:29You can't get a bad laptop now with these new chips and they're all fairly similarly priced
00:34We're talking between a thousand and fifteen hundred pounds ish, fairly expensive for these fancy new thin and light laptops
00:40But all this competition also means we're starting to get more affordable options trickling down
00:45Like the recently announced Snapdragon Plus 8 Core chip and also Intel's previous generation chips
00:50What they're now calling the Core Ultra Series 1 and these are aiming for the sort of 700 to 1000 range
00:55So for this video
00:56I'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
01:01Laptop, you've got a better idea of what you want
01:04So let's start with the brand new Intel chips, the Core Ultra Series 2 because Intel have, well, they're not doing very well
01:10Generally speaking and quite frankly over the last couple of years
01:12They just haven't kept up and that's why we've seen such fantastic competition from Qualcomm, Snapdragon and to be honest
01:18We've just seen Intel fall behind
01:19But the good news is they have finally caught up and actually maybe even taken over the rest of these guys
01:23I actually just reviewed this. It's the ASUS ZenBook S14 and it's a pretty huge overhaul
01:28They've moved the memory onto the chip itself. They've actually halved the number of cores from 16 down to 8
01:33They've got rid of hyper-threading which does have its downsides and we'll come to the results in a second
01:38But it's all in pursuit of efficiency and therefore also battery life
01:41So these new Intel laptops come with either 16 or 32 gigs of RAM, which as I say is baked in
01:47So you can't upgrade it yourself
01:48We have the latest Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, up to three Thunderbolt 4 ports and
01:5348 tops of AI compute performance via their new MPU
01:57I also roll my eyes a little bit when it comes to AI
02:00Performance because there just isn't that much of a use case for these more powerful MPUs just yet
02:06It's more about future-proofing but we'll come back to that later. To give you an idea of this efficiency the base
02:11TDP for this top-end Core Ultra 9, the 288 V, is around 28 watts or about 17 watts on the Core Ultra 7
02:19Versus 45 watts on the equivalent previous-gen Core Ultra 9
02:23But again, they've halved the cores, got rid of hyper-threading, reduced the TDP
02:26Surely there is a performance trade-off here in order to get this better efficiency and battery life
02:30And the answer is yes, there is and we'll come to benchmarks in a second
02:34But you can't argue this is a massive overhaul for Intel from an architecture point of view, from a
02:39Prioritization of what they think you want out of a thin and light laptop like this. It's exciting stuff if you're a nerd
02:45But what's about AMD? They are back with their new Ryzen AI
02:49Chips. And my main problem with this is I haven't really seen a ton of laptops using these new chips yet
02:54This is the Asus ZenBook S16, basically the bigger brother to this guy which runs
02:59Lunar Lake or Core Ultra Series 2. The bigger brother here comes in both Intel and AMD configurations
03:05And actually when I reviewed this a couple months ago, I called it the best laptop
03:08I've used so far because this was a real upgrade over the previous gen Intel, properly comparative to Qualcomm and Apple
03:15But now Intel's back in the game. Does this make sense?
03:19So these Ryzen AI 300 series are based on AMD's new 4 nanometer Zen 5 architecture
03:25And as I say so far, we've only seen a couple of higher-end SKUs
03:28We're running 28 watts with this guy boasting the 12 core Ryzen AI 9 HX370
03:34And there's also a slightly cut down 10 core 365
03:37Although both are from 8 cores on last-gen Zen 4. And AMD say that we're getting about 16% faster
03:44IPC or instructions per clock than the previous generation. Although from my tests and other reviews I've seen we're mostly talking
03:50single-digit improvements
03:52But we also have their new Radeon 890M integrated GPU which is based on their much more efficient RDNA 3.5 graphics tech
03:59Plus their NPU which offers a class-leading 50 tops of AI compute
04:04So Intel is giving us fewer cores, AMD is actually giving us more cores
04:08But they're both also massively pushing the integrated graphics and also the AI performance
04:12So we have Intel, AMD and also now Qualcomm
04:15This is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th edition and it is using the Snapdragon X Elite chip
04:22I've been very impressed with just how many laptops have been launched over the last couple of months since the summer really
04:27With these X Plus or X Elite chips from Snapdragon
04:30There's I think it's like 20 or something
04:32There'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
04:36So there's actually a lot of different options from Dell and Asus and ASUS and HP, Lenovo all rocking these chips
04:43This new hardware really shook up the whole PC or particularly the laptop space this year
04:47And the big story really is that they're based on ARM rather than the more traditional
04:51x86 architecture and both the X Plus and the higher-end X Elite chips offer
04:56Incredibly efficient designs with fantastic CPU performance and also the best battery life we've ever seen. They run cool. They run quiet
05:03They are ultra responsive and with similar performance running on battery versus plugged in they are fantastic
05:09All-rounders and these Snapdragon power PCs were the first to launch with Windows
05:13Copilot Plus features like a live translation, a co-created tool, the recall when they eventually
05:20Unrecall it and launch it. To be honest though
05:22All this Copilot Plus stuff feels like a bit of a marketing exercise because I don't think many people use a lot of these features
05:28Regularly some are useful like Windows Studio FX for the webcam
05:31And it's basically a proof of concept that with a powerful
05:34local NPU running AI accelerated tasks that can offload from the CPU or the GPU and either run it much faster or much more efficiently
05:42Thereby giving you better battery life in theory fantastic
05:45But it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing where there just isn't that many use cases for these NPUs just yet
05:51But in terms of future proofing all these Windows laptops have at least 40 tops of AI performance
05:56Which is Windows is a minimum requirement for these Copilot Plus features
06:00So hopefully we'll see more over time and also more applications utilize it. But certainly there was a lot of excitement
06:05Let's just say about these guys being the first out the gate with Copilot Plus on Windows
06:10The Achilles heel of these otherwise fantastic Snapdragon chips though is that being ARM based they can't run x86 apps
06:17Which are basically every Windows app ever made natively
06:20so to run an app or a game it has to be either a specific ARM version like Windows on ARM or run via an
06:25Emulator and most of the time it's completely seamless
06:28You may not even know the difference but there are still plenty of apps that have compatibility issues
06:32Whether they don't run as well or they just simply don't run at all
06:35So it's definitely worth doing a research to see whether the apps that you use or your work uses will run on this
06:42However, like the Intel and AMD rivals at launch these Snapdragon laptops were also pretty pricey again in the 1 to 1.5 K region
06:49Although because some of these laptops have been out for a few months now
06:52We're starting to see some decent deals and discounts actually making them more affordable than the brand new Intel rivals
06:58And especially with the new 8 core X plus chip coming out
07:01I think what we're gonna see and this is a little bit of a spoiler for my conclusion
07:04Is 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
07:11And also obviously being on well the next 86
07:14we do have some app compatibility issues because I tell you what if I could get an 8 core Snapdragon X plus laptop for
07:20750 800 quid I would definitely consider that over a 14 1500 pound Intel core ultra series 2 laptop
07:28Then we have the MacBook
07:29This is the MacBook Air 13 with the m3 chip and there's a reason why this is arguably the benchmark laptop
07:35It's incredibly popular. You get fantastic performance battery life. It runs cool
07:39It runs quiet silent
07:40In fact because it doesn't even have a fan every other one of these has fans to cool down the chip
07:44But despite that we're still getting comparable performance
07:47So Apple with this design with their own Apple silicon have for a few years now since the introduced the m1 and m2 and m3
07:53Just blowing the competition out of water and it's why those annoying
07:57Youtubers keep making those videos with titles like is this a MacBook killer?
08:00Of course
08:01I 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
08:08A massive advantage and with the m3 here
08:10We've got an 8 core CPU 10 core GPU with either 8 16 or 32 gigs of memory
08:15Which like these new Intel chips is also baked onto the chip so you can't upgrade it yourself
08:20Not that you can upgrade really anything about a Mac
08:22That is definitely one of the downsides. The only area it falls behind a little bit is in terms of AI compute performance
08:28Although we are gonna get Apple intelligence soon and any m-series laptop
08:32So if you've got an m1 m2 m3 or upcoming m4 that will support Apple intelligence with new MacBook Pros
08:37Expected in late October November time with new m4 pro and m4 max chips
08:42Presumably giving us a massive boost in AI performance ahead of Apple intelligence as it stands though
08:47I don't think we're gonna see updated MacBook as this year. We may have to wait a little bit longer for that
08:51We'll see it on the pros first
08:53However, the latest iPad pros the 11 and 13 do come with a new m4 chip
08:58Obviously, this is gonna be a lower power version also fanless like the airs
09:01But I ran a couple of quick tests on this
09:03Versus the m3 in the air to sort of get a sense of how much faster it might be going to the next generation
09:09MacBook airs with an m4 and in Geekbench 6 the m4 single core processor speed was up 15% and the graphics were a
09:16Ridiculous 82% faster and this is in an iPad
09:19The other issue is that if you spec up a MacBook air with more RAM or storage then you're into MacBook Pro price territory
09:26And of course this does give you more options and because it's thicker and has a fan you're gonna get better sustained performance
09:31But spec'd like for like it is a fair bit pricier and I would argue
09:35It's a different class of laptop and really if you're gonna go with a MacBook Pro
09:39Then it's worth bumping up to an m3 pro or max chip anyway with the m4 series just around the corner
09:44But I'm getting ahead of myself
09:45Let's concentrate on the hero now and on this table with me as I say, we've got the 13-inch MacBook air with the m3
09:51We've got the ZenBook s14 with the top spec ultra 9 series 2 processor horrible naming scheme
09:58We've got the Snapdragon X Elite. This is the
10:02X1e80-100 which technically is not the highest-end chip
10:06There is an X1e84-100 but that is only in as far as I know the Galaxy Book 4 edge
10:11No other laptop no other Snapdragon laptop offers that chip
10:14So 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
10:19Unless you got the Samsung one with the highest spec and paid extra for it
10:22Then we've got the ZenBook s16 with the Ryzen AI 9 HX370. Honestly, this video took forever to make I hope it's useful
10:29So enough waffling. Let's jump into some results and starting with battery life in my full-screen video streaming test
10:35Just running my own YouTube playlist because someone's gonna watch my videos as you would expect
10:40The now rebranded first-gen Core Ultra 9 from last year dropped out first after just over eight hours
10:45No surprises there then came the Ryzen AI powered ZenBook s16 at 9 hours 44
10:50The screen is bigger to be fair which draws more power
10:53But then the battery is also bigger as well
10:55The MacBook Air 13 lasted a little bit longer just over ten and a half hours, which is very impressive given its smaller battery
11:01But then the battle for second place and it goes to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 in the ZenBook s14
11:07Which kicked the bucket at 13 hours 23 with the Snapdragon X Elite in the Surface laptop lasting a whopping 14 hours 41
11:15Perhaps after the Snapdragon that was a clear win for battery life from this guy
11:19But I do want to give credit to this guy as well because it lasted 68% longer than the previous gen
11:24So this gets the first place trophy this gets the second place and I think also the most improved trophy and the MacBook deserves a
11:30Trophy for lasting as long as it does on the battery it has inside. It's not just the sizes what you can do with it
11:37But what about standby life?
11:39Well, I charged them all up to 100% and then left them for 15 hours
11:42I came back and these two still had a hundred percent charge left. This guy actually dropped 4% down to 96
11:48I thought we would do better than that actually and then the Ryzen over here on the ZenBook s16 dropped 2%
11:54But 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
11:59You know, this is not a scientific experiment
12:01It was a win for these two in terms of standby time
12:04But let's move on to performance and start with the processor the CPU and I'm using the full speed max performance modes on all of
12:11These to see what they are capable of flat out
12:13And of course the MacBook Air will be a disadvantage here because it doesn't have a fan
12:17but despite that in my single core CPU tests
12:20Apple's m3 was out front with the Snapdragon X Elite and the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 just behind and pretty evenly matched
12:27I must say which is a big step up from Intel's last-gen chips
12:30But predictably because they've halved the number of cores the new Intel chip doesn't do as well in multi-core where it's around
12:3725% slower than the equivalent last-gen so quite a drop and it's outpaced by everything else on test here
12:43I am always amazed though by what Apple's chips can do with so little wattage and also without a fan
12:52And in my battery only test so not plugged into the charger only the Snapdragon X Elite maintain the same results as when plugged in
12:59And having identical on battery performance is definitely a great feature of these Snapdragon machines
13:06Now moving from the CPU to the GPU in terms of graphics in my 3d mark wildlife extreme benchmark
13:12The core ultra series 2 chip and the Apple m3 came out on top
13:15But there was only a single digit percentage difference between all but the snapdragon in the steel nomad light test
13:21In fact, the snapdragon was significantly behind in both tests
13:26But then in games the new Intel ultra 9 series 2
13:30absolutely took the lead across the board being anywhere from 20 to 33 percent faster than the previous gen and
13:35outpacing AMD in all but hitman where Intel kind of falls apart for some reason and
13:41Interestingly despite showing the same arc 140 V integrated graphics
13:45The lower powered core ultra 7 was a fair bit slower than the same laptop with the higher TDP core ultra 9 in
13:51Both cases though the X CSS and FSR upscaling are doing a lot of the heavy lifting getting as well into the playable
13:58TTP 30 or even 60 FPS territory depending on the game again, though
14:03The snapdragon really does struggle to keep up here
14:05But unlike the MacBook Air at least it can play games, although not as many as the Intel or the AMD
14:12And breathe that was a lot to take in but which should you buy? Well, I think the new Intel chips are very impressive
14:17We're getting great all-around performance fantastic battery life. Really really good graphics performance
14:22Particularly in games that can legitimately give us performance of a couple year old dedicated GPU and while multi-core is significantly down
14:29I think they have been smart about optimizing efficiency single-core battery
14:34GPU performance these new Intel laptops while not perfect are really really good
14:39however
14:39The fairly significantly lower multi-core performance would lead me to say that the Ryzen AI chips like we have in the ZenBook s16
14:46Let me get that out of the way are probably your best option if you are running more demanding tasks regularly
14:52even if this new chip isn't as an impressive an upgrade versus the previous gen and also as I say
14:57There's aren't that many options as many options
15:00I should say compared to some of these other laptops using this chip or at least not yet
15:04But for the most demanding workloads running Windows and on x86, there's no app compatibility issues
15:10Get yourself a Ryzen laptop
15:11But this is where it gets tricky because for pure battery life get yourself a Snapdragon laptop really really impressive there in terms of efficiency
15:18And just overall performance as well
15:20However, unless this is significantly cheaper, which it may be not just because of discounts, but also lower-end models
15:26I would probably just go with the Intel you're getting similar performance similar battery life
15:31Although not quite as good but normally app compatibility issues and a much faster GPU as for the MacBook
15:37Well, this is still incredibly easy to recommend
15:39I would argue it's still probably the best overall laptop in terms of form factor webcam battery life not having a fan
15:46So it's you know
15:47Silence keyboard trackpad Mac OS is lovely as I say the fact that they designed the chip the laptop and the software just means it's
15:53A lovely experience. It's not gonna be for everyone and there are advantages to Windows laptops, of course
15:58But then this is also do a refresh in a few months with an m4 chip
16:02Which could make it even better and the base model of this can actually be a fair bit cheaper than these guys
16:07Although once you upgrade to 16 gigs of RAM and maybe 512 storage, which I would probably recommend then the pricing is actually pretty similar
16:14What would I buy?
16:15out of these on balance
16:17I would probably get the air still but broadly speaking if I were to buy a new Windows laptop
16:23I would probably go with the Intel with a ultra 7 the combination of overall performance graphics battery life
16:29I probably go for one of these but they're not cheap. If you've got any other questions drop a comment below
16:34I'll do my best to answer it
16:35let me know out of these guys which one you go for if you did find this useful a cheeky like and subscribe would be
16:41Fantastic, and I will see you next time right here on the tech chat