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Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

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Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#51

Post by sitzkrieg »

dmix wrote: post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

i hate ios and apple software quality is a total joke.

ill give it up for any actually good things tho, i did try a macbook air during a long trip and the battery life is truly excellent and worth dealing with the downsides

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#52

Post by masklinn »

binkHN wrote: post #13
dmix wrote: post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

I don't know how it compares, but my recent AMD ThinkPad uses about 1% of the battery per hour while in "modern standby." I figure I have at least three and up to 4 days of being unplugged before it's forced to shut down.

Pretty sure GP was using their MacBook over the weekend. The MBA is supposed to last something like 30 days in sleep.

Yours is the sort of things I got with my Linux work laptop, and it’s miserable: a few years down the line battery degradation means after a 3 days weekend you have even odds the laptop will have slept itself to shutdown.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#54

Post by viraptor »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #49
dmix wrote: post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

I don't understand why battery life in gaming laptops is so incredibly shit even when doing non-gaming tasks. I thought a while back Intel and AMD worked on hardware/software to automatically switch to integrated graphics when you don't need the discrete GPU? Did nothing come of that? I don't expect the battery life to be as good as non-gaming laptops, of course, but I feel like it should probably last longer than li…

It works like that on most laptops. The GPU selection should be transparent on windows. (And can be done explicitly in Linux)

I know Linux has powertop which can measure energy usage per subsystem. Not sure if windows has something like that to answer your question?

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#55

Post by eastbound »

binkHN wrote: post #11

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. I don't know how good the Linux support for this hardware is, but, if it works well, the reason of buying Macs for their battery life gets blown out of the water.

The track record is important: PCs have a track record of reducing the battery life to 15 minutes within 2 years through simple Windows updates; It’s probable that it will take 15 years to overcome people’s assumptions.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#56

Post by viraptor »

jxi wrote: post #17
dmix wrote: post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

Macs have always had great battery life and the Apple Silicon chips took it to another level. It remains to be seen if any Windows laptop can actually consistently achieve their marketed battery life given Windows’ terrible track record for power management and proper sleeping.

Yeah, no. Some macs had good battery life. The last Intel MBP was really bad though. (Less than 2h of basic desktop use and lots of overheating after a year)

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#57

Post by MengerSponge »

dmitrygr wrote: post #3

So the new pro-level laptop from MS+QCOM (they are bragging of the specs of the one with Snapdragon X Elite chip which starts at $1,500) and ships in a month beats last year's entry-level mac, which starts at $999 and has been shipping for a year?

Seriously. I'm already a little annoyed that Apple has moved away from "and you can buy it today", but at least they're way ahead still.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#58

Post by chris_wot »

ghostly_s wrote: post #31
chris_wot wrote: post #7

What concerns me the most is the repairability. We make extensive use of Macbook Air M1 and M2 units, and we have a support contract for repairing the devices onsite. We also have a support contract for repair of Surface Pro units, and when these die they get sent away to Microsoft and a replacement eventually arrives. From what I can tell, they have dreadful repairability.

Who offers on-site repair for your Macs? All my employers have sent us to the Apple store.

CompNow. We have thousands of Macs (we are a school). Many private schools in Sydney have paid for on-site repairs.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#59

Post by dagmx »

Partially copying my comment from the Copilot+ thread

They do some sleight of hand when doing the comparisons during the release today.

The Surface Laptop is physically a competitor to the actively cooled MacBook Pro (in fact it’s thicker).

Their performance and battery metrics are against the slimmer and passively cooled MacBook Air.

Their performance comparison is between the M3 and the Snapdragon X Elite when the M3 has throttled (their wording is sustained performance). The Elite is a significantly higher TDP product line than the M3 and its own sibling.

Their battery comparison is between the M3 and the Snapdragon X Plus. This is the lower wattage SoC, paired with a thicker body that likely has a larger capacity battery as a result.

It’s very unlikely that the device has both stronger performance AND longer battery life, because those are handled by different SKUs. Likely you will choose whichever metric matters more to you.

Still a strong showing, but take the “benchmarks” with a heavy grain of salt.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#60

Post by larrykubin »

peppertree wrote: post #32
dmix wrote: post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

I have serious trust issues when microsoft makes a claim about battery life.

Yeah, I bought past versions of the Surface and the Surface Book. They would often never wake up from sleep or the battery would be dead unexpectedly. Hard for me to trust them after feeling like I wasted money multiple times.
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