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I get 12+ hours of battery life on my M1 Air, no longer bother with cables and outlets at coffee shops. What else I could buy of similar weight/size/battery/qu

I get 12+ hours of battery life on my M1 Air, no longer bother with cables and outlets at coffee shops. What else I could buy of similar weight/size/battery/quality? Even if knew of an alternative, there are other unexpected perks to going with Apple: travel constantly, occasionally selling my old one and switching to a new machine is easy whereas with other brands would be impossible. Amortized cost is less than $1/day. If this Asahi thing pans out (I'm guessing maybe in a year or two it won't use twice the battery) I'll immediately dual boot and spend the majority of my time in it. :)

nextos 4y ago
This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. ARM laptops from other brands are starting to pop up but they will take at least a year to catch up in terms of performance. Right now, ThinkPad X13s runs Linux very decently, but it's less powerful than the M1. In the US market it might be cheaper than M1 Mac Airs. In Europe it's 50% more expensive and customer support is poor.
- atchoo 4y ago
  Interesting product. 230g lighter with 10 hours longer battery life than an M1 Air. > In Europe it's 50% more expensive It's basically the same price in the UK. £84 more than an equivalent M1 Air on the Lenovo site right now.
  - nextos 4y ago
    That's a good price. In mainland EU, right now, the X13s is €1490 in lenovo.com. A MacBook Air M1 is €1200, and I can get almost 10% off using academic discount. Plus, the Snapdragon CPU in the X13s is still far from the M1 in regular benchmarks. Linux support is better in the X13s, except for the camera. It's an IR one, and this might never be well supported.
- Kuinox 4y ago
  There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html
  - nextos 4y ago
    Yes, but not in terms of heat and battery. What fanless laptop do you suggest with similar specs to a MacBook Air M1? The best think I have found that runs Linux reasonably well (still with lots of caveats) is the X13s. And I cannot get a decent price.
    - Kuinox 4y ago
      Heat and battery is directly tied to the performance per watt. With equally performing software, the one with the best performance per watt will be run cooler and longer. The graph I sent is not raw performance, but performance per watt.
      - nextos 4y ago
        Sure, but in practical terms are there any laptop makers that sell any CPU from that list, say a i3-1210U, in a good case and with good cooling? Because, as I said in the original post, even when Apple was selling Core 2 Duos, their cooling was better than most other manufacturers. I was often buying Macs to run Linux because of this. Also see what the parent post says about performance per Watt, which mirrors my experience as a user. No current x86_64 machine is close to ARM if you want low heat.
  - wokkel 4y ago
    Nobody wanted an arm laptop because it doesn't run windows/existing software. Apple bundles an is and a decent emulator for old software. If they didn't nobody would want it.
    - Kuinox 4y ago
- bombolo 4y ago
  > This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. I had one of those macbooks… very silent but the fan broke quite soon and to use it I had to limit the cpu frequency or it would overheat and shut down. I take the noise over the sleek computer with the air intake and outtake placed in the same hole that overheats constantly. The machine was completely unusable in the summer, the bottom would get scorching hot. I could NOT place it on my legs.

nextos 4y ago

This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. ARM laptops from other brands are starting to pop up but they will take at least a year to catch up in terms of performance. Right now, ThinkPad X13s runs Linux very decently, but it's less powerful than the M1. In the US market it might be cheaper than M1 Mac Airs. In Europe it's 50% more expensive and customer support is poor.

atchoo 4y ago
Interesting product. 230g lighter with 10 hours longer battery life than an M1 Air. > In Europe it's 50% more expensive It's basically the same price in the UK. £84 more than an equivalent M1 Air on the Lenovo site right now.
- nextos 4y ago
  That's a good price. In mainland EU, right now, the X13s is €1490 in lenovo.com. A MacBook Air M1 is €1200, and I can get almost 10% off using academic discount. Plus, the Snapdragon CPU in the X13s is still far from the M1 in regular benchmarks. Linux support is better in the X13s, except for the camera. It's an IR one, and this might never be well supported.
Kuinox 4y ago
There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html
- nextos 4y ago
  Yes, but not in terms of heat and battery. What fanless laptop do you suggest with similar specs to a MacBook Air M1? The best think I have found that runs Linux reasonably well (still with lots of caveats) is the X13s. And I cannot get a decent price.
  - Kuinox 4y ago
    Heat and battery is directly tied to the performance per watt. With equally performing software, the one with the best performance per watt will be run cooler and longer. The graph I sent is not raw performance, but performance per watt.
    - nextos 4y ago
      Sure, but in practical terms are there any laptop makers that sell any CPU from that list, say a i3-1210U, in a good case and with good cooling? Because, as I said in the original post, even when Apple was selling Core 2 Duos, their cooling was better than most other manufacturers. I was often buying Macs to run Linux because of this. Also see what the parent post says about performance per Watt, which mirrors my experience as a user. No current x86_64 machine is close to ARM if you want low heat.
- wokkel 4y ago
  Nobody wanted an arm laptop because it doesn't run windows/existing software. Apple bundles an is and a decent emulator for old software. If they didn't nobody would want it.
  - Kuinox 4y ago
bombolo 4y ago
> This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. I had one of those macbooks… very silent but the fan broke quite soon and to use it I had to limit the cpu frequency or it would overheat and shut down. I take the noise over the sleek computer with the air intake and outtake placed in the same hole that overheats constantly. The machine was completely unusable in the summer, the bottom would get scorching hot. I could NOT place it on my legs.