Two new laptops announced yesterday are being touted as “Microsoft’s MacBook Air,” with the company claiming that they offer similar performance to the M3 MacBook Air, with even greater battery life.
But commentators have been quick to point out that this isn’t a like-for-like comparison. A key feature of the MacBook Air is it achieves its impressive performance without the need for cooling fans, so a fairer comparison would be with the MacBook Pro …
We noted yesterday that Microsoft’s presentation for its latest Copilot+ PC laptops specifically claimed to beat the M3 MacBook Air.
Microsoft was especially eager to show how its new ARM-based PCs could outperform Apple’s M3 MacBook Airs, both in sheer performance as well as battery life. The Mac vs. PC fires were very much being stoked in this presentation.
Executive VP Yusuf Mehdi said:
It’s going to outperform any device out there, including a MacBook Air with an M3 processor, by over 50 percent on sustained performance.
In an attempt to back this up, The Verge‘s Tom Warren was treated to a full hour of demos and benchmarks at Microsoft’s campus.
Benchmark tests usually aren’t that exciting to watch. But a lot was at stake here: for years, the MacBook Air has been able to smoke Arm-powered PC chips — and Intel-based ones, too. Except, this time around, the Surface pulled ahead on the first test. Then it won another test and another after that. The results of these tests are why Microsoft believes it’s now in position to conquer the laptop market.
But Arstechnica noted one key thing Apple hadn’t mentioned: the Copilot+ PCs have fans, making them more like a MacBook Pro than a MacBook Air.
One caveat that I hadn’t seen mentioned in Microsoft’s presentation or in other coverage of the announcement, though—Microsoft says that both of these devices have fans. Apple still uses fans for the MacBook Pro lineup, but the MacBook Air is totally fanless. Bear that in mind when reading Microsoft’s claims about performance.
John Gruber checked out a bunch of these new breed of Windows machines, and didn’t find any of them claiming to be fanless, noting that he’d expect them to highlight this if it were the case.
- Acer Swift 14 AI: I couldn’t find any mention of fans or cooling, which makes me think it has fans.
- Asus Vivobook S 15: “Plus, dust filters for both fans keep your laptop pristine.”
- Dell: No mention.
- HP: No mention.
- Lenovo: No mention.
- Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge: Only mention of “fan”: “Galaxy Book4 Edge also brings fan-favorite features, Chat Assist and Live Translate, to the PC.”
Top comment by Graham Jones
The fan isn’t a problem until it kicks in, and you notice it. That rarely happens with the MacBook Pro, but maybe you have to throttle it enough to notice. The comparison isn’t honest, but Microsoft have done this before, as have other companies. They will find the most favourable numbers and present them within their own marketing narrative. It’s not strictly honest, but marketing isn’t known for its honesty. Anyone using a Mac does so for the entire user experience. They like the hardware, software, App Store and services and overall user experience. I’m sure many Windows users are the same, but they are two companies that have a very different ethos to one another, and they have very different businesses as well. They cater to their own markets and occasionally cross over into each other’s territory. I don’t think anyone using a Mac will be tempted in the slightest.
So yeah, take the comparison with a large dose of salt.
9to5Mac’s Take
Microsoft does appear to be taking some liberties here.
On the plus side, it’s great to see Windows laptops at least attempting to compete – that incentivizes Apple to keep up the pace of development on both performance and battery life. Better Windows machines means even better Macs.
Photo: Microsoft
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