Your Next Laptop Won’t Be “Intel Inside”

Your next laptop won’t be “Intel Inside”. Finally.

Intel-based laptops have poor energy performance, with batteries lasting less than 2 hours and overheating. Besides, these CPUs have accumulated many design bugs over the years, requiring inefficient workarounds from compiler and operating system manufacturers.

This became evident when Apple switched its computer CPUs to M1 in 2020 and never looking back, resulting in laptops that stay cool and have long-lasting batteries. The MacBook Air M1 set a new standard for laptops, being excellent, better than any entry laptop, affordable at around $1000 while good enough for 99% of users.

Other manufacturers struggled to compete, with only their premium lines matching Apple’s display and lightness, but never battery life and energy efficiency. To justify premium prices, they offered excessive configurations, leading to energy and silicon waste.

A lawyer who wants a Windows laptop with Intel that is as light and has a screen as good as the Retina of the Air M1 will only find it in something like a Dell XPS (premium line of Dell) for $1700 because they don’t make it with less than 500GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and i7, even when 128GB, 8GB, and i3 are totally sufficient for her and for 99% of people and all their tasks. They won’t manufacture or will not have it ready for delivery. If they’ll customize it, the price won’t be worth it.

On the other hand, affordable laptops from these manufacturers are poor, with low-resolution displays, heavy and with inelegant designs. A high-density display is the most valuable feature for users, followed by lightness and solid-state storage. RAM and CPU are less important but often overly highlighted due to branding.

Four years after the M1, the industry has finally moved. The new generation features Qualcomm ARM CPUs, which are more efficient and allow batteries to last nearly 24 hours. Manufacturers can now offer products similar to the benchmark (Apple MacBook Air), including in price, because they won’t have to beef it up with unnecessary amounts of RAM and storage to hide or compensate other inefficiencies, and stay focused on what really matters: the human interaction devices such as high-resolution display, smaller size, better camera, speakers, microphone, keyboard.

In 2024, if offered a laptop with “Intel Inside,” consider it obsolete as it is since 2020. Your next Windows laptop will have “ARM Inside,” but it won’t need a sticker to brag around because that’s not what matters.

🇧🇷 Also in Portuguese.

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