I own it and will be returning it. Its horrendous. 10 hours on power saving mode with boost disabled and brightness down to 75%.8 if you are watching media and that is with HDR off. Ill be getting teh s14 with ultra 7 258 instead
one more thing, when you compare different models, kindly do these: 1) Set brightness to same levels, using that specific tool, spider something 2) on OLED and mini LED laptops, Dark mode makes significant contribution to the battery usage. So I think testing all laptops with white mode gives fair comparison, and OLED laptops then have bonus offering extra battery if on dark mode.
@@vovcheable yeah it's absolutely insane that this guy thinks it's reasonable to test the battery life of windows laptops by *disabling literally all power saving capabilitlies* and then complains about how they don't last as long as the apple options .. when with the balanced mode it lasts way longer .. sigh
Correct! I would also like to add what @ArdgalAlkeides said, high performance shouldn't be used for battery testing. Technically all processors can run at, say, 60 W (well, don't know the Macbook Air, maybe that one doesn't) which will be 1.5 hours at most of battery time. So you're testing the power configuration instead of efficiency. Also, different CPUs have different efficiency profiles. Maybe a laptop allows your CPU to double the power usage, for 10% extra performance, while another laptop might not. So you can see with the same chip how efficiency can vary greatly (that 2x power for 10% extra performance is not an exaggeration). I'm happy to see the balanced power profile battery test. While it's also not perfect, it's much closer to an Apples to Applesx86 comparison. Ideally, but it would take a lot to test, there would be tests with the minimum possible power for the CPU and then also do tests at different power levels, like 5 W, 10 W and so on, to see how it can do for each power cap. Here also the test might differ, you might be ok to actually run the computer at the minimum possible power (800 MHz usually for Intel CPUs) when you watch a movie, but the same power plan might be too slow and unresponsive (Thanks Microsoft) even for basic computer stuff, like checking your photos in the file explorer and writing in MS Word, so a different power level would be acceptable for this. And the acceptable power levels for each of these tests would be different from a chip to another. This would be quite a lot of tests, but it would allow to see the proper picture for the chips, even though how the laptop is manufactured, the motherboard and connections has an impact on efficiency too, not just how much power the CPU is using. Especially at the very low values, if the CPU consumes 2 W, but the laptop is built badly, the rest of the system might use 8 W bringing the total usage to 10 W, so at most 9-10 hours with the biggest batteries. While a proper built laptop might consume only 3 W, so with 2 from CPU you get to 5 W in total, so you can get 18-20 hours of battery life. From what I understand, unfortunately, having more ports usually means a bit more power usage too, which I guess is one of the reasons why Apple is so excessively, disgustingly cheap when it comes to included ports. Also having the RAM on the chip, not separatedly also helps. And having it removable is also worse than having it soldered, when it comes to efficiency. That's why I can't wait to see Lunar Lake, the first (at least recently) mass-consumer x86 chip with memory on chip. I think the chip for Steam Deck has this too, but you can't buy it separatedly.
@@ArdgalAlkeides yes exactly, apple has less brightness, only 60hz. Oled options take more battery because of the panel. Even in dark mode oled takes more power than lcd. Also that oled is 120hz.
@@ArdgalAlkeides it's not insane in the slightess. You're measuring how much work can be done on battery with the script he has set up on high performance. I agree that comparing how apple is much better on battery isn't a comment that's needed because it states the obvious. However, efficiency isn't necessarily *just* how long something lasts, but how much work can be done as well. It's a duplex measurement. However, I also agree that high performance is not the best way to test the laptops, because afaik, macbooks just run on a pseudo balanced mode. So it's best to put all under the same conditions.
High Performance mode (the one you used, not the one in the settings app) isn't really a fair comparison to MacBooks. This mode does force the system to always feed max power to the processor even if not needed, thus overruling all processor features to scale performance based on usage. The fairest one would be best performance under settings.
I was going to say the same thing. The old and hidden power plan "High Performance" will keep the CPU at maximum clock, it's only good for desktop users who don't care about battery, and sometimes to prevent micro-stutter in games.
The Qualcomm and apple silicon chips are clocked up all the time. Intel and AMD have for a long time been "cheating" on efficiency by clocking down when they think the user is idling. Unfortunately modern computers are always up to something, however small, which breaks this "cheat" for the x86 chips. Linux is the only modern OS that isn't scanning or downloading in the background, so the CPU can sit idle and downclock which fairs much better on normal intermittent usage with x86
@@YakovFn again, they said the same thing 5 years ago. And until it's incompatible in gaming and general productivity software used in daily working tasks, it will be completely useless. Pretty much the status of Mac nowadays.
@@AZisk Hey, I have been watching your videos from a long time, really appreciate your hard work in reviewing them for us. I am looking for a premium, light-weight, portable, high performance programming laptop with AI capabilities. Looking forward for your suggestions!
LOL - even if you're not a "fanboy", you can appreciate the build materials. I wish more manufacturers would make an effort to make their laptops feel as "solid". With the right build, you can also use a metal case for better heat dissapation. Unfortunately in many cases it's a race to the bottom for price that's considered most important, and plastic is just that much cheaper.
I wish more laptops had an all-metal construction like the MacBooks do. It just makes the laptops feel so much more premium. That's part of the reason I went for a Razer Blade 14 over other gaming laptops. The milled aluminum chassis of the Razer Blade makes it extremely sturdy and very premium feeling.
I really hate the white caps with white backlight. I had an ASUS G14 for a while and from experience, the white-on-white is just impossible to read in anything but a dark room. Darker color keycaps would be much better for legibility.
Agreed. Keycap materials for shinethrough keys tend to be neutral in color - which makes finding good shinethrough keycaps (light or dark) very difficult. Either they're very low quality, or the legends don't show in "normal" light very well. Then (in non-low-profile keyboards) North-facing LEDs have interference issues with Cherry-profile keycaps, but legends are usually printed on the Northwest of the keys, meaning that the preferred South-facing LEDs don't shine through well, as they're not in line with the legends...ugh. Some older Apple keyboards had Southwest legends, which looked great, and would fix this issue, but for some reason the keycap industry hasn't caught on to this at all. We need better shinethrough materials that have good contrast, and for more shinethrough keycaps to embrace Southwest legends.
@michaelthomashamilton yep, my wife has older vivobook and I got same impression, I don't get what we're they thinking about when they created those and maintained it Ower multiple generations?
The problem is that most software vendors are moving to web technologies to offer SaaS products. So, regardless of ARM or x86, what really matters is battery efficiency when using Chrome (or Edge or Firefox). Note, I’m not saying that Native apps are going away, however workflows are trending differently.
@@albyxyeah.. You're absolutely right.. This is why for the most part, the ARM laptops would work.. For the most part.. Only place they would fail for now is GPU performance as that wasn't the target with this Gen 1.
Well.. 6 months is a short time.. They need at least 2 years.. And I believe from the next gen too.. Gen 2 would fix a lot of the flops on Gen 1.... Well at least what I hope for.. But I really hope they do, especially GPU performance and more efficiency improvement.. I would have gotten the Snapdragon laptops as I am looking assuming their GPU performance was reliable. For my workflow, that's the only thing holding me back.
How the hell did you measure Apple silicon laptops? There is no "high power" plan on MacOS. I think it is wrong to even put it in the "high power", since the defaults of balanced should be good for most workloads and that is the default as most people will use their laptop.
Agree, the High Power Mode test is in my opinion not a valid test (and never a good setting) as the manually forced high power plan (which isn't even available by default) mainly does force the system to always feed max. power to the processor even if not needed, overruling all OS and processor features to scale performance based on usage. It is a very extreme power plan which is not there by default for a good reason...and probably nobody should use. Just use the enabled Balanced or even High Performance mode if you want to. It will feed max. power if required but scale things down if not. I am not aware that MacOS even allows for that...at least on my M1 MacBook I couldn't find anything as extreme as the manually set High Power Mode.
I am not sure I would agree with that. Using Windows I would never consider anything other than full power plan given how much driver issues (on my desktop b550 any plan would literally unalive Intel Bluetooth) and how much sluggish performance I've encountered. And not that Apple was particularly good when they had Intel chips, having only bursts of high performance. But that does not apply to Apple Silicon. If you load it, it will give necessary performance. But on a regular basis, it's very efficient. In Windows it always feels like it's your manual choice, and while it might be reasonable to stick with heavily capped performance, I would not sacrifice that after M1s. I just really hate lags and slow performance, I would've bought less performant model in the first place is battery was my priority. That's more of a Windows problem, of course, not an AMD one.
@@Executor009but then when it comes to the battery life, they will put it in low power mode to get the longest lift. The issue with this is, neither the performance or battery number will then reflect actual usage. Because using it in low power mode would completely change the performance score.
And just to make clear, as a DEV I am regularly using MacOS, Windows, Linux and love/hate them all the same. All have their pros and cons. No need to start a war 😉
Yess. I do want more data points with the out of the box power plan because that's the intended use. I would imagine that it will be wasteful to keep the core clocks up high while watching youtube videos. And also for Average Efficiency
What a huge difference with the balanced plan. Please go back and add the comparison of the laptops you still have to compare with. It would be very interesting.
Seriously does anyone ever need to press to click when just a single touch works perfectly fine. How does it matter if you can click at the top or not? A single click which is much faster and easier works. They don't even need to make the trackpad clicky even at the bottom, there is literally no use for that. Just give a solid trackpad with no movements at all.
The proper answer to this whole debate are haptic touchpads. They click everywhere. You can also adjust the clicking force or even disable the click completely. MacBooks have had them for years, and they're now emerging onto Windows laptops.
Correct. I never click on the touchpad, even drag&drop does not need any clicks. The whole "superior haptic touchpad" discussion is only there because youtubers don't know how to use a touchpad without clicking around.
Try a macbook and then talk about this again. If you have never felt what's better you won't be able to appreciate it. Just go to a store and try the haptic touch trackpads. It will feel so good that you'll disable the tap to click. No more tapping! you'll want to press down and feel the vibration instead of moving the whole part down. Then you'll feel that you can press anywhere and that will be a gamechanger.
So I actually never used to click the track pad until I bought a Mac (thanks a lot apple). On windows I would always do a tap which works everywhere so that whole diving board thing was never an issue. Now when I go back to windows machines I find myself clicking and getting annoyed 🤦
@@patrikpukan I know but for some reason I gravitate to the click despite having the tap feature active. I could be wrong since it was years ago but I don't think apple had the tap feature on by default when I bought the machine. In any case it's not something I'd use as a deal breaker for a laptop purchase. The texture and tracking precision are more important to me.
The part when you perform the automated test..omg, I would like so much to know how to do something like that. Do you have scripts that perform everyday task for you? In the other hand, this review is by far one of the best I saw, if not the best. The test adds a massive value! Thank you!
The thing I'm most curious about is actually it's standby battery. Probably the main thing that the Snapdragon seems to have over these x86 chips is the fact that I can close the lid on my laptop and come back and still have the battery exist. I don't really understand why idle power consumption is such a problem, but I care about the idle power consumption a lot. I can come back to my MacBook after leaving it on the table for 2 days and the battery isn't dead, I can't say the same about an Intel laptop I'm curious if the new AMD chips resolve this issue with Windows sleep
With x86 ACPI, old S3 sleep turned off everything except RAM and it could last a week without any issues. new S0iX sleep mode (marketed by Microsoft as "Connected Standby") turns of most of the hardware off but keeps the CPU and RAM powered, and standby tasks running on the CPU can request additional devices to be powered for a period of time. Linux can be configured to not run any tasks during S0iX standby and can last a whole week fine.
Bought the asus zephyrus g14 for my 13 year old daughter, for school, gaming and coding. I am so impressed that I'll most likely buy the g16 instead of a Dell XPS.
G16 is a miracle. I have this s16 and the 6 speaker audio is astounding but the g16 is even a little bit better because it radiates straight up from the palm rest!
I think it s time to call out JustJosh with his misleading ridiculous battery efficiency tests. I think he has a deep bias against Qualcomm and I don't know why. How long does the battery last is the most important, and his results are always contradictory to those of other RU-vidrs. He should also learn from others instead constantly praising himself regarding his "integrity" and his lack of sponsorships...
My guess would be simple disappointment, because ARM processors in PCs should have been the second coming of Jesus. I mean the expectations were high. And calling attention to the application compatibility issues is a public service, to save many people, who don't know any better, from disappointment.
@@Trickey2413 Under high loads almost never happens. I have over 50 chrome tabs open and a dozens apps and I'm still under 10% cpu usage most of the time.
How are the fans? That's the main thing I really appreciate about the ARM laptops ... they're so quiet. I was worried about the SL7's fans but they basically never turn on, and the laptop only gets a little warm to the touch if I'm doing strenuous things.
The miraculous thing about this laptop is you can get lots of work done in whisper mode which is 10 watts and the fans almost never turn on they are inaudible. If you run in Max fans or in performance mode the laptop is quite noisy because the fans are undersized to save energy.
@@systemBuilder that's neat! I know that I have quiet mode on my gaming laptop and it's ... extremely not quiet, so I'm happy to hear it's better here at least :)
I love your videos on comparing development workload across all the platforms but here are the things you need to take care of. 1. when comparing battery, make sure the brightness is same on all laptops and the refresh rate is same or mention it in your data points. 2. HP mode in windows will make the OS feed the processor full power but it also doesn't let Wifi card go to sleep or throttle down according to needs, all the ports and every PCI-E power saving feature are disabled. 3. additional info like backlight was on or off, and write/find a script where it feeds the processor max power but doesn't disable all the power saving stuff on windows.
Man. RU-vid did a great job recommending this video to me. I can say this is a good review of this laptop. I always used Balanced on laptops when it came to On Battery use of the laptop. While Plugged‚ it depends‚ some Ryzen laptops were performing in certain tasks way better when using the balanced power profile in Windows 10.
127 tabs according to the manager... and the manager i use solely, because they're spread across several windows and i don't want to lose them. Edge's RAM saving feature is amazing. ... Anyhow! ... lol
Yes, Edge puts them to sleep, and if you only use one or two at a time, you can have hundreds of tabs in the background. There is just a minor delay when you bring them to the foreground.
For me the most impressive thing here is the new AMD chip almost matching the M2 Max in battery life and efficiency while being manufactured on an inferior node (TSMC 4nm vs the 3nm for the M2).
2:25 so using it on your lap is gonna fry you? It seems like the holes are all at the bottom, and those rubber things are to keep some distance with the desk?
Cool video thanks. Not sure if you still have the 16 inch M3 Macbook Pro Max, but if you do, it would be awesome if you can also include its various stats in your future charts and benchmark comparisons :)
I bought one and sent it back for warranty after a few days. Random reboots, black screen freezes and an odd occasional backlight blinking. Got a serious beta-tester feel.
Apple user to Touchscreen laptop: I typically never use the touchscreen. "Like Steve Jobs said, my arm would tire out too fast if I have reach out that far. And don't put cursor keys on any keyboard either. All cursor movements have to done with the mouse." R.I.P., Steve.
Zenbooks are a step above Vivobooks in build. They're mean to be like a MacBook competitor and usually have an all metal construction, but the bottom panel could be mistaken for plastic if the sheet metal doesnt have enough bracing. Especially if you're used to MacBooks, the stamped metal sheet doesn't feel as sturdy
Does your testing method take screen brightness into account? For example, is the screen calibrated to a specific brightness? If not, it would be great to have those data points as well. Since the test is mostly automated, you could run it at different brightness levels. I hate it when my screen is too dim. I have an older 8th gen Acer 2-in-1, and the screen only goes up to what I assume to be about 200 nits. At university, in well-lit rooms, I often have to turn up the brightness on my Galaxy Tab S9+ (which I think maxes out at 500 nits) to see my screen. So, what I am trying to say is, I wouldn’t even consider buying a laptop with only 200 nits of brightness today. Many reviewers only test at 200 nits, which for me is barely usable. P.S.: I know color vibrance and many other variables make a difference in perceived brightness, but still…
Very interessting video and very nice battery test. But im very curious: is the workcycle (like whats being done for how long) documented? This tests offers such an interesting insight into battery capacity and this would be very nice to know so everyone can estimate how it compares to their own work.
+1 trackpads should be much smaller. Also, do non-gaming laptops need to have such small cursor keys? Programming without dedicated Home/End buttons on the right side is a pain.
There are lots of adjustments the manufacturer makes to the power plan that you override when using the windows plan. The plan switches automatically if you are plugged in.
Don't buy this as a gaming laptop the power limit clips the power at 34 w and so the 370 chip is gimped and is not worth owning, the 365 is a much better deal and in some games the 880m ties and even beats the 890m!
I’m eager to see the comparison with competition in the ARM world. Temperature and heat should also be a part of the comparison. I think ARM is the future. There is no way around ARM.
this comment is just for me to practice. --- is the first batch of laptops to get it.(0:08) the interaction of the chassis and the chip.(0:41) that's what makes or breaks a laptop's reputation.(0:43) this is a different caliber laptop.(1:11) still kind of has a lot of give.(1:56) the bottom is plastic so it is gonna bend.(1:58) with these laser cut notches in here.(2:49) how's this new ceraluminum stuff gona hold up to stains.(2:57) it's a little bit too much push for me.(4:05) the ergonomics of this keyboard feel right at home for me.(4:49)
which laptop should I buy as a CS student Macbook M1 14inch with 16ram and 1tb ssd or Zenbook S16 with ryzen 9 HX370 with 32gb ram and 1tb ssd if both are similarly priced.
I would pick the ZenBook tho. But if you prioritize battery life over customizability. Then go for the m1. But the m1 is a little bit dated now, so honestly I would recommend the ZenBook.
There is too much variability in this "power plan" approach. The fact that a balanced plan produced 3x the battery life indicates that we are comparing apples to oranges.
@@AZisk Maybe the out-of-the-box experience is the one to compare imo, unless there is some egregious misconfiguration. Balanced on windows usually yields 90%+ of the performance, while high performance massively jacks up idle power consumption even though the laptop isn't doing anything.
Realistically even the Mac books throttle performance because it is not constantly feeding the CPU the same amount of power consistently because not every task requires full power or else that would lead to significant CPU degradation
Returned my snapdragon, loved how cool it ran, lasted 8 hrs working. Ran games soso. I returned it because it didn't run Vonage business it just stopped working. And then I just decided to get the AI 9 VivoBook just like the Snapdragon when I had and that one gets about the same amount 8 hours for work just runs hotter but runs games great
I bought and returned that computer. It is a great computer in terms of display, keyboard, battery life, design, etc., but the track pad is terrible. It would randomly click in places that I didn't click. Panning on google maps was basically impossible. I couldn't drag and select cells in excel. I also had some sleep issues, but an app update got rid of those.
I like Firefox Developer Tools more. I have "Edit and Resend" in the network tab, unlike Chromium-based browsers where I only have resend. There was another thing it had, but I forgot which one. Anyway, back to the topic at hand ... high performance shouldn't be used for battery testing. Technically all processors can run at, say, 60 W (well, don't know the Macbook Air, maybe that one doesn't) which will be 1.5 hours at most of battery time. So you're testing the power configuration instead of efficiency. Also, different CPUs have different efficiency profiles. Maybe a laptop allows your CPU to double the power usage, for 10% extra performance, while another laptop might not. So you can see with the same chip how efficiency can vary greatly (that 2x power for 10% extra performance is not an exaggeration). I'm happy to see the balanced power profile battery test. While it's also not perfect, it's much closer to an Apples to Applesx86 comparison. Ideally, but it would take a lot to test, there would be tests with the minimum possible power for the CPU and then also do tests at different power levels, like 5 W, 10 W and so on, to see how it can do for each power cap. Here also the test might differ, you might be ok to actually run the computer at the minimum possible power (800 MHz usually for Intel CPUs) when you watch a movie, but the same power plan might be too slow and unresponsive (Thanks Microsoft) even for basic computer stuff, like checking your photos in the file explorer and writing in MS Word, so a different power level would be acceptable for this. And the acceptable power levels for each of these tests would be different from a chip to another. This would be quite a lot of tests, but it would allow to see the proper picture for the chips, even though how the laptop is manufactured, the motherboard and connections has an impact on efficiency too, not just how much power the CPU is using. Especially at the very low values, if the CPU consumes 2 W, but the laptop is built badly, the rest of the system might use 8 W bringing the total usage to 10 W, so at most 9-10 hours with the biggest batteries. While a proper built laptop might consume only 3 W, so with 2 from CPU you get to 5 W in total, so you can get 18-20 hours of battery life. From what I understand, unfortunately, having more ports usually means a bit more power usage too, which I guess is one of the reasons why Apple is so excessively, disgustingly cheap when it comes to included ports. Also having the RAM on the chip, not separatedly also helps. And having it removable is also worse than having it soldered, when it comes to efficiency. That's why I can't wait to see Lunar Lake, the first (at least recently) mass-consumer x86 chip with memory on chip. I think the chip for Steam Deck has this too, but you can't buy it separatedly.
Future is ARM based chips but I still hope x86 will come back stronger🤞🏻. Thanks to AMD for working on it because I have already lost all the hopes from intel😶
Your complain about the trackpad is just because you are used to Apple laptops. I've never use the CLICKY click from trackpads, "tapping" the trackpad is more than enough, works perfectly in ALL LAPTOPS and is more effitient (less force spent haha), by doing that you wont have that problem anymore.
Oh, I just saw that double tap and hold doesn't work my macbook... it does in other laptos tho. That's probably why Macbooks users like to click the trackpad.
High performance power plan more for weak PCs, because cpu state don't go below 90% of frequency. I tweak my power plan and disable turbo on cpu on battery and it's last longer
How to make this HIGH MODE to stay? Every time I switch to the other profile and close the control panel window it’s gone and I have to redo the whole procedure again.
@@10secondsrule Don't use the manual high mode. Use the inbuilt profiles in the new settings (there is also a performance/power mode), they will also give you full performance if needed. The profile Alex uses is a relic from the past where processors didn't scale automatically. It is something you would use in 2014 but we are now 10 years ahead.
Hi, Alex. I have a suggestion for you, change your table into a white color table and all of your products/computers you test will look profissional and incredible to watch.
As a enterprise developer for Microsoft solutions who use VMWare virtual machines a lot, this machine is really not as good as the intel chip macbook pro 2019. Especially when it can just hang and requires a force reboot almost every other day, this just can't make me trust this one as a primary workstation. But what can I do, I am still using my old intel macbook as the primary workstation and treat this zenbook as a backup
I think you should also see how powerful it is like the ryzen and intel has better cores i think for gaming and stuff ? Compared to snapdragon ? How does it game then?
if you are clumsy enough or stupid enough to be drinking coffee near your machine and spill it on the top. then you deserve to get whatever you get. Please! really
Wish it had a numpad. That's an immediate disqualification for me. I say the same thing about those TKL keyboards too. I know it doesn't matter to many people, but it one of my top requirements in a laptop (or keyboard). Like you, I almost always have an external mouse plugged in too!
