Apple’s new M1 processor took the laptop world by storm, with many proclaiming it had ended the PC’s whole career.
Hyperbole and irrational fanboy flexing aside, Apple’s M1 is indeed a powerful chip. But to get a better feel against its contemporaries we sat down and retested a pile of current Windows 10 laptops to get an idea where the M1 MacBook Air 13 lands in the pecking order of laptops.
While we don’t have direct access to an MacBook Pro M1, our sister publication, Macworld does, so we cribbed from its glowing review of the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1. Macworld also graciously ran a couple of additional tests for our analysis. For two other results, we relied on published results from Puget Systems, a bespoke system builder that manufactures workstations and rolls its own productivity-focused benchmarks.