ULTIMATE $1,000 used laptop? Apple Silicon vs Intel Mac vs PC

so let's say you've got a thousand dollars and you want to maximize your value by buying a used laptop what should you buy should you get a lightly used apple silicon machine maybe a heavily depreciated windows laptop or should you even consider buying a used intel macbook now that prices are coming down significantly well to find out i've got one of each i bought this razer blade 15 and we're going to compare it to the m1 macbook pro as well as a used 15-inch 2019 macbook pro and let me tell you this comparison is more interesting than it might seem let's get into it [Music] each of the devices we're comparing today have their strengths but they also use internet browsers which can be a weakness if not secured properly that's why today's video sponsor guardio is here to help and you can try it for seven days free guardio is a browser extension that actively protects you as you browse the web it keeps your browsing information secure prevents malware and phishing scams from reaching you and gives you and five family members peace of mind after installing the guardio extension a free security scan will detect existing threats on your browser after which you can continue to a seven day free trial to remove them and start monitoring for threats in real time guardio means you don't have to worry when clicking on unknown links or accidentally clicking ads or pop-ups or even those pesky unwanted notifications that inundate your computer telling you that it's full of malware it also removes unwanted extensions it prevents third parties from changing your browser settings and it even monitors for information leaks with guardio i know that i'm safe when browsing online so if you want to start a free 7-day trial check out the link in the description below and now let's get back to the video right so let me take a minute here and walk you guys through the laptops that we are going to be comparing here first up the most modern machine is the m1 macbook pro this is one that's still on sale even though it came out a year and a half ago but you can buy these things especially base model ones like this for a thousand dollars or even less next up is my 2019 15 inch macbook pro which has a 2.3 gigahertz core i9 these upgraded models with a more powerful cpu are starting to come down in price very significantly to the point where you can now get them for under a thousand dollars now moving over to the razer blade 15 this i think makes this comparison quite interesting because this machine i paid 970 dollars for and it comes with a core i7 9750h 16 gigabytes of ram half a terabyte of storage but an rtx 2080 max q as well as a 240 hertz display so the 2080 was the main reason that i bought this thing i think it's really interesting that we have this shootout with a 2080 compared to an m1 in the same price bracket this should be really cool but i knew i wanted to buy a razer blade for this video for two main reasons number one is i think they look cool and uh i've never owned one and i just kind of wanted to but the second and more important reason is that the razer blade has always been the most macbook-esque high-end pc laptop razer clearly focuses on clean simple designs with aluminum enclosures and a focus on build quality that you don't see too often in other laptops and trust me that matters when talking to a crowd that regularly prefers apple products you're not going to persuade anyone to switch by showing them a loud rgb festooned plastic monster with a four inch thick enclosure and howling fans the blade is not that so i think it makes this comparison a lot more valid now first off i'd be remiss if i didn't show you guys some benchmarks but keep in mind this is hardly an apples to apples comparison so there's a lot more than just numbers between these three first up in cinebench r23 we find that the m1 chip despite its insanely low power consumption is very competitive with even the high end core i9 these may not be current processors but given the price point and the fact that the m1 is itself a year and a half old it's very impressive to see it's also worth noting that while these graphs tell you something about performance they don't really give you an idea about the experience for example noise this is where apple silicon excels because after a 10-minute cinebench run this is what it sounds like compare that to the intel macbook and the razer blade and you get a pretty clear picture i mean this thing is outperforming the razer blade silently while sipping a fraction of the power that is significant and then we also have to consider that those cinebench numbers are with all three machines plugged in when you disconnect the max from power they don't lose any performance but pretty much every pc does so if we re-run that test on battery power this is what it looks like it's a pretty significant drop off for the blade putting it more in line with an iphone 13 than an m1 graphics are another area where direct apples to apple's comparisons are nearly impossible but i mean when you compare an m1 8 core gpu to an rtx 2080 max q do i even need to show you a benchmark result oh i do oh how about a tomb raider on 1080p medium well wait is that 25 on the macbook and 36 fps on the blade oh wait oh no nope that sorry that was on battery power when you plug the razor in it goes up to oh no it's 101. yeah that's that's not super close uh or what about good old csgo at 1080p apple silicon does okay here on paper but it's not a smooth experience 80 fps with lots of stutter and choppiness isn't a really enjoyable experience and well the razer blade with the 2080 is is much better at gaming we're basically pinned at the refresh rate of 240 hertz but what about some quick blender tests maybe that will even the playing field well again here we find that the blade smokes apple silicon and also the old intel mac as well it's like not even close where the m1 takes 2 minutes and 43 seconds and the intel max two minutes and four seconds the rtx 2080 blasts through the render in just 18 seconds in the classroom render we have yet another annihilation when using gpu cycles it takes the blade 37 seconds compared to the m1's 6 minutes this is what happens when you have optimization and the m1 chip is optimized but not for this but that's definitely because we're kind of crossing lines in terms of how these products are angled i mean one of them is a gaming laptop and one of them is essentially an ultrabook there's a lot to take in here and it's not easily measured with objective performance figures and in fact when you look at these things holistically there's a lot of areas where these very different laptops surprisingly overlap it's kind of like a three-way venn diagram in a way the blade and the 15-inch pro are both 15 inches and run x86 not apple silicon but the 15-inch macbook pro and the m1 are both on mac os the blade and the m1 on the other hand both have good enjoyable keyboards compared to the butterfly keyboard but the macbooks both have better track pads it's this really cool cross section where each machine has some strengths each machine has some strengths that it shares and each machine has some weaknesses that it shares one such example would be battery life where both the intel machines are okay but apple silicon is pretty much in a class of its own to find out just how good it is i ran a 60 minute youtube video at maximum brightness on all three machines over the course of an hour the blade ate through 17 of its battery the 15 inch macbook pro actually did worse here consuming 23 while the m1 consumed just 9 it's truly insane how good the battery on the m1 is nothing else can really come close including apple's own 14-inch macbook pro that is both twice the price as well as thicker and heavier okay so now we've reached the point of the video where i need to break down the form factors of all of these devices and that's going to require some ranking so let's start with the display in my opinion the best is the macbook pro it's the highest resolution it's the biggest it's the brightest second to that i'm going to put the m1 even though the razer blade has a 240 hertz 15 inch panel i prefer using a 13 inch 2560x1600 retina display to it for one very simple reason and that is because this is a 16x9 1080p panel it things just don't look as good on here sure it's great for gameplay but for everyday use i prefer 16x10 i prefer the way apple handles scaling this is better so now let's move down from that and talk about the keyboard well this one is actually kind of tough between the razer and the macbook i like that you can change the color of the backlighting on this individually backlit keyboard i'm gonna i'm gonna give the edge here to the razor it's just a little bit better to type on and then of course in last place well it's the butterfly keyboard but when you move below that to the trackpad i guess the 15-inch macbook pro would come first because it's just you know a larger trackpad and then obviously the razer that's going to be stone dead last this trackpad sucks i don't know if maybe this trackpad is like gummed up because it's a used laptop but it sucks you have to push really hard you can only really push on the bottom third of the trackpad because it's a diving board and anything higher up than that is too stiff the tracking speed is inconsistent the multi-touch gestures aren't my favorite it's it's just a weak point and then i could once again say the same thing about the speakers the razer is definitely the worst here although it is pretty good for a pc laptop it just can't really compete with the m1 which i would put in second although very very narrowly to the 15 inch macbook pro which has slightly better sound just because it's you know a larger laptop with more speaker in it so now let's talk about ports and third place is easy it's the m1 we only have two thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack that's not not great but deciding between these two for a winner well that's a little bit tricky because over here we have mini displayport hdmi three usb type a ports one usb type-c port the proprietary charging port and of course a headphone jack and then we can compare that to the intel macbook over here with four thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack so on the one hand the razer has more ports but on the other hand the macbook has more thunderbolt ports and crucially it can also charge over thunderbolt which is a lot more useful than carrying around some wonky proprietary power brick but having hdmi and usb type a is pretty nice i'm going to give an edge to the macbook here but let me know do you disagree do you think the razer is better in the ports department let me know in the comments below now when it comes to form factor there's a lot to consider with these devices but for portability it's quite simple the the 13-inch is the smallest and the lightest and it is therefore the most portable the 15-inch comes second and the razer isn't you know a ton more heavy but it is noticeably thicker and heavier than the 15-inch macbook pro i have to say i've made an entire video on this i think the 15-inch macbook pro of this generation has a fantastic form factor if it weren't for the catastrophic keyboard unreliability thermal issues and poor performance that is sort of associated with this design i'd quite like it but that's not to say that the razer blade isn't a good form factor i think it's pretty impressive given that this thing has an rtx 2080 in here and it's still pretty thin pretty light and a very attractive design overall and then finally we have upgradability and this one is very very easy to decide because neither of these are upgradeable at all you can't do anything however the razer blade has upgradeable ram as well as upgradable storage and on a thin and light and relatively portable laptops such as this that is really great to see all right so now it's time to try to come up with some conclusions and obviously a lot of this can be subjective for example if you do final cut pro the razer blade isn't really a legitimate option for a primary device and likewise if you do blender modeling well you can do it on apple silicon but the razer blade is going to just be so much faster that it's it's not really worth considering however if you do have the luxury between choosing between any of these three for whatever task you need it for then i think we can start by eliminating the 15-inch macbook pro yeah okay sure it does have the most powerful cpu but only by a little bit and it comes at the expense of thermals and noise and comfort and battery life so i don't think it's really worth it we don't really have good graphics sure it can dual boot mac os and windows but it doesn't really run anything in either of those any better than either of these so i think honestly unless you can find a really really well-specced 15-inch macbook pro that is unbelievably cheap so cheap that you would be willing to suffer through the butterfly keyboard for a couple of years then maybe go for it but for most people i wouldn't even i wouldn't even bother and that brings us rather interestingly to a comparison between a 15-inch gaming laptop and a 13-inch m1 macbook pro wow bet you didn't think that i could find a way to compare these two laptops and yet here we are i do think that for general purposes the macbook is a little bit better this razer blade realistically is a gaming laptop that is also good at productivity tasks which can also do just fine for general operating system tasks and web browsing the macbook is kind of the opposite of that it is really meant more for general tasks web browsing note taking google drive situations but can also have some pretty serious performance if you need it so given that this is sort of like a supercar adapted for the road and this is more like an efficient hatchback with a 300 horsepower electric motor in it i personally would tend to go for the simple thing that's fast but that's probably just my take on it i am curious to know what you guys think so let me know in the comments below between which of these two or even three if you want to consider the intel macbook you would choose i'm very curious to hear the results and with that thank you guys so much for watching make sure to like comment and subscribe and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Luke Miani

Views: 140,122

Keywords: razer, blade, macbook, pro, MacBook Pro 2019, MacBook Pro m1, m1, m1 chip, apple silicon, apple silicon vs intel, m1 vs core i9, m1 vs gaming pc, apple silicon vs windows, Mac vs pc, Intel Mac vs intel pc, razor blade vs apple, apple silicon vs razor blade

Id: SHAnP0DMdH4

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2022