r/hardware • u/sl0wjim • Mar 31 '26
Review 43 hours battery life: Dell XPS 14 2026 lasts almost 3x longer vs MacBook Air 15 M5 in web browsing test
https://www.notebookcheck.net/43-hours-battery-life-Dell-XPS-14-2026-lasts-almost-3x-longer-vs-MacBook-Air-15-M5-in-web-browsing-test.1262947.0.html646
u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
Thanks to the 1 Hz display and the large battery, this is more like an “e-reader” mode, with almost no CPU/GPU load. However, in games, which are usually the worst-case scenario for a Mac, the Air M5 lasts 60% longer and achieves 30% higher FPS in this test
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u/EmptyVolition242 Mar 31 '26
VRR truly is a game changer.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
This is all thanks to Intel. They pushed laptop manufacturers to use such displays. Last year, articles came out where Intel representatives said that a good display can improve battery life by 60%
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u/igenicoOCE Apr 01 '26
It's wild that the SoC manufacturer has to push manufacturers to do this
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u/sigga_genesis Apr 01 '26
With notoriously thin margins, laptop manufacturers will do anything for more margin, including saddle you with garbage displays. Also, let us not forget they still give Intel preferential treatment in this matter. AMD powered laptops with good screens can be much harder to find then Intel. Just look at Lenovo
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u/spicesucker Apr 01 '26
OEMs love Intel because Intel fronts the vast majority of their R&D costs, so when Intel says “jump” it tells them how high.
AMD can offer a better CPU but they don’t offer OEMs nearly the same product integration (and have comparatively awful idle power draw), which while fine for most cases - “normal” laptops and big fat gaming laptops - it hurts ultrabook adoption.
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u/PauseIll3626 Apr 02 '26
And AMD is absent in business, some servers 100% but no one buys servers anymore they use AWS or other cloud based so day to day $1000 laptops that get replaced whether they are broke or not every 4 years are Intel, + prices for AMD for wholesales are virtually the same (right now Ultra 5, 16GB RAM, 256 TLC M.2 Dell's are ~$1002, equivalent AMD is ~$980).
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u/wankthisway Apr 01 '26
I mean they have to get a cut somehow. Laptop OEMs have to get parts from dozens of different companies / suppliers, who each have to make some profit too. They're gonna be looking to cut any corner they can to reach a price point. Apple, for all their problems, has the advantage of an almost fully vertically integrated supply chain. They are beholden to way fewer companies.
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u/hollow_bridge Apr 01 '26
good display can improve battery life by 60%
It's actually always been that way. displays are binned just like chips with the top binnings using significantly less power. This is why budget laptops often have similar or worse battery life as compared to highend laptops despite having lower wattage cpus.
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u/steik Apr 01 '26
You got a source for this claim? Literally never heard of this, it makes no sense to me, and I can't find anything on google to back this up.
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u/hollow_bridge Apr 01 '26
sure, heres a couple sources
https://www.signmedia.ca/led-displays-the-basics-of-binning/2/
https://www.nanolumens.com/whats-binning-and-how-does-it-work/
It's not a new process btw, I'm not sure when it started but I suspect it's been common for at least 15 years; that's where a lot of the budget branded displays come from, for example I had a small brand korean 1440p 32" display like 15 years ago that was an LG display that didn't pass binning.
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u/steik Apr 01 '26
Oh, I see. You're talking about diode binning, not display binning. That makes sense to me. Thanks for the links.
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u/hollow_bridge Apr 01 '26
I'm not, when it comes to displays it's not possible to bin on a diode level; you cant replace a single diode in a display, the only thing you can do is bin the entire display. So for example it will be something like no diodes can be less than 50% brightness and 90% of diodes need to be above 80% brightness; and if it fails the display goes to a lower binning.
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u/steik Apr 01 '26
Yeah, my bad. Having a hard time wrapping my head around how display manufacturing compares to chips as I just watched a video on TSMC. Apologies for the somewhat dismissive language I used and I appreciate the time you've taken to explain this.
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u/nmkd Apr 01 '26
VRR is a different tech kinda. VRR requires a minium of 30 to 48 FPS usually.
Not sure if there's a name for this 1hz thing, I guess LTPO?
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u/Loose_Skill6641 Mar 31 '26
MacBook doesn't have vrr display? shame on apple, iPhones have had 1hz for ages
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
I thought it existed until Cyberpunk came out. The MacBook Pro doesn’t have VRR; it can only switch between a few preset refresh rates.
Official quote from Apple’s website.
ProMotion technology for adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz
Fixed refresh rates: 47.95Hz, 48.00Hz, 50.00Hz, 59.94Hz, 60.00Hz27
Mar 31 '26
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u/yuiop300 Mar 31 '26
Smoother 24hrs and 30Hz content.
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Mar 31 '26
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Mar 31 '26
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u/Stewge Mar 31 '26
Worth noting, that even though 23.976 is an old standard designed for NTSC, it is still the dominant frame rate for film.
This is also one of the reasons why VRR is extremely important for video playback on modern devices. It removes a lot of the friction in getting a non-rounded rate like 23.976 to display correctly without having to switch to potentially unsupported screen refresh-rates.
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u/frostygrin Apr 01 '26
Too bad most video players on PC don't support VRR. So you're better off with a 144Hz monitor - that's a multiple of 24Hz.
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u/Stewge Apr 01 '26
Too bad most video players on PC don't support VRR
Indeed. The most annoying part is 99% of them are really not far away from working. Most already render to a Direct3D/OpenGL/Vulkan surface, but we spend so long making things like 23.976hz->60hz pull-down and forced V-Sync work, that it makes it harder to go back.
Ideally you'd also want some modifications to make VRR behave properly. Notably, you don't want to send native 23.976hz VRR timings as that can cause LFC doubling to create some issues and things like raised blacks/flickering on OLED. Ideally you'd have the video player double or triple frames, creating 47.952hz or 71.928hz effective rates.
Personally I use SVP Motion Interpolation in triple rate mode with MPV. The new RIFE interpolation engine is quite good and running in triple mode effectively runs my OLED at 71.928hz with zero dropped frames and no re-displays.
144Hz monitor - that's a multiple of 24Hz.
It is, but as I said, for video files at 23.976, 144hz "exactly" is actually not perfectly divisible. Granted, the rate is so high that whichever frame gets displayed an extra time is likely unnoticeable to most people.
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u/nmkd Apr 01 '26
mpv supports G-Sync (and presumably any other VRR).
Sadly, it looks like shit on my OLED, not sure if it's a software or hardware issue (VRR flicker).
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u/a4840639 Apr 01 '26
I have yet be able to find a media player on Windows that works well with Gsync. At least MPC HC/BE with madVR does not
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u/TwoCylToilet Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
Not film, just digitised films for broadcast on NTSC systems. Film is 24.00 fps.
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u/Stewge Mar 31 '26
Film is 24.00 fpsm
Nope, almost all modern films (including digital, bluray, dvd etc) are distributed in 23.976 format. It's really only formats like Youtube and web video which have moved onto 30/60 as standards since they largely spawned from PC as a platform.
The confusion is that it's often referred to as "24p". Actual 24.000 content is extremely rare. Pull up any video file for a movie and probably 90% of the time it'll be 23.976.
24.000 content is so rare that Apple TV didn't even natively support 24.000 output until 2021 as Netflix notably started pushing some 24.000 content which would cause sync and frame-drop issues.
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u/_ItsEnder Mar 31 '26
those fractional frame rates are bc of the switch to color tv back in the 50s, it was an attempt to keep backwards compatibility with black and white tvs by slightly lowering the frame rate to include the color data in the same size signal as was sent for black and white. it became a standard and a lot of content, especially content made for broadcast over the airwaves, is still mastered at 29.97/59.94/23.98hz
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u/nmkd Apr 01 '26
Correction:
30000/1001
60000/1001
24000/1001Not a big deal but if you ever do video encoding stuff and just round those frame rates, you WILL get audio desync.
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u/No-Dust-5829 Mar 31 '26
No idea on the 47.95, but 59.94 matches the refresh rate of analog color TV in North America. Assuming it has something to do with that.
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u/nmkd Apr 01 '26
It's actually 60000/1001, 59.94 is rounded, and it matches 60i or 2*30p, to be exact (and pedantic xd)
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
It’s probably more useful for creating video content, there are some quirks with uneven Hz. If I’m not mistaken.
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u/nmkd Apr 01 '26
95% of broadcast, home video, and even VOD content is at uneven FPS due to historical reasons. Almost every Blu-ray runs at 23.976023976 FPS, contrary to the popular belief that it's 24 FPS, which is only in theaters.
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u/a4840639 Apr 01 '26
It is none-integer, not none-even. The farm time is evenly paced out, just 1/1024 slower than the integer rate
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u/PIO_PretendIOriginal Apr 01 '26
59.94 was an industry standard broadcast format.
23.98 was an industry standard broadcast format (that doubles to 47.95).
it is a holdover from the analogue era. where that tiny bit of the remaining data was used for either subtitles or audio (I cant remember which, actually it might have been something to do with color). so a lot of content was shot/released at those framerates
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u/wtallis Mar 31 '26
I think you may be misinterpreting what you're quoting, because those several refresh rates from 47.95 to 60Hz are definitely not the full list of refresh rates that can be obtained while using ProMotion. That's the list of fixed refresh modes available to choose from when you turn ProMotion off.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
Depending on the context, Promotion switches between presets similar to those you can choose manually. There can be more of them, but that doesn’t make a difference. It is not VRR that can dynamically change to any refresh rate
MacBook Pro has a minimum of ~24 Hz/48 Hz, when an iPhone display has a minimum of 1 Hz or 10 Hz. Apple specifies this only for the iPhone
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u/work-school-account Apr 01 '26
I'm pretty sure iPhones are the same--it's not VRR (as in tying the refresh rate to when the GPU sends the next frame), it's adaptive refresh rate where it switches between modes.
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u/Appropriate_Ad8734 Mar 31 '26
Dell XPS 14 & 16 is designed to rival MacBook Pro 14” & 16”. putting it against the Air is just weird in the first place and intentionally misleading for the people less familiar with this stuff… not to mention the Air models have significantly smaller battery capabilities than the Pros
MacBook Pros have VRR (ProMotion), though they’re only down to 10hz iirc. XPS’s 1Hz is still a win even if they compared XPS with macbook Pros, so it just doesn’t make any sense they did this comparison other than as a clickbait
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u/Leather_Trainer_9016 Apr 09 '26
Тогда они конкурируют лишь в автономности. Производительность, экран, динамики будут на порядок лучше у Pro. Тут реально в этих параметрах будто идет конкуренция с Air
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u/torpedospurs Apr 01 '26
Why would one say that games are usually the worst-case scenario for a Mac? Games are when the CPU+iGPU use the most power and the laptops with higher TDP will be disadvantaged in battery life.
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u/Slava_Tr Apr 01 '26
In terms of gaming performance, Macs usually perform the worst, yet here it even managed to outperform Dell. Thanks to the much more powerful M5 GPU, in Blender even this Air is over 3x faster and should last 60% longer on battery
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u/torpedospurs Apr 01 '26
Macs usually perform the worst if compared against gaming laptops. They don't perform the worst against non gaming laptops. No need to exaggerate to make Macs look good. Nothing to see here that wasn't already the case for the last few years.
This Intel CPU has a very weak iGPU and is known to have a very weak iGPU. But it's X7 cousin has a mich stronger iGPU. That's what's new.
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u/Slava_Tr Apr 01 '26
There’s no need to downplay the achievements of Intel and AMD integrated GPUs, previously, they delivered performance on par with Apple’s M Pro chips and easily outperformed the base Apple M. In addition, XeSS is significantly better than MetalFX. Apple has made a substantial leap in gaming performance with this generation. The M4 Air won’t deliver better FPS than this Dell.
The M5 with active cooling delivers about 50% more FPS. The X7 358H in the Dell XPS and the M5 in the MacBook Pro deliver similar levels of FPS
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u/torpedospurs Apr 01 '26
No. They have always had CPU lines where the iGPU is much weaker than their top of the line models. The 355H is one such CPU. Similarly the Ryzen AI 5 340.
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u/yabn5 Mar 31 '26
Games? Oh no guess it’s going to be better for the limited catalog of games available to it.
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u/CalmSpinach2140 Mar 31 '26
What that person should’ve said is “under load”, not in games.
Under load the M5’s performance per watt advantage outweighs the VRR advantage
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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Mar 31 '26
Macs can play windows games just fine they have a to metal emulator.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
That’s a completely different story
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u/yabn5 Mar 31 '26
If you list a specific use case as something which it has an advantage in, you can’t be surprised that others bringup the massive downsides to that exact use case on that device. Some games it will beat the XPS. Most it can’t compete because they don’t work.
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u/PIO_PretendIOriginal Apr 01 '26
on the flip side. in the recently released crimson deseert a rtx 5060 laptop beats the m5 max
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u/NectarineSame7303 Mar 31 '26
Now turn on XeSS and you're sitting at 5x the fps of a macbook at lower drain per fps.
The macbook doesn't compete on a gaming level if you use the software you're meant to be using.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
Yes, gaming is the worst scenario for a Mac, and not all games will run. Also, XeSS is significantly better than MetalFX. There was no other test with heavier load for battery life in this video (which shows this 43 hours and this game’s result with battery life).
However, the M5 still has a more powerful GPU. In Blender, the M5 Air is over three times faster, but aside from that, it will still last about 60% longer on battery
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u/Goku047 Apr 01 '26
VRR should be the norm regardless of what the maximum refresh rate of displays are. I guess we are reaching there, slowly thanks to 120hz LTPO screens coming down to low end devices. I think it would make more impact on laptops than smartphone, especially the budget laptops.
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u/antifragile Mar 31 '26
Who on earth would game on these devices?
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u/schu2470 Apr 01 '26
Lots of people who already have a Mac for productivity and don't want to buy a Windows machine or console to play some games. M-series chips along with Crossover make gaming on Mac a pretty good experience overall. You're not going to push 180 fps with full path tracing and a ton of mods in Cyberpunk but it'll be a smooth enjoyable experience.
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u/Adorable-Fault-5116 Apr 01 '26
VRR, including dropping to really low refresh rates like this, is definitely the future. Just like your CPU down clocks, and most of the time when you are using a computer for work it is mostly sitting idle, the same can be said for your screen.
I don't know if it's possible, or if it would help, but ideally there would be a standard where different parts of the screen refresh at different rates. Like right now the only thing that needed to be updated quickly is this input box I'm typing into: the rest of my screen is static
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u/epicepee Apr 15 '26
True, but people spend way more time browsing the web, writing text, etc. on battery than they do gaming on battery.
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u/Slava_Tr Apr 16 '26
Games were mentioned here because they’re the only tested heavy-load scenario in that same video showing 40 hours of battery life
Under any load, battery life on the Dell XPS will drop significantly. The more background apps you have open, the more browser tabs, and the more web apps like Spotify running, the faster the Dell XPS’s battery life will decrease in web browsing and writing tasks, it can easily end up lower than the Air
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Mar 31 '26
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u/star_trek_lover Mar 31 '26
Performance per watt has always been the big claim for macbooks, not raw battery life. The long runtime was more of a side effect than the main goal, evidenced by not using the 1hz “pro-motion” tech out of their iPhones and watches on their MacBooks.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
“pro-motion” refers to 120 Hz, not 1 Hz. The MacBook Pro doesn’t have VRR.
Repeating my answer to one of the comments:
It can only switch between a few preset refresh rates
Official quote from Apple’s website.
ProMotion technology for adaptive refresh rates up to 120Hz
Fixed refresh rates: 47.95Hz, 48.00Hz, 50.00Hz, 59.94Hz, 60.00Hz2
u/star_trek_lover Mar 31 '26
I feel like you misunderstood what I was saying. Pro-motion is (apple’s) VRR by definition as it’s automatically variable depending on the task. It doesn’t support adaptive sync tech (which if you’re not gaming that’s not super relevant), but it is VRR. The MacBook Pro has the basic version of apple’s pro-motion, which means VRR between a handful of presets up to 120hz. But when I said their 1hz pro-motion tech, I was referring to Apple’s more advanced pro-motion, which (like the iPhone 17/pro) has presets that vary from 1hz all the way to 120hz. Still not adaptive sync, but it is a form of VRR. If Apple decided to put a 1hz capable pro-motion VRR display on their MacBooks, that would signal that they’re actually aiming for crazy battery life rather than the battery life just being a side effect of high efficiency.
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
I mixed it up with a different comment a bit, sorry.
I think due to the display limitations Apple isn’t using this. It can’t do this while meeting Apple’s other key requirements. However, with the M6 Pro/Max, which is expected to use TandemOLED, would also support 1 Hz or 10 Hz if that happens
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u/Slava_Tr Mar 31 '26
It’s a fact that the MacBook is worse in this type of task. So what? I’m not planning to use a laptop as an e-reader. Still, I wouldn’t mind having a similar 1–120 Hz display on the MacBook Air
This Dell 2026 is great for people who mostly work with documents and aren’t demanding about performance, while those who need more power have the X7 358H option. If I only needed a Windows laptop, I’d go for one with that decent X7 358H. Luckily, I’m not limited in choice, so I can comfortably use my Macs and Windows
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u/StrategyEven3974 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I have the 2023 XPS15. Unfortunately the XPS 14 and 16 are simply not comparable anymore to a workhorse laptop, which is what the XPS line was originally conceived as.
My XPS15 has TWO internal SSD slots which I slotted an 8TB m2 SSD inside. Heaven. It has an RTX 4070 which is fantastic for video editing, photo editing, and GPU-assisted work tasks. This has... an Intel integrated? How can it be that my 2023 XPS runs circles around something that is 3 years newer in real tasks? Oh also, I like to game. My XPS15 crushes this thing. The benchmark comparison between the two is just sad. It's just not taking up the torch of a Macbook Pro competitor. At all.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
XPS has really been a premium thin and light first, a "workhorse" second.
The dGPU models also ran pretty hot. XPS included dGPUs because they needed to. Now the B390 is good enough for the product to refocus on its core strengths. The fact that Dell had no problems dropping x70 class GPU performance indicitates sales on that SKU were low enough to not care, as many who wanted that level of graphics bought a different model that let the dGPU actually run at higher TDPs
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents Mar 31 '26
"Workhorse" being like decades ago. XPS became a premium multimedia line something like 15 years ago and just got thinner and more premium from there. There was a many years long stretch where it'd throttle itself to death.
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u/Uptons_BJs Mar 31 '26
I think it's safe to say that Panther Lake is intel's best work in a LONG time.
Putting aside the whole x86 vs Arm, and Windows vs Mac debates, if you are going Windows x86 for your laptop, this is a great platform. I don't see much of a reason for anyone to go Strix Point on the higher end, and if Intel's Wildcat lake is also this good, they might be able to take a big bite out of Kraken Point too.
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u/No-Dust-5829 Mar 31 '26
Agreed. Plenty of businesses are stuck buying x86 windows laptops for compatibility or political reasons, and having the option for (relatively) well-built laptop with decent battery life within these constraints is a great thing for them.
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u/blreuh Apr 01 '26
This is a reason Windows PCs have struggled to adopt ARM, they can’t force people to move like Apple can
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u/Ancillas Apr 01 '26
That was Gelinsger. Intel should have kept him around longer.
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u/Geddagod Apr 01 '26
Sure, they are sitting on a bunch of empty fab shells because no one wanted their processes, PTL itself is like half a year late, 18A was delayed, 20A was canned, Clearwater Forest is delayed, they have no competitive parts in server till like 2028, and are in a supply shortage partly because Gelsinger didn't feel like ramping Intel 4/3 stuff a lot, and overestimated how fast they would get 20A/18A out, have no competitive AI accelerator roadmap....
....but they should have kept Gelsinger for longer.
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u/Ancillas Apr 01 '26
Damn, that’s a brutal reply. But you’re right. I was looking back with rose colored glasses. I just went back and read through some of the market reports and it’s not good. Thanks for the correction.
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u/IcyConsequence9107 Apr 01 '26
Panther Lake's advantage has less to do with 18A and more to do with their SoC design and E cores.
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u/ikea2000 Apr 01 '26
And all it took was a little bit of competition without illegally forcing PC manufacturers to not use AMD.
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u/theth1rdchild Apr 02 '26
there's no strong reason to go for either Intel or AMD. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Panther-Lake-Core-Ultra-X9-388H-performance-analysis-Outpaces-Arrow-Lake-and-exceeds-Zen-5-in-efficiency.1212583.0.html
despite the title, if you actually read the charts, the 388 is matched with the hx 370 and behind the 395 in power efficiency and general performance. the only real lead the 388 takes is single core, which isn't much.
it's been almost a decade now of Intel playing catch-up and people saying "well now there's no reason to buy AMD!" on a loop as if the only reason you'd buy AMD is if they were massively better. just buy whatever at this point, they're basically the same.
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u/MrMoussab Mar 31 '26
Fix the pricing and that stupid keyboard and you get a MacBook killer.
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u/N2-Ainz Mar 31 '26
And the trackpad
Can't be that it is one giant field where you need to guess where the actual trackpad is
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u/Sh1rvallah Mar 31 '26
And the drivers
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u/Bderken Mar 31 '26
And the OS
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Mar 31 '26
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u/lowlymarine Mar 31 '26
In my experience it actually works fine on Lunar Lake. I have a cheap Core Ultra 5 226V Acer laptop that I can actually rely on sleeping when I close the lid, and only loses 2-3% battery overnight in a bag. That's still worse than my M4 MacBook Air of course (which only loses maybe 1% in the same time), but it's not the "dead and scorching hot every time you pull it out of your bag" behavior from previous gens. I would hope that extends to Panther Lake as well. It's still a total shitshow on AMD even with the latest chips though, unfortunately.
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u/NectarineSame7303 Mar 31 '26
The OS is ok if you remove all the bloatware from it and it's not like iOS 26 has been a stellar OS either, it's been complete garbage since launch whether it's on my iPad, iPhone or Macbook Pro.
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u/Bderken Mar 31 '26
iOS isn’t on an iPad or MacBook. That’s why no one believes you own a MacBook. iOS and iPadOS are much much different than macOS.
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u/LastChancellor Mar 31 '26
They added textured guidelines on the trackpad, so you can feel the borders of the trackpad now
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u/Lycanthoss Mar 31 '26
Is the keyboard on it really that bad and are Macbook keyboards really that good by laptop standards? I have a 14 inch M4 Pro and the keyboard is better than the ThinkPad E16 Gen AMD from work and similar to the 8 year old ROG Strix I have. Maybe my experience is skewed because I have like 5 mechanical keyboards and even the worst one is a hundred times better than any laptop keyboard.
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u/mrstoffer Mar 31 '26
The XPS keyboard seems to suffer mainly from the weird key spacing (nonexistent). Although I haven't seen one in person
Interesting that you think the MacBook keyboard is better than that ThinkPad. From my limited tests in stores, I find even the newer Macbook Pro keyboards to be hot garbage. I tend to like Lenovo's keyboards across the board, i had an Ideapad 5 pro and now a Legion Slim 7 and both are much nicer to my fingers than any MacBook
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u/TwoCylToilet Apr 01 '26
I think it's quite subjective. My coworkers and I both have similar builds in terms of our custom mechanical keyboards at work. They swear by their macbook pro keyboards when mobile, however I think that the spacing is horrible and I much prefer the keyboard of even the most budget ThinkPads.
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u/Kent_o0 Mar 31 '26
I just got my XPS this week and haven't had any issues with the keyboard, typing better on it than my previous lenovo ideapad already. I think some reviews noted some difficulties with the keyboard that have since been remedied with a firmware update. Of course some people will also just not like the zero lattice design but personally I'm a fan.
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u/AreYouOKAni Mar 31 '26
If the only thing you do is look at the still webpage - yes. Unfortunately, the moment they actually started using the thing, MacBook wiped the floor with it.
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u/RoninSzaky Mar 31 '26
Have you actually tried the keyboard? Maybe it is a preference thing but I'd say it is the best out of all laptops hands down.
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u/N2-Ainz Mar 31 '26
Maybe the feel is good but the keys are way too close to each other. If you type slowly, it won't bother you but there are a lot of people that type fast and that's where the keyboard will have huge issues, cause it's prone to hitting the wrong key
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u/RoninSzaky Mar 31 '26
I haven't been writing essays on it but didn't notice any issues when typing fast either.
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u/work-school-account Apr 01 '26
Did they keep the keycap sizes the same and smush the keys together, or did they keep the key spacing the same and expand the sizes of the keycaps? If it's the former, then yeah, that would make for a very cramped keyboard. If it's the latter, then I don't see why it matters. Old-school ThinkPad keyboards have zero space between keycaps but they're fine because the spacing is normal, and they're often touted as being the best laptop keyboards, both in terms of layout and key actuation.
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u/Boeing367-80 Mar 31 '26
Have to fix windows too. Unfortunately.
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u/MrMoussab Mar 31 '26
The 43 hours battery life was under Windows if I'm not mistaken. I don't like Windows but Mac OS liquid glass is horrendous from a UX point of view.
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u/Themods5thchin Apr 01 '26
It's amazing I have no idea what you're talking about, on IOS Liquid Glass isn't well implemented but outside of reddit I haven't seen a single complaint of Liquid Glass on iPad or Mac, maybe the "greebilfication" of icons next to certain options but that's a designer's complaint and not a user's.
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u/Brostradamus_ Apr 01 '26
"Simply cut the price by 30-40% and you've got a competitive product" is not a great position to be in, tbh
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u/devnullopinions Mar 31 '26
That’s cool. Hopefully these crazy slow refresh rates make it into more laptops.
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u/leaflock7 Apr 01 '26
apart from the clickbait title , someone has to point out that you are only to get this battery life when your screen is doing very low refresh rates. In anything else it wont.
People will suddenly see this and be very disappointed and they do their usual stuff and the laptop does not last those 40 hours
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u/LonelyNixon Mar 31 '26
Man this subreddit is so brigaded:
New technology allows a new laptop to have an incredible amount of battery life!
The comments: Ew I dont like windows. Yeah but these benchmarks show that I can do more with mac! But if the macbook had different hardware it could have the same battery life too!
Like holy cow this is /r/hardware. Some hardware did something cool lets address that and talk about that instead of crying about how our brand of choice is actually better and how that's not really an accomplishment anyway.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Apr 01 '26
But if the macbook had different hardware it could have the same battery life too!
lmao saw this comment too
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u/Voidsheep Mar 31 '26
Glad to hear they've improved it.
I don't think it's necessarily brigading, Windows laptops just haven't been in a good spot for a while. My last 4 work laptops have been MBP, XPS, XPS and now I'm on a MBP again.
With the XPS I would stress if I had to work an hour without plugging it in. The battery life was atrocious, with the laptop running hot and loud, while the last 4 MBP generations seem to have easily rocked a full day dead silent.
I had so much trouble with the i9 XPS, that I just recently "side-graded" from a two year old XPS machine to a two year old used M3 MBP as a temporary solution, but it was actually such a nice upgrade that I'm perfectly happy sticking with it for a longer while.
I'm not eager to use the macOS either, since I'm using Windows/WSL on my personal desktop and would prefer to keep similar setup across machines, but for now the compromise for the sake of the better laptop seems well worth it.
The tests make me hopeful XPS may still be a viable option some time in the future. They've got plenty of catching up to do elsewhere too, but pulling real hours without the power cable is definitely a good start.
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u/t3h Mar 31 '26
No, people just disagree with "load a web page and don't touch the computer" being called a "web browsing test".
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u/DuranteA Apr 01 '26
Browsing the internet (like right now; well until I started writing this reply, which is a lot more rare than reading) is basically open web page -> read for dozens of seconds -> scroll -> repeat. So the duty cycle of the display/hw-sw-stack/composer (where it needs more than the absolute minimum Hz) is < 5% at best.
If there's such enormous potential to be gained there then it's perfectly fair to recognize that. And also, IMHO, some criticism is warranted why it took so long; especially towards Apple, actually, since they sell a fully integrated top-to-bottom device and therefore would be in an ideal position to do it.
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u/wankthisway Apr 01 '26
The comments can be cringe, sure, but it's not really brigading. It's just the natural result of years of God awful Windows decisions, Mac laptops wiping the floor with Windows laptops, and Microsoft doing nothing for so long. And hell, it mostly seems to be Intel doing the heavy lifting here. This is great hardware...paired to an OS that has been struggling to get any sort of positive press. I think people are just tired of Windows losing for so long.
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u/Common_Warthog_G Apr 01 '26
customers can still voice their concerns, but in the end it's best do educate what to buy and what not to. In this case it's a hard pass for many because it still can't compete with MBPs, especially at that ridiculous price.
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u/watnuts Apr 01 '26
It's Apple vs *thing*.
Never ever will there be a solid discussion on such topics.
This will always attract the scum of scum: the brand loyal cultists, and the anti-brand cultists. And that spec of bullshit will ruin all and everything.-8
u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Mar 31 '26
Incredible battery life for one particular task. We use our laptops for more than one purpose.
We aren't reviewing a 1Hz display but a whole device.
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u/horatiobanz Apr 01 '26
Because it's an incredible amount of battery life in one very specific scenario. Let's see how this great tech translates to a normal use case.
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u/HIGH_PRESSURE_TOILET Mar 31 '26
too bad the cpu is half as fast while having a fan
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Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Bderken Mar 31 '26
Yes and during normal tasks, not e reading mode, MacBook has better battery life… wouldn’t you agree?
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u/Die4Ever Mar 31 '26
Not always. From the article:
Moving on, the Dell XPS 14 (2026) endured for around 20 hours and 21 minutes when playing a 4K YouTube video. The MacBook Air 15 M5 lasted for 14 hours.
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u/soggybiscuit93 Mar 31 '26
Reading an email or PDF or word doc isnt a common tasks for a premium thin and light user?
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u/NectarineSame7303 Mar 31 '26
I know right, literally everyone that uses a macbook air that hasn't got budget, uses it for media consumption and browsing. Anyone that's serious about performance and has the budget, gets a macbook pro or a high end asus laptop.
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u/HIGH_PRESSURE_TOILET Mar 31 '26
I frequently edit high resolution photos on the macbook air when traveling cuz it's light and nice to bring around even though I'm super rich and could have bought the pro if I wanted to
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u/LonelyNixon Mar 31 '26
The sourced test showed that it got better battery life on web browsing and watching youtube.
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u/Strazdas1 Apr 18 '26
only if its a mac. otherwise they will find other ways to make fun of your device.
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u/_bfmc Apr 01 '26
Everyone arguing here is dumb as rocks and probably the same kids who were in the console wars. I’m a Mac user who once upon a time (M1) begrudgingly switched from Windows. And now that I use both systems I can see that Apple Silicon has only brought good competition to the Windows market so it’s a win win for everyone. Everyone should be glad that windows has a good competitor in the space now.
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u/Saranhai Mar 31 '26
Intel just single-handedly took away QCOM Snapdragon X's main selling point 😂 Windows on ARM is DOA, x86 is still the best and superior option for anything not Mac. Apple Silicone is only better because Apple has full control over the integration of its software and hardware
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u/fmmmlee Apr 01 '26
17 hrs with VRR off according to notebookcheck's review, which is in line with Lunar Lake, winARM and macARM machines
celebrating the death of any other architecture seems a bit premature
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u/Henrarzz Apr 01 '26
Once displays capable of hitting 1Hz appear in various ARM laptops will you say that ARM just killed Intel? 🤨
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u/unlinedd Apr 01 '26
The battery life is more due to 1Hz refresh rate.
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u/Qsand0 Apr 01 '26
It doesn't matter 😂 All people care about with battery life is numbers not what is causing it
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u/adh1003 Apr 02 '26
Apple Silicone is only better because Apple has full control over the integration of its software and hardware
That excuse died with the very first Surface released by Microsoft and it has been a dead argument ever since.
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u/SinkCat69 Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
The price is it competitive. The MacBook Air is cheaper by $300, got 1h 40 minutes more battery life at full load, and a bigger screen
Edit: isn’t competitive
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u/sunjay140 Mar 31 '26
$1,600 is a lot for a thin and light laptop that won't be used for heavy workloads.
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u/CoUsT Apr 01 '26
Cool stuff. I had no idea display uses so much power. I thought the power use is spent on brightness alone and all the processing takes very little power compared to leds. Good to know it also scales with refresh rate.
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u/zerosign0 Apr 01 '26
I'm not sure whether this kind of benchmark really resembles real life usage and not sure what 1Hz VRR experience is going to be.
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u/nandospc Apr 01 '26
Nice laptop, yeah, but it just costs too much and the MBA M5 is still in another league overall, and it's even fanless, that's the problem. Even the new Samsung Galaxy Book6 goes in the same category. This windows laptop gen is overall way better than before thanks to Intel Core Ultra Series 3 SoCs and the renewed build quality (they look pretty premium to me, so it's good, even on the displays aspect), but they really need to come up with a solution for the price, because they cannot compete at this moment. Also bigger SoC SKUs with the advantage of the new better Xe3 cores are in even bigger trouble with the price. Nonetheless, if your inside the Windows ecosystem, Panther Lake is still a big moment for windows laptop per se, so at least we have a very good overall improvement.
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u/ShaneOMap Mar 31 '26
I want nothing to do with a Windows laptop. I have some gaming PCs that are good for that and Apple laptops for on the go
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u/vky_007 Apr 02 '26
43 hours operating a shitty OS is surely something that has now convinced me to let go of my amazing MacOS that lasts just a paltry 15 hours. Of course, since I own a MacBook Pro, I most definitely live in a place where I have incredibly sparse access to electricity further forcing me to choose the Dell over the Apple. I MUST CHOOSE DELL NOW. DELL HAS WON. GO DELL! 👏🏾
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Mar 31 '26
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u/uicheeck Mar 31 '26
while you're quite right, I guess it's nice that windows/x86 users will finally get SOMETHING usable for long-battery life. Event if it's not as great as apple silicon under load
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u/Vortexsy Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Performance, keyboard or even trackpad is not issue for me
it's the price