The Contenders ($750 Price Point)
- Apple MacBook Air (M4): 16GB RAM, Aluminum build.
- Microsoft Surface Laptop 2025: Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB RAM.
- Acer Aspire 14: Intel Core Ultra 7 (Lunar Lake), 32GB RAM.
- Lenovo IdeaPad 5 16-inch: AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 chip, 16GB RAM.
Build & Design
- MacBook Air (Winner): Full aluminum body, best glass trackpad, thin design. Best display (brightest at 500 nits, 85% more pixels than the others).
- Surface Laptop: Aluminum build (MacBook clone), nice glossy screen, but has a “diving board” trackpad.
- Lenovo: Plastic build, diving board trackpad.
- Acer: “Atrocious” plastic gray bezels, feels super cheap, diving board trackpad.
Performance Tests
- SSD Speed:
- Winners: Acer & Lenovo (>6,000 MB/s Read).
- Loser: MacBook Air (~3,000 MB/s Read, ~2,100 MB/s Write).
- CPU (Geekbench 6):
- Winner: MacBook Air M4 (40-55% faster single-core, 33-41% faster multi-core than competitors).
- Web Browsing (Speedometer 3.1):
- Winner: MacBook Air (62-99% faster). Lenovo’s fans spun up just doing this simple test.
- 3D Rendering (Blender – BMW GPU Render):
- Winner: MacBook Air (22 seconds).
- Losers: Lenovo (2m 39s), Snapdragon (3m 27s), Intel (4m 12s). The MacBook was ~7-8x faster.
- Photo Export (Lightroom):
- Winner: MacBook Air (54 seconds).
- Loser: Acer (2m 31s).
Battery Life Test
The laptops were tested at maximum brightness (note: MacBook Air screen is significantly brighter/higher resolution).
- MacBook Air: 26% remaining (Tied for best percentage, but driving a better screen).
- Acer (Intel): 26% remaining.
- Surface (Snapdragon): 19% remaining.
- Lenovo (AMD): Died completely (0%).
Thermals & Noise
- MacBook Air: Fanless (Silent). Ran a single Cinebench run with a score of 850.
- Lenovo: Loud fans, hot spots (~50°C). Score: 836.
- Acer: Loud fans. Score: 602.
- Surface: Loud fans. Score: 399.
- Result: The fanless MacBook Air outperformed all actively cooled Windows laptops in performance per watt and raw speed.
Conclusion
The host declares the $750 M4 MacBook Air the “best budget laptop of all time.” It dominated in performance (especially rendering and single-core tasks), build quality, display quality, and resale value, while matching the best Windows battery life despite having a brighter, higher-resolution screen. The Windows competitors were criticized for poor plastic builds, loud fans, and significantly slower performance in creative tasks.
I use MacBooks, and I agree that MacBook Air is a better value here. But, it was a little strange that he just breezed past the ports section — “The Air has 2 thunderbolt 4 ports, which is great” — then moved on. The ports is legitimately an area where the Air comes up short compared to most Windows laptops in that price range. Sure, maybe the other don’t have thunderbolt 4 — but most people interested in “budget” probably aren’t using tools that benefit from that anyway.
That was a breath of fresh air in the very competitive ‘tech reviewer on YouTube’ space, so thank you for the effort. I truly appreciate it. My current daily driver is a Macbook-lookalike HP (still) running Windows 10 and I was considering switching to Linux (Zorin OS/Linux Mint), but software compatibility issues and reading up on the latest versions of Apple laptops (+ this video) have convinced me to invest in a Macbook Pro with a 5-10 year replacement horizon in mind.
I have used a lot of Windows and Chromebook laptops since 2000’s, and I must say the MacBook M4 Air has the best keyboard I have EVER used !. I love it, it fits my fingers so well, easy to type 110wpm with, so I bought a magic keyboard thinking it would be as good, but no.. its not the same, it feels “loose” to write on, and also its hard to feel where you are on the keyboard. Just for the keyboard I would say go for M4 Air 🙂 (I also have M4 Pro, but its not as good either.. but better than Magic Keyboard USB-C) But the Acer 714 chromebook has the best touchpad I have ever used.
it has a gorilla glass touchpad, so the fingers are so smooth on the trackpad, while the Macbook M4 Air (and Pro) has some resistance. edit: best screen and speakers goes to the M4 Pro, I mean, its display looks even better than my MSI Oled screen…
Tim Cook is very much maligned by many including commentators and YouTubers. However this video demonstrates that Tim Cook’s strategy of driving down manufacturing cost makes him as great as Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a great pioneer of personal IT devices with new easy to use UI and the optimisation of software and hardware working together.
He pushed the applications of IT technology to products that we never would’ve imagined or had for all of us average people. Tim Cook would force IT hardware manufacturing to a level that would reduce costs for all of us. Yes, I think that many Windows product makers would now be forced to consolidate among them and merge with one another to achieve the same degree of VERTICAL INTEGRATION that has enabled Apple products to have performance far superior but still highly price competitive if far cheaper. Think on this above paragraph.
Intel or AMD might need to merge with Acer, eg, to come up with products that have lower profit margins between part suppliers and builders of pc. This has been how Apple has been able to reduce the costs and give better value for money across the board of its products. The cutting out of the middleman in many parts for building MacBooks is the advantage that Windows machine makers have NOT been able to duplicate. They need to achieve this in order to compete against Apple. This is my take on this price advantage vs performance of Apple products these last 2 years and going forwards.
If indeed all Windows and even Android hardware makers consolidate among themselves to have a small number of Vertically Integrated device manufacturers-brands, the whole IT hardware industry would thank Tim Cook. I have a feeling this will happen. Then all IT products will be cheaper and more demands and higher cashflow for new products. It will be good for everyone.
