48 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2021REVIEWS TESTED: APPLE M1 CHIP
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 (go.pcworld.com/glrv). Macworld also
graciously ran a couple of additional tests for
our analysis. For two other results, we relied
on published results from Puget Systems (go.
pcworld.com/pgsm), a bespoke system
builder that manufactures workstations and
rolls its own productivity-focused
benchmarks.
Our tests show the M1 MacBook Air 13
performing very well compared to equivalent
PC laptops. You can jump straight to our
conclusion for the final analysis, but if you
want to dig deeper to see exactly where and
how the M1 does well, read on...THE LAPTOPS WE TESTED
Apple’s MacBook Pro M1 features its spiffy
new M1 Arm-based SoC/CPU, a 512GB
custom SSD, 16GB of LPDDR4X/4267
memory, a 13.3-inch 2560x1600 screen, and
lap weight of 3.1 lbs.
For our PC comparisons, we decided to
pick from laptops that are similar in size and
weight:- MSI’s Prestige 14 Evo (go.pcworld.
com/14ev) is equipped with a four-core,
11th-gen Core i7-1185G7 with Iris Xe
graphics, 16GB of LPDDR4X/4267 memory, a
512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, and a 14-inch FHD
screen. It weighs 2.7 lbs. - MSI’s older Prestige 14 (go.pcworld.
com/ps14) is equipped with a six-core,
10th-gen Core i7-10710U, GeForce GTX 1650
Max-Q graphics, 16GB of LPDDR3/2133
memory, a 1TB PCIe 3.0 SSD, and a 14-inch
4K screen. It weighs 2.8 lbs. - Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7 (go.
pcworld.com/slm7) has an
eight-core Ryzen 4800U with
Radeon graphics, 16GB of
LPDDR4X/4267 memory, a 512GB
PCIe 3.0 SSD, a 14-inch FHD, and
lap weight of 3.1 lbs. - The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
(go.pcworld.com/az14) includes
an eight-core Ryzen 9 4800HS,
GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q
graphics, 16GB of DDR4/3200
The MacBook Pro M1 features Apple’s M1 Arm-based SoC/CPU. memory, a 1TB PCIe 3.0 SSD, a