8 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020NEWS MACBOOK AIR IS NOT FASTER THAN 98% OF LAPTOPS
pcworld.com/apcl) by stating: “M1 is faster
than the chips in 98 percent of PC laptops
sold in the past year.” The site also includes a
detail note that states: “Testing conducted by
Apple in October 2020 using preproduction
13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M
chip and 16GB of RAM. Performance
measured using select industry-standard
benchmarks. PC configurations from publicly
available sales data over the last 12 months.
Performance tests are conducted using
specific computer systems and reflect
approximate performance of MacBook Pro.”APPLE IS SO FULL OF IT
So, not only does Apple not say what tests it’s
basing its claims on, it doesn’t even say
where it sources the comparable laptops.
Does that mean the new fanless MacBook
Air is faster than, say, Asus’s stupidly fast Ryzen
4000-based, GeForce RTX 2060-based
Zephyrus G14 (go.pcworld.com/ze14)? Does it
mean the MacBook Air is faster than Alienware’s
updated Area 51M (go.pcworld.com/51ma)?
The answer, I’m going to guess is “no.” Not at all.
Is it faster than the miniLED-based MSI Creator 17
(go.pcworld.com/ct17)? Probably not, either.