Here's a datapoint. I just got an HP Omen gaming laptop for $1100 on Amazon. Pretty much equivalent to the 3800x mentioned in the article, but came with 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD, and 6GB Nvidia 1660ti discrete graphics. I can seemingly run unlimited browser tabs, video conference and play a game across 3 monitors (built in one is 144hz) simultaneously with no latency whatsoever. I upgraded to 32GB of ram for $144 and added another 512gb PCIe SSD I had lying around, because it had an extra slot. The fans do run (quietly) all the time, and it has a battery life of about 4 or 5 hours. Not in the same league performance per watt as the M1, but interesting performance for the dollar none the less.