And that's with the M1 having 4 slow cores for better battery life / consumption (with 8 full speed cores it would obliterate the 5850U).
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Apple-M1-8-Core-3200-MH...
Apple M1 - CPU Mark: 14,872 / Single thread: 3,630
AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U - CPU Mark: 20,659 / Single thread: 3,237
The AMD is 38.9% faster on the multi-core benchmark, and 10.8% slower on the single-core benchmark.
(And, still, that's with M1 having 4 cores tied behind its back for better battery life).
Most people’s performance workload is dominated by media consumption—not media creation. But the latter sure does make for good benchmarks.
It's not really that simple. An M1 with 8 full speed cores would also consume significantly more power and would no longer work in something like the MacBook Air. On paper these CPUs are both targeting the same power budget, so if AMD can put 8 full-speed CPUs in the same power budget that Apple can "only" put 4 full-speed and 4 low-power then why shouldn't AMD get a win from that?