US. Canada. Probably other regions. A Surface Laptop with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is $1200 USD. A M3 MBA with with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD is $1500.
- 13" or 15" screen
- Snapdragon X Elite (which still doesn't match M3 performance)
- 16 GB memory
- 512 GB SSD
Surface laptop price is $1399 (13") or $1499 (15"), which is $100 cheaper for the 13" vs the equivalent MBA, and $200 cheaper for the equivalent MBA 15". The Snapdragon X Plus, which is what it looks like you priced out, is quite inferior to the Elite and even the older Apple M1/M2 series chips.
This is all to say that neither is a bad buy, depending on your needs.
The Surface Pro has an OLED config now, which costs more, but the laptop and standard pro are still LCD.
X Plus and X Elite NPU hit 45 TOPS. M4 is 38 TOPS...
Also, as far I know, Elite does match M3. Actually, Qualcomm promise that even X Plus is able to match it, as they say Elite is better than M3.
We'll have to wait to see more benchmarks.
PS: There's 3 Elite series.
> Are we talking about AI/ML?
While I have a basic understanding of TOPS metrics I don’t have a good enough understanding to speak much about it — especially when I’m not sure of what exact AI/ML workloads will be used on such platforms. I mean, how many tokens/sec and what wattage does that equate to?
> Also, as far I know, Elite does match M3.
> Actually, Qualcomm promise that even X Plus is able to match it, as they say Elite is better than M3.
Can the Elite outperform Apple’s chips? Can it do it at comparable wattage, or is it going to burn your lap doing so? Can’t wait to see.
In multi-core from what I've seen X Plus is faster than base M3.
Single: 3088 Multi: 11595
Non-production Elite X From Anandtech[1]:
Single: 2800 Multi: 14400
Non-production Plus X From Anandtech[1]:
Single: 2425 Multi: 13100
Slower single perf for both Snapdragons. Decent 10% jump in multi over the M3. I am eager to see how the production units will pan out on benchmarks and sustained performance.
Qualcomm's been shady in the past with their so-called "Apple killer" chip benchmarks. I don't think these are "Apple killers", but I hope it pans out, for competition's sake.
1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21364/qualcomm-intros-snapdra...
M4 iPad Pro: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/6036233 S: ~3747 M: ~14740
Snapdragon X Elite: https://browser.geekbench.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=snapdr... S: ~2400 M: ~14000
Note this is an M4 iPad Pro. I would imagine an M4 Mac would spec a little better, due to less heat/power constraints.
tl;dr: M4 stomps on the Elite in single-core with about 36% more performance. The baseline M4 and X Elite are about even on multi-core. X Elite has marginally better NPU TOPS performance if that's something that matters to you.