this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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The M2 chips and presumably the M3 as well are incredibly sophisticated but they're not powerful exactly, they're just power efficient. They deliver excellent performance for their power draw.
But if I actually want to high performance chip I can get better options as long as I don't care about battery life, and if I need a high performance chip I probably don't actually care about battery life.
So it's good for people that want reasonably good performance on the go but no power use really cares.
The bigger point here is that if you need that kind of power, it comes with compromises to battery life, heat, and device longevity.
Apple silicon is just fast enough for most workloads you want on a laptop, and can handle surprisingly heavy video workloads. For anything more, a desktop is a better idea than a laptop anyways.
There’s definitely a niche for desktop replacement class laptops, but that is a niche. Gaming laptops are still king though. You don’t buy a macbook for gaming.
Gaming laptops are such a terrible way to game that I can’t think of a situation where I’d recommend one.
For budget reasons, get a console or build a couple gen old desktop for a cheaper price.
For portability? Get a Steam Deck.
If you’re gaming at the dining room table, it’d be better if it were a Steam deck. On the couch? Game on your console if you have one; if you instead have a PC, game on it hooked up here.
Doing non gaming stuff? Well, you probably don’t need a gaming laptop for that - a “productivity” laptop makes more sense.
And of course, that’s where MacBooks shine.
Admittedly I am in a weird situation where consoles and steam deck are both off the table. I am a bit of a framerate junkie. 30fps is unplayable.
Amusingly my m1 max macbook can actually hold 120fps in final fantasy xiv and actually has a 120hz screen, but those specs for the price would make no sense if this wasn’t also my main productivity system. The battery life, heat, speakers and screen quality are all huge bonuses in this case.
A steam deck would never satisfy me, so a gaming laptop would have been mandatory for travel if not for my macbook.