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YouTube creator Luke Miani compared the new Surface Laptop 7th Edition powered by Snapdragon X Plus with the M2-based Apple MacBook Air. He used Cinebench to measure the performance of the machines’ processors, and the results are somewhat shocking. However, in some areas, the M2 MacBook Air still performed better than the Surface Laptop. So let’s take a look.

Battery life and performance

Luke Miani ran Cinebench twice, for 10 minutes each time, for a total of 20 minutes. The test showed that Apple Silicon’s power efficiency is still superior to the new Qualcomm offering. When the MacBook Air M2 lost 10% of its battery during testing, the Surface Laptop 7th Edition based on Snapdragon X Plus was already 65% discharged.

Speaking of battery capacity, the difference between the two machines is not that big. The M2 MacBook Air is equipped with a 52 Wh battery, while the Surface Laptop 7th Edition has a 54 Wh battery. So the result we saw is due to the significantly higher power consumption of the Snapdragon X Plus during testing. On the other hand, the Surface Laptop’s keyboard temperature reached 45°C, while the MacBook Air’s was 36°C. It should also be remembered that the Surface Laptop has an active cooling mechanism.


But in Cinebench, the Surface Laptop also received a significantly higher score than the M2 MacBook Air. It even outperformed the M3 MacBook Air in the test. Nevertheless, the Snapdragon SoC is still new and needs to be refined in various aspects. You can see the results below (the lower the better).


While the Cinebench test highlighted the difference in power efficiency between the two chips, the Surface Laptop performed relatively better in normal video streaming when it came to battery life. Over 7.5 hours of video playback, the MacBook Air achieved 36%, while the Surface Laptop achieved 12%.

The post Snapdragon X Plus outperforms Apple M2 / M3 chips in Cinebench first appeared on HiTechExpert.top.