Mad about Apple’s M1 chip

The newly released SoC is raising the bar on so many levels, but is it enough?

Apple’s M1 chip is upending the ultraportable laptop market. Thanks to its impressive 8-core CPU, up to 8-core GPU, and 16-core Neural Engine, this impressive system on a chip (SoC) is showing everyone what they’ve been missing all along.

This chip has outperformed Intel’s Tiger Lake i7 chips in benchmarks as well as outgunned its Iris Plus Graphics, while also giving both the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro staggering battery life.

Intel now has cause for concern. After all, the M1 is not just paving the way for Apple to completely rely on its own homegrown internals and ending its use of Intel chips for good, but also giving

Apple devices the power boost they need to rule over their rivals.

Still, is the M1 chip powerful enough to supersede other Pro-level flagships? Not necessarily. The MacBook Pro 13-inch Intel configurations have the advantage of having more RAM and storage to upgrade to. Laptops like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, on the other hand, have the upper hand in terms of graphical power, boasting Nvidia GTX or RTX GPUs while being not much thicker than M1 laptops. That makes them more appealing to professionals who also play AAA games.

This is hardly a fair comparison, however. We’ve only seen the M1 do its thing in laptops that neither offer such RAM and storage options, nor have discrete graphics. What we know is that it’s already proven itself a powerful adversary, beating the Dell XPS 13, among the best laptops out there, in performance. If Apple does get around to replacing those Intel chips in the higher MacBook Pro 13-inch configurations with the M1, it would be very interesting to see it stretch its legs with more RAM and storage.

There’s a hard battle awaiting Intel-powered laptops. And, with Apple allegedly threatening to unleash its

M1X chip on MacBook Pro 16-inch adversaries sometime this year, it may well be a long one.