MacBook Pro 13 M1 vs Dell XPS 13 - What is Happening!? | The Tech Chap

 

is the base model of the new MacBook pro 

13 with the m1 uh eight-core CPU eight-core GPU eight gigs of ram the unified memory uh and also 256 gigs of storage and it'll cost you a cool 1299 pounds which is the same in dollars nice and simple then we've got the new dell XPS 13. this is the 9310 model uh which comes with intel's latest tiger lake 11th gen processors which of course also come with their much faster integrated xe graphics along with 16 gigs of ram 512 gigs of storage and it will cost you a little bit more than 1650 pounds however this actually starts at a thousand dollars which puts it right up against the new macbook air although if you want the i5 with xc then you have to pay 1100 which bizarrely here in the uk is 1400 pounds and then you've got the choice between full hd and ultra hd options of the dell basically there are about a million combinations uh different specs prices and even regional differences so value for money may vary but I have as I say go with a slightly more powerful uh model here which does put it at a 350-pound premium over the macbook pro 13 but perhaps the more powerful i7 and also the extra ram will help it keep up with the m1 chip but to start with I'm sure you'll agree side by side in terms of design the xps 13 really does feel next gen both apple and dell have taken the exact same chassis as the previous model and just dropped in some newer hardware inside but the xps is a good deal thinner lighter it has razer thin bezels and is overall a much more compact and portable machine build quality is top-notch on both though with aluminum chassis being able to open them with one finger although unlike the ultra hd model this full hd version of the xps does have a slightly cheaper looking plastic bezel unlike the glossy flush finish, we have on the albeit chunkier bezels on the macbook let's bring up a bit of tech chat and now one important difference between these two are the screens as I mentioned the dell comes in two flavors full hd plus and ultra hd plus whereas the macbook pro just goes for a kind of a happy middle ground with a quad hd resolution 

but as you can see they both do have a 

16 by 10 aspect ratio so you just have a little bit more room at the top and bottom of the screen which I think makes a big difference especially in this smaller 13 inch laptops so yeah big fan of the 16 10 on both of these now importantly if you go for the 1080p version of the dell like I have here it's a little bit cheaper and you also get nearly double the battery life of the 4k model which is a pretty big deal the downsides well it's obviously nowhere near as sharp as 4k it's not quite as color accurate and it's also not a touch screen but as I say I think apple strikes a good balance between the sharpness of the screen and also the battery life another big difference between the two as you can probably see is the quality of the webcam this is the dell this is the macbook and while even just looking at the screen side by side it's a night and day the difference it really is so if you know web calls video conferencing all that malarkey is important to you which I think in 2020 it is for most of us the macbook is definitely the winner okay I've made you guys wait long enough let's get to the good stuff and firstly battery life which lasts longer and starting with youtube in their respective most optimized browsers so safari on the mac and edge on the xps after one hour the xps is down to 86 battery versus 92 on the macbook then after another full hour of a zoom call we're down to 68 on the xps but then switching to gaming and I fired up a bit of shadow of the tomb raider and we're looking at 29 and 44 on the xps and mac respectively and finally going through an hour of using office apps the xps drops to just seven percent with a whopping 30 left on a macbook that's pretty crazy I mean this is the full hd version of the xps which lasts as I say about twice as long as the 4k model but it still can't keep up with the m1 powered macbook pro and so in terms of pure online video playback we're looking at 9 hours on the dell and 12 hours on the macbook so a pretty convincing win for the team apple in terms of battery life but what about performance now as i mentioned this is the 350 pounds more expensive dell with the more powerful i7 with double the ram of the macbook so this does have a bit of an advantage going in and kicking off with cinebench r23 in single core the mac is just seven percent faster but a whopping 63 percent faster in multi-core moving on to geekbench 5 or 5.3 to be exact which now offers both a specific intel and apple architecture cpu test the mac is 13 faster in single core and 45 faster in multi-core and finally in geekbench's opencl graphics test the mac again takes the win with a six percent lead over the dell 

so the macbook is faster across the 

board although the huge multi-core boosts aren't entirely surprising uh given the fact that we have an eight core cpu in here uh versus a quad core in the uh dell xps with the intel chip but you could argue that's kind of academic because these are the chips that are in these laptops you know these are competitively priced they are very much are in the same league so does it matter what they're powered by or how it's powered the fact is this at least in those tests 

is significantly more powerful 

but those are just synthetic benchmarks what about the real world use well let's start with a few games which admittedly isn't the mac's strong suit we're still pretty limited by the range of games that will run on mac os but in the shadow of the tomb raider at full hd with high settings which is quite ambitious to be fair the macbook averaged 24 fps versus 20 on the dell interestingly though the results are reversed in turtle war 3 kingdoms where the max scores a 19 fps average to the dell's 25. so for the tiebreaker, we have fortnite again full hd high settings and this is where the mac really pulls ahead 42fps versus 27 on the xbs which was also much more inconsistent as I played with lows of just 7 fps remember though all these games are running through apple's rosetta 2 emulation on the mac , uh you can see in the activity monitor unlike most apps running is still using the intel architecture so even though the dell one in total war it's just pretty amazing how well the emulator software runs on the mac considering in most cases it's a fair bit faster than the native app on the windows machine but there is a but because while generally performance on the mac is very impressive it can be a little bit inconsistent I tried cs go for instance on steam and it wouldn't even load properly on the mac apparently the latest big sur beta will fix it, in fact, some reddit users have put together a really helpful spreadsheet of how well games work on the m1 some are great some not so great now this will only get better over time as developers create universal versions of their games which are properly optimized for apple silicon but the truth is you could cherry pick the games you benchmark to then you know favor either the mac or the dell I think there are just too many variations so for me when it comes to gaming at least the bottom line is that the xc graphics in here is a massive step up over the previous intel uhd chips and most importantly we have a much much bigger library of games available on windows so while neither of these is gaming laptops per se I think the dell is the better choice but what about video editing I think this is a more likely use of these laptops in the real world well, I loaded up the same 10 minutes 4k 30 timeline in premiere pro davinci resolve studio 17 the latest beta version I might add and also final cut pro and the results are fascinating we're looking at 25 and 31 minutes for export on the xps and mac respectively in davinci resolve studio 17 beta the macbook completes the render in half the time of the xbs and finally in final cut well it's a one horse race since you just can't run it on windows it's going to be so interesting to see the performance changes when the adobe suite finally gets updated on the m1 so I'll definitely revisit that when that happens which is probably next year they're promising lightroom in december then maybe photoshop early next year but for now if you're working in premiere pro then the dell is the best choice but for davinci and final cut users definitely go with the mac now I hope I'm not boring you guys all to death with these uh numbers I just realized I've opened that backward these numbers and tables but I think it's pretty fascinating just how different these two laptops are and while I've been running my tests along the way I have noticed a couple of extra advantages for the mac firstly even though this does have a fan unlike the macbook air, it's consistently much quieter and also much cooler than the dell in fact while playing fortnite the surface of the dell reached a pretty toasty 45 degree celsius with the fans noticeably whirring away on the mac it was near enough silent to measure just 34 degrees celsius and of course, you do also have the option to install some iphone and ipad apps on the mac thanks to the m1 and big sur it doesn't seem to have many of the popular ones just yet but this could be a big selling point so however you feel about apple you have to agree on the m1 their first chip and a laptop which is still having to emulate most programs through rosetta is proper revolutionary stuff and remarkably versus the 11th gen i7 on the xps it's near enough 30 faster on average and on top of that it also lasts about 25 longer while also being much quieter much cooler and actually compared to this higher spec version of the dell actually cheaper but that's not to say the dell isn't worth buying in fact the the biggest deciding factor is probably the os do you prefer mac os or windows 10 and also if the battery isn't that important to you then the 4k the touchscreen is a useful option to have it's also more portable the I o is a little bit better with micro sd ports and also thunderbolt 4 where you can actually output this to more than one external screen the mac for some reason is limited to one external display although I think you can get around that with a display port splitter thing but I think more importantly is that most models of the xps 13 get 512 gigs of storage which is double that of the mac having said that in favor of the apple aside from everything we've talked about so far it's subjective but I do prefer the keyboard and the trackpad on this especially with the slick gesture support in mac os the speakers are also a good deal better than the dell and of course, that webcam is a lot better on the mac, it's like a night and day difference but I would definitely recommend paying the extra for 16 gigs of ram because a couple of times when i was in premiere pro and also affinity designer, I've had pop-ups saying that I've run out of memory and I've had to close the app I think that's my biggest complaint about this so far definitely go for 16. don't forget though that you can still buy intel MacBook pros uh the four-port model with 10th gen i5 and i7 chips and frustratingly these are the only ones you can spec up to 32 gigs of ram and also double the storage up to four terabytes now as for the question of should you go with the MacBook pro or here's what I made earlier the new MacBook air also powered by the m1 well I think that is a story for another time maybe even tomorrow I'm actually working on that already I've got a few more tests to do so for this video between the MacBook and the dell if I was going to buy one I would go with the MacBook although I do love this as well this is being held back by intel perhaps if you saw an AMD version of it then that would make these a lot more tempting but what do you think which one would you go for and why to let me know in the comments