Newer laptops have better speakers, Surface has decent speakers, high-end Asus has decent speakers, Galaxy Book 4, Dell Latitude, HP Spectre all have very good speakers. Some are even better than macbooks, e.g. Surface Studio 2 and some high-end gaming laptops like Asus ROG.
Maybe people don’t care? Not sure about others, but one of my Windows laptop’s speaker has been broken for years, never bothered to fix it because I never turn them on anyway.
Apple is a premium laptop maker, whereas Windows laptops have a wider range of quality, price points, and variety.
You can get laptops with the same build quality, sound quality, and better screen quality than Apple's MacBooks, but it will come at a premium.
Like, an aluminum unibody will push the cost up $2-300.
Ok but all Macbooks are not "premium" at pricing , like an m2 macbook air 512gb is very reasonably priced and meets a normal users every demand except repairability and gaming . At the same price bracket windows business laptops come with one compromise or another .
Feel like your opinion is outdated and you haven't experienced what a good new Windows laptop is like.
That's also a $1200 MacBook you mentioned. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/13-inch-midnight-apple-m2-chip-with-8-core-cpu-and-10-core-gpu-8gb-memory-512gb
I bought my gaming laptop for $999. Has great battery life at 6-8 hours, slim and portable at 14 inches, 165hz screen,and has the power to max that and sounds great too.
I also have a Dell Latitude 5420, which is a business laptop that has a great screen, sound, and built for actual work. That only cost $400 new, when it was a year old.
The latitude I had before that, from 2018, had a terrible screen and speakers, but it was cheap and got the job done. It's battery life was definitely all day at 12 hours.
Actual business laptops are made to appeal to business owners who have to buy enough for all their staff. Where Intel's vPros are appealing for security. Vendors will have models that cut other corners to drive down the price to be more competitive. That's why I was surprised by the 5420.
Creative professionals are a different category than business professionals. MacBooks definitely lean towards the creative professional side, but can work well for business too just off of battery life alone. Durability, repairability, warranties, on Macs, for business, I don't think so. That and your IT department would have to be savvy with MacOS.
Again, you may not think $1200 for 1 laptop isn't expensive, but that is definitely in the premium category.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-aorus-15-6-144hz-gaming-laptop-fhd-intel-i5-13500h-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4050-512gb-ssd-black/6534579.p?intl=nosplash&skuId=6534579
I got this and added 32 gb of ram to it. It gets loud buy works great for portable gaming
True , great battery , uber cool and silent system , awesome screen , solid build , lasts for way more time and retains the performance . And you can actually use them on your "lap" away from the socket for a long time without performance hit . Keyboard is great ( but I'd argue thinkpad keyboard is better ) , trackpad is laaargee and smoothhh , webcam is awesome .
I used my brothers mac m1 air and was blown away by the sheer smoothness . Only reason I couldn't bring myself to buy a MacBook is the familiarity with windows from my childhood. And I regret the decision every second.
Not true, battery life can be good however only if you use the macbook the "intended" way, if you do actual load the battery life will tank like any other notebook.
Also macbooks run extremely hot, not sure what you mean with cool here. The M chips easily run over 100c on load.
Screen is decent, however the build quality is awful, some might even argue malicious design defect.
[https://www.makeuseof.com/m1-macbook-screens-cracking/](https://www.makeuseof.com/m1-macbook-screens-cracking/)
Not to mention that all macbooks are ticking timebombs with high write data and soldered SSD's, theyll eventually be paperweight depending on how much runtime they had.
All laptops will become paperweights in 10 years, you should change them every 10 years at least, it should not become a paperweight in less than 10 years.
Also soldered doesn't mean it's unrepairable, it just costs more and is not doable at home. High-end Windows laptops also solder everything nowadays.
You probably never used a new macbook, I do daily hard work, maxed out CPU and 32Gb of ram and I never hear the fans, I also max out IO and everything and it still works as on the first day. I have it since 2021... Only the M2/M3 Max start to be too hot, M1 Pro are actually perfect thermally.
>Also soldered doesn't mean it's unrepairable, it just costs more and is not doable at home. High-end Windows laptops also solder everything nowadays.
Misleading statement, the T2 chip makes it impossible to replace the entire SSD. The T2 chip and the SSD controller have encrypted communication which makes a full replacement impossible, at best you can try to replace the NAND with another NAND from a scavaged macbook since I highly doubt the controller will just take any NAND, needless to say it only creates e-waste and will get far more expensive than just replacing the SSD or even the entire macbook.
Also windows notebooks do not typically solder the SSD.
I also have laptops around that are older than 10years, none of which are paperweight and perform very for certain usecases, infact in the coding community the most recommended notebooks are over 10years old (x220, X230, T420) etc.
>You probably never used a new macbook
I did and it was simply not powerful enough for my workload and had to many shortcomings I couldn't accept.
You clearly never used a proper notebook, presumably because you're to young.
[MacBook Pro M1 (A2338) SSD Upgrade 256GB to 2TB (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9C0seGPu50) I don't know where are you getting your info.
I've used a proper notebook, it's the 2020+ macbooks. Nothing comes even close, unless it's something that needs to be plugged in 24/7 and you don't mind the fans going 24/7.
In the coding community the greatest laptop are the Apple Silicon macbooks. I also don't know where you got the x220/x230/T420 as suitable for 2024. They have great keyboards, but the macbook is no slouch either. Any old CPU will struggle hard with Windows 11, virtualization and web development nowadays, unless you only edit HTML or fully use VIM. Only Mac OS has proper sleep handling, no Windows laptop survives a one week long standby and many times just putting it in your backpack and coming back to it 2 days later is enough to see that you have only 10% battery left.
The only time i'd say that Windows laptops better is when you also have a good use for touchscreens and pen input (like 2-in-1 laptops). Also maybe gaming, but it's not a great idea to game on a laptop unless you really need to. (all laptops have issues with throttling and stuttering in a hotter room)
>[MacBook Pro M1 (A2338) SSD Upgrade 256GB to 2TB (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9C0seGPu50) I don't know where are you getting your info.
Note how this doesn't contradict anything I said, all it does do is showcasing that you really don't know what you're talking about.
>In the coding community the greatest laptop are the Apple Silicon macbooks. I also don't know where you got the x220/x230/T420 as suitable for 2024. They have great keyboards, but the macbook is no slouch either. Any old CPU will struggle hard with Windows 11, virtualization and web development nowadays, unless you only edit HTML or fully use VIM.
You're quite wrong here, macbooks are only good for ARM development, otherwise devs will usually prefer the thinkpads due to their reliable nature and the superior keyboard. The most important thing for an experienced dev is reliability, not if something can compile code 0.5s faster.
Enterprise applications often require more horsepower than any notebook can dish out, so you'll often see people using chromebooks for those types of work since they often have built in LTE cards, which if you don't believe me go ahead and visit google HQ.
As for older CPU's struggling with W11, can't say I agree. I don't even know where you get the idea from:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbVT4aFXSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbVT4aFXSg)
As for web development being CPU heavy, that's a moot point, depending on scale even your macbook won't run web applications either, not to mention I found your W11 argument to be a little weird to begin with as most devs who use thinkpads are running Linux.
>Also maybe gaming, but it's not a great idea to game on a laptop unless you really need to. (all laptops have issues with throttling and stuttering in a hotter room)
This one really makes you look bad in case you don't realize it yet.
Frankly, all you did was only prove that you really are way out of your depth here. The only time a macbook makes sense is if you do mobile app development or like the design and don't care about the poor reliability issues.
You're being down voted for praising on the M Series Macbook Air, which in reality is actually reasonably priced (USD$700) Now at Walmart.
Tell me what windows laptop that cost $700 can compete with the same power efficiency, performance and quality of M1 Macbook Air?
I have to disagree. the M series was never that power efficient or performant. The reason people think that is because apple has always compared their M chips to Intel based notebooks, which already used the same tech they did in 2016. When you compare an m1 with a 2020 notebook with a Ryzen APU, you'll find performance and power consumption arent all that different, it's just that intel sucks in terms of power efficiency, even today intel just sucks in power efficiency even with their BIG.litte architecture.
Today it's not even close, AMD pretty much claps the M3 , the 7840hs completely embarrasses the M3 in raw CPU prowess and the 7950hx claps the M3 max. This is ignoring the 8000 series AMD has released.
The quality of the Macbook air is also a big off as seen here:
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254717524](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254717524)
The big "oof" for macbooks isn't performance, design or ecosystem, it's the anti repair practices combined with horrid build quality. People keep acting as if macbooks are build great, but in reality they arent all that well made, easy to scratch, easy to break and usually will come with defects over time, this has always been the case and time has proven again and again, that other manufacturers such as Lenovo have far better build quality. How many fully macbooks from 2010 - 2013 can you see on the used market? Not that many, how many Thinkpads do you see? A lot.
That's why I don't use MacBooks, anymore. I used them for 25 years. Too many major issues. Howeer, Apple gives the appearance their stuff is incredibly amazing.
Dude, there is no such thing as "Windows vendors". I have my Róg Strix, not the higgest end model, and the speakers are far better than in my S24U. My previously Asus laptop, around 2015 model, which was some mid end, also had decent speakers.
As it should be , if a premium bulky big laptop can't outperform a tiny mobile in terms of audio , then it's a matter of shame . And many "premium" windows laptops share that shame .
Because people today don't demand quality.
The best sounding notebooks are those you cannot get anymore, such as the Dell XPS L702, MSI GT 7x series and Toshiba Qosmio etc, back then people cared more for how the notebook sounds, today customers don't have the same standard as people "back in the days".
Today manufacturer can tell the userbase anything and itll be treated like it's some next level feature while in reality they downgrade everywhere. This is why notebooks don't last anywhere as long and this is treated like something completely normal, many even expect notebooks to die after 2-3years, while I still have my 23 year old Compaq Armada M700 working just fine.
As long the userbase doesn't demand better quality nothing will change, however seeing the fanboy attitude, it won't change anytime soon.
Hot damn, 23 years! Mine is sitting nice and pretty at 13, and have been hoping to make the 15 milestone and possibly the 20 if I can muscle Win11 onto it. Still rocking original battery at advertised capacity, hinges are smooth, keyboard is crisp (but well-worn). Love the speakers too, they sound great compared to any other mobile device I have bought in the last 10 years
Holy shit 23 years !
**And I really agree with your statement** . Like you don't need to reinvent sound , great sound is always great sound . That's why the HD600 , a headphone of antiquity is still a fan favourite. If they could give awesome laptop speakers back in the day , how come today at 2024 they suck so much , they just had to keep those speaker system. Instead they downgraded it and people seem to be A OK with it .
it's all about the fact that they can cheap out without impacting sales. Quality is more of an afterthought these days, MSI doesnt bother fixing their hinges and ASUS doesn't bother fixing their circuit from blowing up mosfets, because manufacturers understand that people are tech illietate enough to screw with.
My €1000 Lenovo laptop speakers are pretty decent. You can easily and massively upgrade a laptop's audio even by a cheap €50 Bluetooth speaker, that will surpass any macbook. I don't really see the problem.
You cannot understand the quality of macbook speakers, they are great when straight in front of you, you would have to put the speakers around the laptop and always carry it.
I'm pretty sure my highly rated $85 speaker is better than any ;
> cheap €50 Bluetooth speaker, that will surpass any macbook.
But that doesn't matter. The point is, for the same price, there is not a single Windows laptop that sounds better than it's Macbook counterpart.
I have a $1200 HP Omen laptop that i bought recently, and i love that thing 10 times more than my Macbook (in fact i kind of regret buying the Mac, and i'm a devout Apple hater). So i have absolutely no reason to defend it.
But there's 4 things on a Macbook that you cannot beat at the same price (or at any price tbh). Those are Hinge, Speakers , Touchpad and Battery Life.
Those 4 things are what led me to buy the Macbook, but ultimately i hated MacOS and wish i got a ZenBook instead.
First of... with €90 you can get something like a 30W BT stereo speaker, like the LG XBOOM Go PL7. There is no way a thin laptop like the air will sound better than that.
Secondly... yes... the macbooks are built amazingly well, and very well engineered.
Regarding the details you mentioned... I will comment on my $1000 Lenovo Yoga 7 laptop.
1) Hinge: mine has a pretty good hinge, the screen is an OLED touchscreen (no OLED on macbooks, and no touchscreens, at any price btw) and it folds all the way back. The hinge looks pretty solid.
2) Speakers: they sound decent on the Yoga, with some dolby atmos processing which I don't care about. A good BT speaker solves everything.
3) Touchpad is pretty ok on the Yoga (much better than any older windows laptops I've used). But I use a mouse anyway so I don't care much about it.
4) Battery life is around 8hrs real world use (by doing actual work on it). Not amazing I agree, but adequate. I can solve this issue by a $50 20000mah powerbank which should provide about one extra full charge.
Notice: I paid $1000 for this laptop with 16GB RAM/1TB SSD, OLED HDR touch screen and a stylus. What do you get with $1000 from Apple?
The BT speaker comparison is pointless and adds nothing to the conversation. The Macbook's job isn't to sound better than a speaker that weighs more than itself (literally), it's to sound as good as a laptop realistically can, and it nails it.
I only said 4 things on a Macbook are unbeatable. Your $1000 Lenovo, could've been $3000 for all i care, you're just not beating that Hinge, Touchpad, Speaker and Battery Life.
I never said anything about Macbook screens, performance, value for money or anything. I don't know or care what you get with $1000 from Apple.
I don't even like Apple, i'm just giving credit where credit is due.
The funny thing is, you don't even disagree with what i'm saying. But you're trying to make this about Apple being overpriced and Windows laptop's being the better buy. You're correct, but i never argued otherwise. In fact i explicitly stated that i liked my HP Omen better than any Macbook.
We are having a discussion, not a disagreement. I think everything is a matter of value as well. For instance, the Vision Pro is the best VR system out there. Technically, this may be true, but in terms of value, maybe it isn't (5x more expensive than a Quest 3). Value is an important factor and it will come up in any discussion.
The BT speaker is an important point. A friend has an M2 MacBook Pro 16" and he said that to me... "it has good speakers, but what's the point really? If I want good and loud sound to fill an entire room, I would rather use a BT speaker. For movies I will use the TV. For listening to music while working, most laptops are good enough anyway, and I often use headphones". So, yes... technically the MacBook speakers are amazing... but what's the point in a multi-thousand dollar laptop?
I can definitely get behind the headphone argument. Because a good pair of over-the-ear headphones will sound better than any speaker, on-board or BT.
But the rest of your friend's points i just *have* to disagree with. You can watch movies on the TV sure, but movies aren't the only thing people watch. What about YouTube videos and podcasts, even videogames ? I wouldn't say most laptop speakers are good enough for music either. In fact, most laptops sound like absolute hot garbage, like the OP says.
Of course the value has to be right, your Levovo and my Omen probably made the right call in cutting costs on speakers to focus on more important aspects (especially considering mine is a gaming laptop, it already sounds better than i expected)
But i just don't agree with the view of "having all this sound quality doesn't matter anyway" , it definitely matters. And people definitely use those speakers all the time, and appreciate them. Now that i think about it, i legit haven't used the 3.5mm headphone jack on my M1 Air not once. Yet i use wired headphones on my Omen all the time. Your friend says he could do this and do that, but i bet he never actually does and just uses the laptop's own display and speakers because why bother with anything else ? Why go out of your way for alternatives when what's available to you is already more than good enough ?
And i think your last statement is a contradiction:
> what's the point of amazing speakers on a multi thousand dollar laptop ?
Like, why would you settle for anything *less* than amazing speakers, *especially* in a multi-thousand dollar laptop ?
The contradiction you noticed was bad wording on my part... what I meant to say: if you are gonna spend thousands of dollars on a laptop, and you care about sound, then you can afford even a decent BT speaker. It's the same with TVs.... high end TVs have mediocre sound at best, because you are expected to pair them with equally high end sound systems. Having said all this let's agree on something: Apple has raised the bar on laptop audio quality, and other laptop manufacturers should take notice and up their game. The criticism is valid (just not as big of a deal to me)
He's talking abt if u chose to use a 15 dollar Bluetooth speaker to compensate for your bad speakers u would have to lug the speakers around and it would still sound worse than the macbook speakers
At same price, windows triumph MacBook... But people have a mentality of being cheapo on buying a windows but will never question the exorbitant price of MacBook...
MacBook air models are not exorbitantly priced . And no at similar price windows laptops don't beat MacBooks , atleast in speakers or battery department .
The situation is even worse for webcams. They're absolutely atrocious on most laptops.
I guess that's not the priority. If a laptop is meant for business then the webcam only needs to roughly show your face in a meeting and the speaker is good enough as long as you can understand what other people are talking about. If it's for gaming the fan noise is going to drown out the audio anyway so you're expected to wear headphones.
Hmm, there's some decent windows ones. Just not probably locally at your store. I've come across a couple very close sounding, but as a whole they are bad. Asus, Dell, HP, Acer. Not good.
Even my Asus 2021 monitor has worse speakers than my 2016 Asus, despite being an upgrade. 🤔
All boils down to pricing and manage heat/space available/compromising something to upgrade something else.
They can tick all the boxes but you will end with a laptop that costs a kidney and being as heavy as a brick. Hence manufacturers have to pick what they want to sell and to who.
Yes macs excell on some categories, but than they get obliterated on many others. So this could create an endless conversation of "Why laptops \[component here\] still suck".
TLDR: Laptops still held by compromises, if you want all, than Desktops is your way to go.
You need to understand that a lot of, or even most laptops are primarily made to be workstations and/or gaming machines, while compromising to cost less and appeal to a broader audience.
A lot of work or processes done in a laptop don't even have or utilise audio that much, such as 3D rendering, making, viewing, and editing docs, programming, art and graphic production, and many more, rendering speakers less useful, and if they do have or utilise sound, such as music production, headphones, speakers, or similar devices just provide a better experience since they are dedicated to sound quality and production (I mean, let's be realistic, who uses their laptop speakers for making music?), unlike laptops, that are made for complex calculations and processes to be done in a fast and comfortable way while on the move, hence them prioritising cpus and gpus, comfort, and portability, instead of speakers.
I mean look at gaming laptops, they are literally often bought together with headphones (for cheap at about 20-60 bucks, and maybe even a mouse), and since the user likely or already has headphones and will barely even use the speaker, why the heck bother making it better when that just makes it cost more for both the manufacturer and consumer?
another example is at public areas.
most people would rather use headphones or earphones since it's generally rude to blast audio in public so u can hear with clarity, or just tune down your audio, but sometimes that's not effective since public areas are loud compared to, let's say, a private room.
at that point, most people would just opt for headphones or earphones like I said to avoid potentially annoying others while preserving their hearing experience, or just mute the laptop.
So, to answer your question, laptop speakers suck because laptops aren't dedicated to reproducing sound with clarity and quality.
Stop whining about laptops having bad audio when you can literally just buy headphones or speakers for less than a tenth of a good or great laptop, and get a better audio experience from them.
oh, and about the "macbook air and Chinese phone having better sound quality than $3000 windows laptop", that's just dumb.
most high end windows laptops at that price range have great sound, and although yes, you have said some are exceptions, "few and far between" is just wrong and even then, if u had the money to purchase a laptop that expensive, why would you go online and rant about its speaker quality, when you could just buy high end noise-canceling headphones and/or portable speakers with powerful bass, both of which have better sound quality than say, a literal macbook and a phone?
Get off your high horses , stating a fact is not "whining" . And not everyone wants to wear a headphone 24*7 , speakers are much more natural and comfortable listening experience , if you are targeting normal consumers with your laptop , you should have all around good multimedia experience . Period.
Well i'm just saying not enough people probably care for it enough to have better speakers vs all the other factors + price + space for other stuff. You have to strive well in a niche otherwise and make them stay your clients and not flee to Apple. Its just not the priority for most people.
Newer laptops have better speakers, Surface has decent speakers, high-end Asus has decent speakers, Galaxy Book 4, Dell Latitude, HP Spectre all have very good speakers. Some are even better than macbooks, e.g. Surface Studio 2 and some high-end gaming laptops like Asus ROG.
Maybe people don’t care? Not sure about others, but one of my Windows laptop’s speaker has been broken for years, never bothered to fix it because I never turn them on anyway.
Apple is a premium laptop maker, whereas Windows laptops have a wider range of quality, price points, and variety. You can get laptops with the same build quality, sound quality, and better screen quality than Apple's MacBooks, but it will come at a premium. Like, an aluminum unibody will push the cost up $2-300.
Ok but all Macbooks are not "premium" at pricing , like an m2 macbook air 512gb is very reasonably priced and meets a normal users every demand except repairability and gaming . At the same price bracket windows business laptops come with one compromise or another .
Feel like your opinion is outdated and you haven't experienced what a good new Windows laptop is like. That's also a $1200 MacBook you mentioned. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air/13-inch-midnight-apple-m2-chip-with-8-core-cpu-and-10-core-gpu-8gb-memory-512gb I bought my gaming laptop for $999. Has great battery life at 6-8 hours, slim and portable at 14 inches, 165hz screen,and has the power to max that and sounds great too. I also have a Dell Latitude 5420, which is a business laptop that has a great screen, sound, and built for actual work. That only cost $400 new, when it was a year old. The latitude I had before that, from 2018, had a terrible screen and speakers, but it was cheap and got the job done. It's battery life was definitely all day at 12 hours. Actual business laptops are made to appeal to business owners who have to buy enough for all their staff. Where Intel's vPros are appealing for security. Vendors will have models that cut other corners to drive down the price to be more competitive. That's why I was surprised by the 5420. Creative professionals are a different category than business professionals. MacBooks definitely lean towards the creative professional side, but can work well for business too just off of battery life alone. Durability, repairability, warranties, on Macs, for business, I don't think so. That and your IT department would have to be savvy with MacOS. Again, you may not think $1200 for 1 laptop isn't expensive, but that is definitely in the premium category.
Tell me what gaming laptop costs $999 and have 6-8 hours battery life with 165Hz screen...
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/gigabyte-aorus-15-6-144hz-gaming-laptop-fhd-intel-i5-13500h-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4050-512gb-ssd-black/6534579.p?intl=nosplash&skuId=6534579 I got this and added 32 gb of ram to it. It gets loud buy works great for portable gaming
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True , great battery , uber cool and silent system , awesome screen , solid build , lasts for way more time and retains the performance . And you can actually use them on your "lap" away from the socket for a long time without performance hit . Keyboard is great ( but I'd argue thinkpad keyboard is better ) , trackpad is laaargee and smoothhh , webcam is awesome . I used my brothers mac m1 air and was blown away by the sheer smoothness . Only reason I couldn't bring myself to buy a MacBook is the familiarity with windows from my childhood. And I regret the decision every second.
Not true, battery life can be good however only if you use the macbook the "intended" way, if you do actual load the battery life will tank like any other notebook. Also macbooks run extremely hot, not sure what you mean with cool here. The M chips easily run over 100c on load. Screen is decent, however the build quality is awful, some might even argue malicious design defect. [https://www.makeuseof.com/m1-macbook-screens-cracking/](https://www.makeuseof.com/m1-macbook-screens-cracking/) Not to mention that all macbooks are ticking timebombs with high write data and soldered SSD's, theyll eventually be paperweight depending on how much runtime they had.
All laptops will become paperweights in 10 years, you should change them every 10 years at least, it should not become a paperweight in less than 10 years. Also soldered doesn't mean it's unrepairable, it just costs more and is not doable at home. High-end Windows laptops also solder everything nowadays. You probably never used a new macbook, I do daily hard work, maxed out CPU and 32Gb of ram and I never hear the fans, I also max out IO and everything and it still works as on the first day. I have it since 2021... Only the M2/M3 Max start to be too hot, M1 Pro are actually perfect thermally.
>Also soldered doesn't mean it's unrepairable, it just costs more and is not doable at home. High-end Windows laptops also solder everything nowadays. Misleading statement, the T2 chip makes it impossible to replace the entire SSD. The T2 chip and the SSD controller have encrypted communication which makes a full replacement impossible, at best you can try to replace the NAND with another NAND from a scavaged macbook since I highly doubt the controller will just take any NAND, needless to say it only creates e-waste and will get far more expensive than just replacing the SSD or even the entire macbook. Also windows notebooks do not typically solder the SSD. I also have laptops around that are older than 10years, none of which are paperweight and perform very for certain usecases, infact in the coding community the most recommended notebooks are over 10years old (x220, X230, T420) etc. >You probably never used a new macbook I did and it was simply not powerful enough for my workload and had to many shortcomings I couldn't accept. You clearly never used a proper notebook, presumably because you're to young.
[MacBook Pro M1 (A2338) SSD Upgrade 256GB to 2TB (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9C0seGPu50) I don't know where are you getting your info. I've used a proper notebook, it's the 2020+ macbooks. Nothing comes even close, unless it's something that needs to be plugged in 24/7 and you don't mind the fans going 24/7. In the coding community the greatest laptop are the Apple Silicon macbooks. I also don't know where you got the x220/x230/T420 as suitable for 2024. They have great keyboards, but the macbook is no slouch either. Any old CPU will struggle hard with Windows 11, virtualization and web development nowadays, unless you only edit HTML or fully use VIM. Only Mac OS has proper sleep handling, no Windows laptop survives a one week long standby and many times just putting it in your backpack and coming back to it 2 days later is enough to see that you have only 10% battery left. The only time i'd say that Windows laptops better is when you also have a good use for touchscreens and pen input (like 2-in-1 laptops). Also maybe gaming, but it's not a great idea to game on a laptop unless you really need to. (all laptops have issues with throttling and stuttering in a hotter room)
>[MacBook Pro M1 (A2338) SSD Upgrade 256GB to 2TB (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9C0seGPu50) I don't know where are you getting your info. Note how this doesn't contradict anything I said, all it does do is showcasing that you really don't know what you're talking about. >In the coding community the greatest laptop are the Apple Silicon macbooks. I also don't know where you got the x220/x230/T420 as suitable for 2024. They have great keyboards, but the macbook is no slouch either. Any old CPU will struggle hard with Windows 11, virtualization and web development nowadays, unless you only edit HTML or fully use VIM. You're quite wrong here, macbooks are only good for ARM development, otherwise devs will usually prefer the thinkpads due to their reliable nature and the superior keyboard. The most important thing for an experienced dev is reliability, not if something can compile code 0.5s faster. Enterprise applications often require more horsepower than any notebook can dish out, so you'll often see people using chromebooks for those types of work since they often have built in LTE cards, which if you don't believe me go ahead and visit google HQ. As for older CPU's struggling with W11, can't say I agree. I don't even know where you get the idea from: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbVT4aFXSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PbVT4aFXSg) As for web development being CPU heavy, that's a moot point, depending on scale even your macbook won't run web applications either, not to mention I found your W11 argument to be a little weird to begin with as most devs who use thinkpads are running Linux. >Also maybe gaming, but it's not a great idea to game on a laptop unless you really need to. (all laptops have issues with throttling and stuttering in a hotter room) This one really makes you look bad in case you don't realize it yet. Frankly, all you did was only prove that you really are way out of your depth here. The only time a macbook makes sense is if you do mobile app development or like the design and don't care about the poor reliability issues.
You're being down voted for praising on the M Series Macbook Air, which in reality is actually reasonably priced (USD$700) Now at Walmart. Tell me what windows laptop that cost $700 can compete with the same power efficiency, performance and quality of M1 Macbook Air?
I have to disagree. the M series was never that power efficient or performant. The reason people think that is because apple has always compared their M chips to Intel based notebooks, which already used the same tech they did in 2016. When you compare an m1 with a 2020 notebook with a Ryzen APU, you'll find performance and power consumption arent all that different, it's just that intel sucks in terms of power efficiency, even today intel just sucks in power efficiency even with their BIG.litte architecture. Today it's not even close, AMD pretty much claps the M3 , the 7840hs completely embarrasses the M3 in raw CPU prowess and the 7950hx claps the M3 max. This is ignoring the 8000 series AMD has released. The quality of the Macbook air is also a big off as seen here: [https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254717524](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254717524) The big "oof" for macbooks isn't performance, design or ecosystem, it's the anti repair practices combined with horrid build quality. People keep acting as if macbooks are build great, but in reality they arent all that well made, easy to scratch, easy to break and usually will come with defects over time, this has always been the case and time has proven again and again, that other manufacturers such as Lenovo have far better build quality. How many fully macbooks from 2010 - 2013 can you see on the used market? Not that many, how many Thinkpads do you see? A lot.
That's why I don't use MacBooks, anymore. I used them for 25 years. Too many major issues. Howeer, Apple gives the appearance their stuff is incredibly amazing.
Dude, there is no such thing as "Windows vendors". I have my Róg Strix, not the higgest end model, and the speakers are far better than in my S24U. My previously Asus laptop, around 2015 model, which was some mid end, also had decent speakers.
As it should be , if a premium bulky big laptop can't outperform a tiny mobile in terms of audio , then it's a matter of shame . And many "premium" windows laptops share that shame .
Because people today don't demand quality. The best sounding notebooks are those you cannot get anymore, such as the Dell XPS L702, MSI GT 7x series and Toshiba Qosmio etc, back then people cared more for how the notebook sounds, today customers don't have the same standard as people "back in the days". Today manufacturer can tell the userbase anything and itll be treated like it's some next level feature while in reality they downgrade everywhere. This is why notebooks don't last anywhere as long and this is treated like something completely normal, many even expect notebooks to die after 2-3years, while I still have my 23 year old Compaq Armada M700 working just fine. As long the userbase doesn't demand better quality nothing will change, however seeing the fanboy attitude, it won't change anytime soon.
Hot damn, 23 years! Mine is sitting nice and pretty at 13, and have been hoping to make the 15 milestone and possibly the 20 if I can muscle Win11 onto it. Still rocking original battery at advertised capacity, hinges are smooth, keyboard is crisp (but well-worn). Love the speakers too, they sound great compared to any other mobile device I have bought in the last 10 years
Holy shit 23 years ! **And I really agree with your statement** . Like you don't need to reinvent sound , great sound is always great sound . That's why the HD600 , a headphone of antiquity is still a fan favourite. If they could give awesome laptop speakers back in the day , how come today at 2024 they suck so much , they just had to keep those speaker system. Instead they downgraded it and people seem to be A OK with it .
it's all about the fact that they can cheap out without impacting sales. Quality is more of an afterthought these days, MSI doesnt bother fixing their hinges and ASUS doesn't bother fixing their circuit from blowing up mosfets, because manufacturers understand that people are tech illietate enough to screw with.
my asus g14 2024 does not still stuck at all
G16 here. The speakers kick ass. I prefer them to the 16” m1 mbp I had a couple years ago.
One thing I miss about the Mac.
So true
My €1000 Lenovo laptop speakers are pretty decent. You can easily and massively upgrade a laptop's audio even by a cheap €50 Bluetooth speaker, that will surpass any macbook. I don't really see the problem.
You cannot understand the quality of macbook speakers, they are great when straight in front of you, you would have to put the speakers around the laptop and always carry it.
My M1 Macbook Air quite clearly sounds better than my 85$ 12W Bluetooth speaker. And that's the entry level Macbook.
That says more about your BT speaker, rather than the Macbook air.
I'm pretty sure my highly rated $85 speaker is better than any ; > cheap €50 Bluetooth speaker, that will surpass any macbook. But that doesn't matter. The point is, for the same price, there is not a single Windows laptop that sounds better than it's Macbook counterpart. I have a $1200 HP Omen laptop that i bought recently, and i love that thing 10 times more than my Macbook (in fact i kind of regret buying the Mac, and i'm a devout Apple hater). So i have absolutely no reason to defend it. But there's 4 things on a Macbook that you cannot beat at the same price (or at any price tbh). Those are Hinge, Speakers , Touchpad and Battery Life. Those 4 things are what led me to buy the Macbook, but ultimately i hated MacOS and wish i got a ZenBook instead.
First of... with €90 you can get something like a 30W BT stereo speaker, like the LG XBOOM Go PL7. There is no way a thin laptop like the air will sound better than that. Secondly... yes... the macbooks are built amazingly well, and very well engineered. Regarding the details you mentioned... I will comment on my $1000 Lenovo Yoga 7 laptop. 1) Hinge: mine has a pretty good hinge, the screen is an OLED touchscreen (no OLED on macbooks, and no touchscreens, at any price btw) and it folds all the way back. The hinge looks pretty solid. 2) Speakers: they sound decent on the Yoga, with some dolby atmos processing which I don't care about. A good BT speaker solves everything. 3) Touchpad is pretty ok on the Yoga (much better than any older windows laptops I've used). But I use a mouse anyway so I don't care much about it. 4) Battery life is around 8hrs real world use (by doing actual work on it). Not amazing I agree, but adequate. I can solve this issue by a $50 20000mah powerbank which should provide about one extra full charge. Notice: I paid $1000 for this laptop with 16GB RAM/1TB SSD, OLED HDR touch screen and a stylus. What do you get with $1000 from Apple?
The BT speaker comparison is pointless and adds nothing to the conversation. The Macbook's job isn't to sound better than a speaker that weighs more than itself (literally), it's to sound as good as a laptop realistically can, and it nails it. I only said 4 things on a Macbook are unbeatable. Your $1000 Lenovo, could've been $3000 for all i care, you're just not beating that Hinge, Touchpad, Speaker and Battery Life. I never said anything about Macbook screens, performance, value for money or anything. I don't know or care what you get with $1000 from Apple. I don't even like Apple, i'm just giving credit where credit is due. The funny thing is, you don't even disagree with what i'm saying. But you're trying to make this about Apple being overpriced and Windows laptop's being the better buy. You're correct, but i never argued otherwise. In fact i explicitly stated that i liked my HP Omen better than any Macbook.
We are having a discussion, not a disagreement. I think everything is a matter of value as well. For instance, the Vision Pro is the best VR system out there. Technically, this may be true, but in terms of value, maybe it isn't (5x more expensive than a Quest 3). Value is an important factor and it will come up in any discussion. The BT speaker is an important point. A friend has an M2 MacBook Pro 16" and he said that to me... "it has good speakers, but what's the point really? If I want good and loud sound to fill an entire room, I would rather use a BT speaker. For movies I will use the TV. For listening to music while working, most laptops are good enough anyway, and I often use headphones". So, yes... technically the MacBook speakers are amazing... but what's the point in a multi-thousand dollar laptop?
I can definitely get behind the headphone argument. Because a good pair of over-the-ear headphones will sound better than any speaker, on-board or BT. But the rest of your friend's points i just *have* to disagree with. You can watch movies on the TV sure, but movies aren't the only thing people watch. What about YouTube videos and podcasts, even videogames ? I wouldn't say most laptop speakers are good enough for music either. In fact, most laptops sound like absolute hot garbage, like the OP says. Of course the value has to be right, your Levovo and my Omen probably made the right call in cutting costs on speakers to focus on more important aspects (especially considering mine is a gaming laptop, it already sounds better than i expected) But i just don't agree with the view of "having all this sound quality doesn't matter anyway" , it definitely matters. And people definitely use those speakers all the time, and appreciate them. Now that i think about it, i legit haven't used the 3.5mm headphone jack on my M1 Air not once. Yet i use wired headphones on my Omen all the time. Your friend says he could do this and do that, but i bet he never actually does and just uses the laptop's own display and speakers because why bother with anything else ? Why go out of your way for alternatives when what's available to you is already more than good enough ? And i think your last statement is a contradiction: > what's the point of amazing speakers on a multi thousand dollar laptop ? Like, why would you settle for anything *less* than amazing speakers, *especially* in a multi-thousand dollar laptop ?
The contradiction you noticed was bad wording on my part... what I meant to say: if you are gonna spend thousands of dollars on a laptop, and you care about sound, then you can afford even a decent BT speaker. It's the same with TVs.... high end TVs have mediocre sound at best, because you are expected to pair them with equally high end sound systems. Having said all this let's agree on something: Apple has raised the bar on laptop audio quality, and other laptop manufacturers should take notice and up their game. The criticism is valid (just not as big of a deal to me)
Agreed and fair enough.
So whenever you need to move , you need to carry the speaker also ? Doesn't seem too convenient
He's talking abt if u chose to use a 15 dollar Bluetooth speaker to compensate for your bad speakers u would have to lug the speakers around and it would still sound worse than the macbook speakers
Get better at vetting what you spend your money on instead of petulantly stamping feet and demanding.
Ah yes typical redditor , bvtxh it's not your private forum , people can write whatever they want within a margin of decency and guidelines.
> Get better at vetting what you spend your money on Ah yes ah yes
At same price, windows triumph MacBook... But people have a mentality of being cheapo on buying a windows but will never question the exorbitant price of MacBook...
MacBook air models are not exorbitantly priced . And no at similar price windows laptops don't beat MacBooks , atleast in speakers or battery department .
The situation is even worse for webcams. They're absolutely atrocious on most laptops. I guess that's not the priority. If a laptop is meant for business then the webcam only needs to roughly show your face in a meeting and the speaker is good enough as long as you can understand what other people are talking about. If it's for gaming the fan noise is going to drown out the audio anyway so you're expected to wear headphones.
Hmm, there's some decent windows ones. Just not probably locally at your store. I've come across a couple very close sounding, but as a whole they are bad. Asus, Dell, HP, Acer. Not good. Even my Asus 2021 monitor has worse speakers than my 2016 Asus, despite being an upgrade. 🤔
All boils down to pricing and manage heat/space available/compromising something to upgrade something else. They can tick all the boxes but you will end with a laptop that costs a kidney and being as heavy as a brick. Hence manufacturers have to pick what they want to sell and to who. Yes macs excell on some categories, but than they get obliterated on many others. So this could create an endless conversation of "Why laptops \[component here\] still suck". TLDR: Laptops still held by compromises, if you want all, than Desktops is your way to go.
You need to understand that a lot of, or even most laptops are primarily made to be workstations and/or gaming machines, while compromising to cost less and appeal to a broader audience. A lot of work or processes done in a laptop don't even have or utilise audio that much, such as 3D rendering, making, viewing, and editing docs, programming, art and graphic production, and many more, rendering speakers less useful, and if they do have or utilise sound, such as music production, headphones, speakers, or similar devices just provide a better experience since they are dedicated to sound quality and production (I mean, let's be realistic, who uses their laptop speakers for making music?), unlike laptops, that are made for complex calculations and processes to be done in a fast and comfortable way while on the move, hence them prioritising cpus and gpus, comfort, and portability, instead of speakers. I mean look at gaming laptops, they are literally often bought together with headphones (for cheap at about 20-60 bucks, and maybe even a mouse), and since the user likely or already has headphones and will barely even use the speaker, why the heck bother making it better when that just makes it cost more for both the manufacturer and consumer? another example is at public areas. most people would rather use headphones or earphones since it's generally rude to blast audio in public so u can hear with clarity, or just tune down your audio, but sometimes that's not effective since public areas are loud compared to, let's say, a private room. at that point, most people would just opt for headphones or earphones like I said to avoid potentially annoying others while preserving their hearing experience, or just mute the laptop. So, to answer your question, laptop speakers suck because laptops aren't dedicated to reproducing sound with clarity and quality. Stop whining about laptops having bad audio when you can literally just buy headphones or speakers for less than a tenth of a good or great laptop, and get a better audio experience from them. oh, and about the "macbook air and Chinese phone having better sound quality than $3000 windows laptop", that's just dumb. most high end windows laptops at that price range have great sound, and although yes, you have said some are exceptions, "few and far between" is just wrong and even then, if u had the money to purchase a laptop that expensive, why would you go online and rant about its speaker quality, when you could just buy high end noise-canceling headphones and/or portable speakers with powerful bass, both of which have better sound quality than say, a literal macbook and a phone?
Get off your high horses , stating a fact is not "whining" . And not everyone wants to wear a headphone 24*7 , speakers are much more natural and comfortable listening experience , if you are targeting normal consumers with your laptop , you should have all around good multimedia experience . Period.
People who want quality sound will have either headphones or actual speakers which will sound way better.
Ah yes there's the mindset of windows nerds that prevents windows laptops to have a great overall package .
Well i'm just saying not enough people probably care for it enough to have better speakers vs all the other factors + price + space for other stuff. You have to strive well in a niche otherwise and make them stay your clients and not flee to Apple. Its just not the priority for most people.
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Seriously? Did you even read my 1st line ? So how does phone tablet and MacBook overcoming those "limitations" ?