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00:00Which is the better laptop? The new MacBook Pro 13 with M1 chip or the Dell
00:05XPS 13 with the latest 11th gen Intel chips? Hey guys I'm Tom the Tech Chap and
00:10so many of you have asked me to make this video especially after I posted my
00:14big XPS 13 vs 15 vs 17 video the other day. I read all your comments and they
00:19were like yeah that's great but who cares now that we've got M1 powered
00:24MacBooks. Well let's put them to the test and this is the base model of the new
00:28MacBook Pro 13 with the M1, 8 core CPU, 8 core GPU, 8 gigs of RAM, their unified
00:33memory and also 256 gigs of storage and it'll cost you a cool £1,299
00:39which is the same in dollars. Nice and simple. Then we've got the new Dell
00:43XPS 13. This is the 9310 model which comes with Intel's latest Tiger Lake
00:4811th gen processors which of course also come with their much faster integrated
00:54Xe graphics along with 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gigs of storage and it will cost you a
00:58little bit more £1,650. However this actually starts at a
01:03thousand dollars which puts it right up against the new MacBook Air although if
01:06you want the i5 with Xe then you have to pay $1,100 which bizarrely here in the
01:11UK is £1,400 and then you've got the choice between full HD and ultra HD
01:16options of the Dell. Basically there's about a million combinations, different
01:21specs, prices and even regional differences so value for money may vary
01:25but I have as I say gone with a slightly more powerful model here which does put
01:29it at a £350 premium over the MacBook Pro 13 but perhaps the more powerful i7
01:35and also the extra RAM will help it keep up with the M1 chip. But to start with
01:41I'm sure you'll agree side-by-side in terms of design the XPS 13 really does
01:47feel next-gen. Both Apple and Dell have taken the exact same chassis as the
01:51previous model and just dropped in some newer hardware inside but the XPS is a
01:56good deal thinner, lighter, it has razor-thin bezels and is overall a much
02:00more compact and portable machine. Build quality is top-notch on both though with
02:05aluminium chassis's being able to open them with one finger although unlike the
02:10ultra HD model this full HD version of the XPS does have a slightly cheaper
02:15looking plastic bezel unlike the glossy flush finish we have on the albeit
02:19chunkier bezels on the MacBook. Let's bring up a bit of tech chap and now what
02:23important difference between these two are the screens. As I mentioned the Dell
02:27comes in two flavors full HD plus and ultra HD plus whereas the MacBook Pro
02:32just goes for a kind of a happy middle ground with a quad HD resolution but as
02:36you can see they both do have a 16 by 10 aspect ratio so you just have a little
02:41bit more room at the top and bottom of the screen which I think makes a big
02:44difference especially in these smaller 13-inch laptops so yeah big fan of the
02:4816 by 10 on both of these. Now importantly if you go for the 1080p
02:52version of the Dell like I have here it's a little bit cheaper and you also
02:55get nearly double the battery life of the 4k model which is a pretty big deal.
03:00The downsides well it's obviously nowhere near as sharp as 4k it's not
03:04quite as color accurate and it's also not a touchscreen but as I say I think
03:08Apple strikes a good balance between sharpness of the screen and also the
03:11battery life. Another big difference between the two as you can probably see
03:16is the quality of the webcam this is the Dell this is the MacBook and well even
03:21just looking the screen side-by-side it's a night and day difference it
03:24really is so if you know web calls video conferencing all that malarkey is
03:28important to you which I think in 2020 it is for most of us the MacBook is
03:32definitely the winner. Okay I've made you guys wait long enough let's get to the
03:36good stuff and firstly battery life which one lasts longer and starting with
03:41YouTube in their respective most optimized browsers so Safari on the Mac
03:44and Edge on the XPS after one hour the XPS is down to 86% battery versus 92% on
03:51the MacBook then after another full hour of a zoom call we're down to 68% on the
03:55XPS but then switching to gaming and I fired up a bit of Shadow of the Tomb
03:59Raider and we're looking at 29 and 44% on the XPS and Mac respectively and
04:04finally going through an hour of using office apps the XPS drops to just 7%
04:09with a whopping 30% left on the MacBook that's pretty crazy I mean this is the
04:13full HD version of the XPS which lasts as I say about twice as long as the 4k
04:18model but it still can't keep up with the m1 powered MacBook Pro and so in
04:22terms of pure online video playback we're looking at 9 hours on the Dell and
04:2612 hours on the MacBook so a pretty convincing win for team Apple in terms
04:31of battery life but what about performance now as I mentioned this is
04:34the 350 pound more expensive Dell with the more powerful i7 with double the
04:38RAM of the MacBook so this does have a bit of an advantage going in and
04:42kicking off with Cinebench R23 in single core the Mac is just 7% faster but a
04:48whopping 63% faster in multi-core moving on to Geekbench 5 or 5.3 to be exact
04:55which now offers both a specific Intel and Apple architecture CPU test the Mac
04:59is 13% faster in single core and 45% faster in multi-core and finally in
05:05Geekbench's OpenCL graphics test the Mac again takes the win with a 6% lead
05:10over the Dell so the MacBook is faster across the board although the huge
05:14multi-core boosts aren't entirely surprising given the fact that we have
05:18an 8 core CPU in here versus a quad core in the Dell XPS with the Intel chip but
05:23you could argue that's kind of academic because these are the chips that are in
05:27these laptops you know these are competitively priced they are very much
05:30on the same league so does it matter what they're powered by or how it's
05:34powered the fact is this at least in those tests is significantly more
05:38powerful but those are just synthetic benchmarks what about real-world use
05:42well let's start with a few games which admittedly isn't the Mac strong suit
05:46we're still pretty limited by the range of games or run on Mac OS but in Shadow
05:50of the Tomb Raider at full HD with high settings which is quite ambitious to be
05:54fair the MacBook averaged 24 FPS versus 20 on the Dell interestingly though the
06:00results are reversed in Total War three kingdoms where the Mac scores a 19 FPS
06:04average to the Dells 25 so for the tiebreaker we have fortnight again full
06:10HD high settings and this is where the Mac really pulls ahead 42 FPS versus 27
06:16on the XPS which was also much more inconsistent as I played with lows of
06:20just 7 FPS remember though all these games are running through Apple's Rosetta
06:242 emulation on the Mac you can see in the activity monitor unlike most apps
06:29running is still using the Intel architecture so even though the Dell won
06:33in Total War it's just pretty amazing how well the emulator software runs on
06:37the Mac considering in most cases it's a fair bit faster than the native app on
06:42the Windows machine but there is a but because while generally performance on
06:46the Mac is very impressive it can be a little inconsistent I tried CS go for
06:51instance on Steam and it wouldn't even load properly on the Mac apparently the
06:54latest Big Sur beta will fix it in fact some reddit users have put together
06:59really helpful spreadsheet of how well games work on the M1 some are great some
07:04not so great now this will only get better over time as developers create
07:08universal versions of their games which are properly optimized for Apple Silicon
07:11but the truth is you could cherry-pick the games you benchmark to then you know
07:15favor either the Mac or the Dell I think there's just too many variations so for
07:19me when it comes to gaming at least the bottom line is that the Xe graphics in
07:23here are a massive step up over the previous Intel UHD chips and most
07:28importantly we have a much much bigger library of games available on Windows so
07:32well neither of these are gaming laptops per se I think the Dell is the better
07:36choice but what about video editing I think this is a more likely use of these
07:41laptops in the real world well I loaded up the same 10-minute 4k 30
07:45timeline in Premiere Pro DaVinci Resolve Studio 17 the latest beta version on my
07:50ad and also Final Cut Pro and the results are fascinating we're looking at
07:5525 and 31 minutes for an export on the XPS and Mac respectively in DaVinci
08:00Resolve Studio 17 beta the MacBook completes the render in half the time of
08:05the XPS and finally in Final Cut well it's a one-horse race since you just
08:09can't run it on Windows it's gonna be so interesting to see the performance
08:13changes when the Adobe suite finally gets updated on the M1 so I'll
08:17definitely revisit that when that happens which is probably next year
08:20they're promising Lightroom in December then maybe Photoshop early next year but
08:25for now if you're working in Premiere Pro then the Dell is the best choice but
08:29for DaVinci and Final Cut users definitely go with a Mac now I hope I'm
08:33not boring you guys all to death with these numbers I just realized I've opened
08:37that backwards these numbers and tables but I think it's pretty fascinating just
08:40how different these two laptops are and while I've been running my tests along
08:44the way I have noticed a couple of extra advantages for the Mac firstly
08:48even though this does have a fan unlike the MacBook Air it's consistently much
08:53quieter and also much cooler than the Dell in fact while playing fortnight the
08:57surface of the Dell reached a pretty toasty 45 degrees Celsius with the fans
09:01noticeably whirring away on the Mac it was near enough silent and measured just
09:0534 degrees Celsius and of course you do also have the option to install some
09:09iPhone and iPad apps on the Mac thanks to the M1 and Big Sur it doesn't seem
09:14to have many of the popular ones just yet but this could be a big selling
09:17point so however you feel about Apple you have to agree the M1 their first
09:22chip in a laptop which is still having to emulate most programs through Rosetta
09:26is proper revolutionary stuff and remarkably versus the 11th gen i7 on
09:32the XPS it's near enough 30% faster on average and on top of that it also lasts
09:37about 25% longer while also being much quieter much cooler and actually
09:42compared to this higher spec version of the Dell actually cheaper but that's not
09:47to say the Dell isn't worth buying in fact the biggest deciding factor is
09:50probably the OS do you prefer Mac OS or Windows 10 and also if battery isn't
09:55that important to you then the 4k touchscreen is a useful option to have
09:59it's also more portable the iO is a little bit better with micro SD ports
10:03and also Thunderbolt 4 where you can actually output this to more than one
10:07external screen the Mac for some reason is limited to one external display
10:11although I think you can get around that with a display port split up thing
10:16but I think more importantly is that most models of the XPS 13 get 512 gigs
10:20of storage which is double that of the Mac having said that in favor of the
10:25Apple aside from everything we've talked about so far it's subjective but I do
10:29prefer the keyboard and the trackpad on this especially with the slick gesture
10:33support in Mac OS the speakers are also a good deal better than the Dell and of
10:37course that webcam is a lot better on the Mac it's like a night and day
10:41difference but I would definitely recommend paying the extra for 16 gigs
10:44of RAM because a couple of times when I was in Premiere Pro and also affinity
10:48designer have a pop-up saying that I've run out of memory and I've had to close
10:52the app I think that's my biggest complaint about this so far definitely
10:55go for 16 don't forget though that you can still buy Intel MacBook Pros the
11:00four-port model with 10th Gen i5 and i7 chips and frustratingly these are the
11:05ones you can spec up to 32 gigs of RAM and also double the storage up to 4
11:09terabytes now as for the question of should you go with the MacBook Pro or
11:15is what I made earlier the new MacBook Air also powered by the m1 well I think
11:20that is a story for another time maybe even tomorrow I'm actually working on
11:24that already I've got a few more tests to do so for this video between the
11:29MacBook and the Dell if I was going to buy one I would go with the MacBook
11:33although I do love this as well but this is being held back by Intel perhaps if
11:38you saw an AMD version of it then that would make these a lot more tempting but
11:42what do you think which one would you go for and why let me know in the comments
11:46below thank you so much for watching guys if you did enjoy this video and
11:49want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe
11:51button below and I'll catch you next time right here on the tech chap
12:03you