Computer power relative to what? A desktop class super computer?

This has been discussed before: similarly configured PC laptops cost just as much or more.

> This has been discussed before: similarly configured PC laptops cost just as much or more.

What?

* Razer Blade 14" [http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade]

* Alienware 13" [http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/alienware-13-l...]

* Alienware 15" [http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/alienware-15-l...]

* Dell DE workstation [http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...] [1]

So basically every other power machine in that price range has better specifications for less or equal pricing (including premium niche brands like Razer)

[1] These come with Ubuntu preinstalled if you want too!

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Edit: Just for grins I thought I would break down the comparison of the Macbook Pro 13" against the Razer Blade.

Stats: MBP 13 (max configured), Razer Blade

Price: $2,499, $2,299

CPU: i7 DUAL core, i7 QUAD core

GPU: Intel Iris (integrated), Nvidia GTX 1060

RAM: 16 GB LPDDR3, 16 GB DDR4

Disk: 512 GB PCIE SSD, 512 GB PCIE SSD

Display: Retina (2560 x 1600), QHD w/ Touch (3200 x 1800)

Basically, the Razer Blade destroys the performance of the MBP for $200 LESS.

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Edit 2: The price discrepancies get even worse when talking about the 15" laptop...just saying.

Take any of your 15" options and try to satisfy the following requirements:

* Quad core CPU

* >= 16 GB RAM

* >= 1 TB SSD

* Retina display with resolution at least as good as the MacBook 15"

* Battery life at least as good as the MacBook 15"

* Weight at least as good as the MacBook 15"

With those requirements---if you can meet them at all, which most can't---the price gap shrinks substantially.

The Razer Blade, for example, is $2700 for the QHD+/1TB option, and it's not obvious if it can meet the last two requirements.

The Alienware in a similar configuration is $2600 depending on the graphics card but the best screen option is 1080p and again, not obvious if battery is good and the weight is just a joke. No amount of money is going to get me to carry a > 7 pound laptop.

And that's without going into more subtle issues like build quality, track pad quality, etc.

Don't forget the speed difference between the MBP SSD and a normal SATA SSD. The MBP uses NVMe and super-fast flash chips.

That one repair dude with the 4+ hour YouTube videos that's always bashing Apple did a Razer Blade/MBP comparison video and the MBP disk transfer speeds blew the Razer out of the water.

I agree the MBP is super ridiculously expensive, but no one for a second should think there's an alternative in any price bracket.

edit:

Razer Blaze SSD test: https://youtu.be/bOXxyeKWd80?t=2254

MBP SSD test: https://youtu.be/bOXxyeKWd80?t=2669

I'm usually on the apple-defending side of this discusion, but: "MBP wins in disk speed and battery" doesn't match "there is no alternative in any price bracket".

For the same price, other laptops seem to offer more power, in exchange for less battery and a few other niceties.

I'm writing this from a MBP (magsafe-and-escape-key mbp) that I love. To me, it makes no sense to say "Macbooks are just like these windows pcs but way more expensive", but neither does saying "there is no alternative to a MBP".

A lot of laptops are competing. Some of them are premium, expensive machines, with high price tags and nice features and quality. The macbook is one of them, with its own set of unique advantages, but also compromises. Some people think they are the best. That's it.

> "MBP wins in disk speed and battery" doesn't match "there is no alternative in any price bracket"

Disk speed, battery, build quality, and screen resolution seem to be the big ones. There don't seem to be any alternatives with the same set of features. All of the machines brought up as an "alternative" are missing one or more of those which means they aren't really an alternative.

I do agree that you're also signing up for a set of compromises when you buy a MBP, but AFAIK there's not an "equivalent" machine elsewhere that I can find, which to me seems a bit strange.

I hate analogies, especially car ones, but for this situation it really does seem to fit. There are three big German car makers. BMW, Audi, and Mercedes each have "equivalent" sets of cars. You can pick and choose between them and while there are might be small features that one offers over the others there are definitely "alternatives".

With the MBP it feels like there's only one, and when looking for an alternative everyone's suggesting a Toyota Camry. Yes, it will get the job done but it's not really the same class of thing.

Last I checked, your last three conditions (display, battery, weight) are simply impossible to satisfy simultaneously in any of the available 15" Windows laptops, regardless of price. You mostly get to choose between 1080p with good battery life, and QHD+, which is admittedly a much higher resolution than the MBP has, accompanied with much worse battery life (Apple advertises 10 hours with light usage). Or, of course, you can get a thick and heavy laptop with everything. None of those options are to my liking, so I'd love to learn about anything that can fit the bill...

Hey I think I got the laptop you are looking for:

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-la...

Also regarding

> Apple advertises 10 hours with light usage

I heard a lot of users were reporting less:

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/03/macbook-pro-battery-life...

I've been seeing about 12 hours of battery life with my 13" tbmbp, though I've switched to safari to make that happen.

It really depends what you're doing. I have a cpu meter running all the time and often see electron based apps (spotify, slack, atom) idle on 5-10% cpu usage for no reason. Just having one of those programs will eviscerate your battery life - its impossible to get 10 hours if the CPU isn't asleep most of the time.

That said, in fairness Atom seems to be getting better with each release. But spotify seems to keep getting worse. I've caught it pegging an entire core a couple of times in the last few weeks - just sitting on 100% cpu usage despite having no music playing. I think it was rendering an animated ad in the background or something, despite my paid account. Its really no wonder people don't get 10 hours battery life out of their machines. This shit is the new flash.

According to reviews, the XPS 15 lasts about five and a half hours on battery with the 4K screen. Pass.

There are two battery sizes: 56 or 97 whr. Just be careful you aren't seeing reviews on the 56.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5q37wd/xps_15_9560_te...

Anecdotally a redditor is claiming ~7 hours?

Dell's XPS 15 comes closest to that, although perhaps doesn't have quite the same battery life, it does have: Quad Core i7, 32GB RAM, 1TB SDD, higher resolution, approximately same weight, and a more powerful GPU.

I would check into the battery life. But I did recall hearing that the new MBPs had battery issues?

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/03/macbook-pro-battery-life...

As I understand it, they fixed whatever issue was causing the battery life issues through a software patch.

I've got a XPS 15 9560 and the battery life sits around 7 to 8 hours for "basic" tasks at around 30% brightness (which is still quite bright). This is running Fedora 25, so it's probably a bit longer under Windows. Not going to reach the 10 hours of a MBP, but it's still quite good.

I can confirm that whatever battery life issues I was seeing in my 2016 15" MBP before seem to have been resolved. I was in Xcode all day Saturday without being plugged in at all and still had like 60% left at around 6:30pm Saturday after having been on my computer since like 10:30am.

MBP:

CPU: I7-6820HQ [1]

RAM: 16 GB LPDDR3 (LPDDR3 is important here...it is "low power" DDR3...so it is under clocked for batter life)

DISK: 1 TB PCIE SSD

GRAPHICS: Radeon Pro 455 w/ 2GB mem

PRICE: $3199

DELL Alienware 15:

CPU: I7-7820HK

RAM: 32 GB DDR4

DISK: 1 TB PCIE SSD + 1 TB 7200 RPM HD

GRAPHICS: GTX 1070 w/ 8GB RAM

PRICE: $2,999

Notes:

* Build quality is subjective and the MBP is certainly thin but the Alienware r3's are sturdy and well-regarded

* Battery life, the Alienware 15 r3 has a 99 whr battery that gets ~6 hr of light use [2] which I think is very comparable given the purported 3hrs of use users are reporting for Apple [3]

* Every computing stat is better than the MBP by a large margin

* Alienware is $200 cheaper (the unit I configured had a G-Sync panel on it so I would guess the price goes down or stays same for 4k IGZO version...)

* Note: Alienware rotates the models it has on it's sight and currently the IGZO 4k screen is not available but that model is out there and will probably be back soon. The review I linked to reviews the IGZO 4k configuration.

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But hey, it sounds like you aren't a compute power focused person (like me...I am irrationally so)...so check out the XPS 15 (9650):

http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/productdetails/xps-15-9560-la...

Max model is $2499 which is $700 cheaper! And, quite honestly hits every point you want...including build quality, track pad, and weight!

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[1] http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_processor/intel-core-i7-m...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDPs9o_L1GI

[3] http://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/03/macbook-pro-battery-life...

It is often the factors you cannot put that easily in numbers that make the difference. I googled for the razer blade and found pretty fast those issues:

- It seems to have around 6 hours surfing time on a battery while the macbook has 10.

- It seems to have a worse screen with bad viewing angles.

- The razor weighs 1.93 kg while the macbook weighs 1.37 kg. This makes quite a difference when you e.g. travel a lot by public transport or by aeroplane. The razor also is marginally thicker (3 mm)

- The razor has USB 3.0 while the macbook has USB 3.1

- The razor has a drastically slower SSD than the one of the macbook

- The razor has shitty speakers, while the macbook has pretty good ones.

- The keyboard seems to have some issues like the function and mediakeys not being lit.

In the end it is pretty obvious, that they are completely different machines. The razor is a mobile gaming machine optimized for gaming performance, while the macbook is a high quality general purpose laptop, optimized for performance in general.

- Battery life is going to be a trade off for performance. Things like the 4k screen as well as the DDR4 (vs LPDDR3) RAM are going to come at a cost to battery life.

- I don't know about the screen, but having owned both, viewing angles are not an issue on either. I _believe_ the MBP has better color accuracy, but the blade is no slouch with full sRGB coverage and 75% Adobe RGB [1]

- I travel a lot by airplane and weights are going to be a personal preference, but I don't notice a difference...and I take public transit for 40 minutes and have a 2 mile walk to work. But again, personal preference.

- Perhaps I am not in the know, but the Razer Blade has USB type-C (TB3) as well as USB type-A (ostensibly serving 3.0). MBP has 4 TB3 ports if I understand it correctly, so it has more, but I don't think it fair to say the Blade has none.

- I don't know if the SSD is "drastically slower"...but it might be slower. Both are PCIE nVME SSD drives, the blade specifically has a Samsung SM951. Not the top of the line, but certainly not a bargin bin drive[1]. And for the price difference, you could replace the drive in the Razer with something better if you want...whereas the MBP is soldered on[2].

- I don't know, I am not terribly impressed by any laptop speakers in 13" form factors...but personal preference. I would have to agree, owning both, that I think the MBP has a slight edge as they don't distort at Max volume and the Blade does slightly...but I wouldn't say the difference between is huge.

- Razer blade media keys are lit, the function labels are not...which is terribly annoying for me (but media _are_ lit).

> In the end it is pretty obvious, that they are completely different machines. The razor is a mobile gaming machine optimized for gaming performance, while the macbook is a high quality general purpose laptop, optimized for performance in general.

I would amend this slightly by saying the Macbook is a high quality general use laptop. Nothing about it is optimized for performance in my mind (LPDDR3, Retina not 4k, etc.). Most of the choices trade performance for battery (IMO). To be clear, this is not bad.

The Razer is definitely a mobile performance focused machine...

But the only reason I bring it up is because I was refuting the claim:

> This has been discussed before: similarly configured PC laptops cost just as much or more.

And I think it is pretty clear that for the hardware, the MBP is definitely more expensive than other options (by significant margins).

[1] http://www.mobiletechreview.com/notebooks/2016-Razer-Blade.h...

[2] http://blog.macsales.com/38719-commentary-soldered-ssd-in-to...

> Battery life is going to be a trade off for performance.

I totally agree and in my opinion this makes the laptops not really comparable. Battery life can also lead to higher cost (e.g. display with lower energy consumption). But I would also qualify the performance statement a bit. If you neither play games nor use Cuda, a graphic card is unimportant. If the applications you use are not or hardly parallel, a dual core might even perform better.

BTW: I checked again and the Samsung SSD has read speeds of 2.150 GBps and write speeds of 1.550 GBps, while the Apple one has read speeds of 3.1 GBps and 2.1 GBps write speed.

Definitely.

I think there is a lot of confusion with what I was trying to say. I wasn't claiming MBPs are "bad"...just refuting the claim that similarly spec'd laptops are about the same price. And I still believe that is a reasonable point.

Regarding the drives, I found some links quoting those figures [1]...although synthetic benchmarks in the wild seem to give different results (~2.0 GBs read and 1.3 GBps write)[2][3]. I wonder what a synthetic benchmark with those two laptops would be like side to side. It may very well be the benchmark tool in both videos is artificially limiting drive performance...which would also be reflected on the Blade who knows.

(As an aside, even at 2.0 GBps read and 1.3 GBps write that is still very fast)

[1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/01/early-benchmarks-o...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoMHYFIUp5I

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dnk1YUdV0gI

The 1060 is monster card. I don't know if it was meant to be put in such a thin and small frame. The blade 14 has issues with throttling.

Any Nvidia is better than no Nvidia (All Apple machines currently) in a world where almost all GPU based computing is CUDA not OpenCL.

Not having used any of their laptops, I can't really comment, but I HAVE sworn off Razer mice and keyboards....plastic pieces of crap...

Razr 13" sports a 1080p display, and below average battery life. Please add that to your list.

>similarly configured PC laptops cost just as much or more.

I guess that depends on what "similarly" means.

The Dell XPS 15", for the same price has a far better processor, far better video card, 32GB of RAM, 4k screen and a 1TB SSD. The Macbook has a touchbar?

http://www.dell.com/ca/p/xps-15-9560-laptop/pd?oc=nxps159560...

I'd love to see the laptops that cost more...