The impressive thing about the M1 isn't just raw performance but performance / watt. There are obviously faster high-end many-core x86 chips, but the power use difference is wider than the speed difference. The M1 destroys mid-range Intel and AMD offerings at a fraction of the power consumption.
Check out this madness:
https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
The MacBook Air trounces the top-end Mac Pro on single core performance. No this is not the top-end Intel you can get, nor is it as fast as AMD, but it's a MacBook Air and consumes a small fraction of the power.
Again... the power efficiency is the thing that really blows me away. 5nm accounts for only some of that.
On multi-core the same MacBook Air is just below recent Mac Pro models on total computational throughput. To beat the MacBook Air you have to go up to newer-generation Xeon chips with 8 full-speed cores. The Xeon is branded as a server chip and uses as much power as probably eight to ten M1s.
It's just insane. If Apple puts, say, 16 full-speed core in one of these chips it's absolutely over for all other vendors. Speculation is that the 16" Pro will end up getting 8 performance cores and 4 low-power cores. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up beating the top-end Intel Mac Pro.
I'm not sure that they can easily add more cores to the M1. If they can, that would also raise the TDP. And adding more cores does not increase performance linearly, even if the architecture is made for it.
Also keep in mind that comparing it to 14nm Intel processors with an architecture from a decade ago is a fair comparison when comparing M1 vs prior Apple products, but is not a fair comparison when comparing it against what x86 can do in general. You would need a modern x86 processor targeting the same watt usage to have a completely valid comparison. As discussed in the thread above.
So yeah, it's a great processor for its target. And it likely will also be a very strong processor when scaled up - it bodes well for the future of ARM. But don't extrapolate the performance too linearly, that is likely to be misleading.
I expected the M1 to be like a much lower power and maybe a bit faster version of this chip, and was really blown away by it being far beyond that.
Heck, he might have used an old dual core with an HDD from all we know. Of course the new M1 models would make a big difference then. So would all other modern laptops.
But in that context of x86 and ARM Zen3 is absolutely the only sound comparison.
I would have some sympathy with that - but that's not the same as discounting the parent's perspective because Apple somehow weren't using "modern processors" previously - because that simply isn't true.
And I still think it's very valid to not forget how old hardware used for subjective comparisons will be. E.g. the old Macbook air sold very well all that time.
It's likely the M1 is better in that category, but it does not look like a huge difference if you factor in the higher performance you get from the Ryzen 9 5980HS.
Multi core better but still lower but not too surprised as it's got 8 large cores vs big.LITTLE 4/4 for M1 - not clear when those cores will start throttling down.
Suspect single core performance is what drives apparent responsiveness so I'd say not too surprising that the M1 gets rave reviews from users.