Performance of the M1 is indeed impressive, and I don't mean to imply that these CPUs all perform relatively the same. But I have a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro with an i5, and it does everything I need a laptop to do: take notes, browse the web, and do some light programming and gaming (e.g. Minecraft at 60 FPS). It also runs x86 programs directly rather than through an emulation layer (though this will become less and less of a problem as time goes on).