So let’s be clear. Until the snapdragon x elite CPU laptops have dropped, there are only a few reasons to purchase a Windows laptop over a MacBook. I won’t deny the performance benefits of the M series chips, but I will dispute the battery life as it is only a couple hours better than a gaming laptop when faced with the same workload.

Reason 0 - Battery Life

If you only care about battery life, as in you aren’t running XCode, then you may be prone to hearing battery life benefits of macbooks, but there are clearly better non-mac alternatives such as Flo Range. If I didn’t want a graphics card in my laptop, I would probably get something similar to this.

Reason 1 - Gaming

So here’s the deal. You can either purchase a macbook, a console, and pay a yearly online fee, or you can just purchase a gaming laptop that can play games with better looking graphics, and you can multitask. I don’t know about anyone else, but I often run at least a browser while gaming. When I sold my PC, I did so because my laptop had better specs so it would be prudent to connect my laptop to my monitors and use my peripherals with the laptop. Really happy about my decision.

I bought my Razer Blade 14 in 2022, but if I could’ve delayed my purchase I would’ve purchase the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14. As for which laptop specs to purchase, it’s going to be graphics card based (CPU is going to be good enough).

Reason 2 - Software

• If you need to use Linux or Windows software, such as Virtual Box, forget about M series Macbooks. You’d need to use UTM.
• When I was virtualizing Linux MInt, the experience was nothing compared to running on bare metal. Don’t use UTM unless you’d be using Virtual Box for the same task on Windows and Linux

Reason 3 - Local AIs are The Future

The future is AI and I strongly believe those of us who can adequately integrate AI into our workflows on our systems will win. That’s why having a graphics card with at leas 8GB of VRAM will prove to be well worth it. Open Source AI is only going to get better. In my opinion, beating the best free alternative is good enough for open-source to win.

Reason 4 - Wanting Macbook Graphics Performance Without MacOS

I’m not a fan of the operating system but I wanted equivalent performance when rendering. I hated the render performance of my old laptop with its integrated graphics. That’s when I realized mobile i5’s are a sham. I made sure to look for a laptop with a graphics card and I’m content it will last a long time.

Recommend Laptop Specs

For a gaming laptop, I recommend Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 or Legion Pro 5 Gen 8+ AMD. Very hard to find in stock since some people know they are extremely good value.

Graphics Card

• RTX 5060 or better (for the future)
• RTX 4070 or better
• RTX 3080-Ti
• RTX 3070-Ti
• RTX 4060: I put this at the bottom because the year before, laptops would have 3070-Ti’s and then they only sold 4070 and 4060s.

RAM

32GB recommended but 16GB is alright. I ran out of memory once but I’m a developer who was running too many programs in the background.

Storage

At least 1TB. I have a 1TB laptop and I currently have 200GB of storage remaining. This is after:

• Partitioning 100GB partitioned for Linux Mint (I am dual booting). I recommended Nobara KDE which is a Fedora based Distro focused on working out the box for dual booting.
• Dedicating 100GB for a virtual machine I was using for a single assignment in one of my classes
• I have several programming projects that take up a combined space of 20GB (better than the 50GB I thought it would be taking)
• 20GB of temporary downloads I plan on deleting soon

CPU

• AMD Ryzen 7 or better
• Do not buy Intel until their power consumption becomes better
• Intel i7 or better if there is no AMD alternative