58% faster than a MacBook Air: Microsoft's marketing makes Surface Pro look better than it is
Apple's M-series ARM processors have built a reputation for fast performance at low power consumption over the last few years, but now Microsoft's marketing is striking back. Surface devices based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite are 58% faster than the MacBook Air, at least according to the video embedded below.
A glance at the fine print reveals that Microsoft's marketing isn't exactly comparing apples to apples. That's because Microsoft is using the older MacBook Air with the Apple M3 as a reference, instead of the latest MacBook Air M4 (from $849 on Amazon). As our benchmark results show, the Microsoft Surface Pro OLED with Snapdragon X Elite is indeed around 49% faster in the Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core benchmark than the MacBook Air M3. However, the performance is almost on par with the Apple M4, even though the MacBook Air doesn’t have a fan, has two fewer CPU cores and draws less power.
In GPU benchmarks, the Apple M4 performs far better than the Snapdragon X Elite. Apple also offers more powerful laptops based on the Apple M4 Pro and Apple M4 Max for customers who need even better performance, whereas Microsoft doesn’t offer a device with a faster Snapdragon chipset. Microsoft’s advertisement campaign once again shows that such marketing claims should always be taken with a grain of salt, since manufacturers usually try to skew the playing field in their advantage.
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