A bunch of QC SXE-based laptops were announced today.
Pricing is a little better than I expected. Dell's premium XPS 13 is priced the same as an MBA 13 with the same RAM and SSD ($1500). It's competitive in hardware features, at a first glance, and in some ways superior - 4 USB4 ports instead of 2, for example. However other vendors (ASUS for example) are making a stronger value play.
Performance is still not fully characterized, but so far everything is playing out as expected. It's crushed by the M3 in single-core, and competitive or superior to the M3 in multicore, sometimes by a lot, depending on the benchmark, with "embarrassingly parallel" workloads like cinebench giving it the strongest lead. Obviously the M4 changes the picture, closing up some/all of the MC gap while pulling further ahead in SC - but you can't get the M4 in a laptop yet. The M3 Pro is a different story - MC loads are even or at least much closer. BUT - and it's a big but - M3 Pro laptops cost more.
So this is all so far working out as I said it would. The big open questions are:
- how well will these work with legacy (x86) software?
- Is there anything to the rumors of systemic WoA problems causing major performance issues?
- how much better will they work on Linux?
And, of course, what if anything will Apple do in response? I still think we're going to see more M4s at WWDC. And I strongly doubt we'll see 3-P-core M4 anywhere in the laptop lineup, then or in the future.
I think QC and MS are playing their hands very well so far, given the failure of the SXE to even approach Apple in single-core performance. Pricing is reasonable, which is the single biggest thing they could have screwed up.