Pick ROG Ally Instead of MacBook Air M2： Here's Why

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

recently I've been thinking about buying

the MacBook Air M2 version because it

looks kind of nice, and I've been using

this ROG Ally as my sole and only one main

computer for about a month and a bit now.

Although it's been pretty good and it has

been able to do everything I need it to do

for my computing needs, I just feel kind

of bored with it. And at the end of the

day, you can't help but ignore the fact

that it is just a gaming console. Like,

it looks like a gaming device, it looks

like it's for kids, something thing that

children would play with for gaming. It's

not really like a serious adult

productivity device that's going to do all

this serious work that you need to do to

impress women. And also because the screen

is very small, it's about 7 inches, it's a

very small screen to use as your main

desktop computer. I have an external

keyboard and a wireless mouse and a little

stand, and I prop it up like that with my

keyboard and I'm typing away, but it

strains my eyes to be staring at this tiny

screen. So I was thinking, what if I sell

this and I bought one of the new Apple

fancy MacBook Air M2s with the midnight

blue, which looks very nice? I really like

the design. I like how square and boxy and

flat it looks compared to the previous M1

MacBook Air, which has that wedge tapered

design. I wasn't really a big fan of that,

but I had the M1 MacBook Air last year and

it was quite good. So I thought, okay,

the M2 is going to be even better, more

powerful. So I go onto the internet and I

search up the Z1 Extreme processor, which

is inside of this. This has the Z1 Extreme

chip made by AMD, and I did AMD

Ryzen Z1 Extreme versus Apple M2 chip,

and the results kind of surprised me. So I

got the results over here, I'll put them

up onto the screen as well. So first of

all, I'm just going to say it plain and

clearly The Z1 Extreme blows the M2 chip

out of the water in nearly every single

benchmark test apart from battery

performance, where the M2 obviously has

better, better, better battery

optimization, has longer battery life

because it's lower powered. So first of

all, look at this. The Z1 Extreme actually

has 25 billion transistor

counts compared to the M2's 20 billion

transistor counts. So you get an extra 5

billion transistors in the Z1 Extreme

chip. And that's because, number one,

it's a much newer modern chip, came out 11

months after the M2 chip. So it has a

4-nanometer semiconductor chip compared to

the M2's 5-nanometer. That's one whole

nanometer. And you might be thinking, oh,

it's only one nanometer, you know how

small one nanometer is? It's tiny, you

won't even notice. Well, the difference

between one nanometer is the difference of

having 5 billion extra transistors.

That's a lot of transistors. And then

looking at the benchmark tests, I kid you

not, the Z1 Extreme destroys the M2 chip

in every single benchmark test. So we've

got the geometric mean of all test results

that I got from this website. The ROG Ally

Z1 Extreme Performance came out on top

with a score of 2,115.98,

and the M2 chip MacBook Air only had

1,081. Like half the amount of what the

Z1 got. And then on these benchmark tests,

we've got a Cinebench R23 single-core.

AMD Extreme Z1 got 1676,

whereas Apple M2 got 1701. So Apple is

1% faster. And then with the multi—

multi-core test, the Z1 Extreme got 10,818

versus M2 got 8538. So Z1

Extreme was 26% better with multi-core.

Geekbench single-core, Apple M2 is only 9%

faster, whereas in the Geekbench 6

multi-core, the Z1 Extreme is 12% faster.

In Blender, the Z1 Extreme was 75% faster.

Geekbench 5 single-core, Apple M2 is +3%

faster. Multi-core, Z1 Extreme 10% faster.

PassMark CPU score, M2 2% faster. And then

the CPU multi-core, AMD Z1 Extreme 71%

faster. So it seems like the M2 is

slightly faster in terms of single-core

performance, but when it comes to

multi-core performance and graphical

fidelity performance, the Z1 Extreme is

actually much faster. And then if we look

at this other benchmark test which tests

the AMD Ryzen 7 7840U,

which is basically the same as a Z1

Extreme, it's just got a different name

because it's slightly different, you can

see it's got better single-core

performance. It's got better multi-core

performance. It's got better integrated

graphic performance by miles compared to

the M2. But it has less power efficiency

because the Apple M2 is very power

efficient, which allows Apple to boast

about having 18-hour-long battery life on

the MacBook Airs, which is understandable

because it's probably lower powered, not

really for gaming, doesn't really have

graphical fidelities, which means that the

battery is going to last longer. So the

more powerful chip's going to use more

battery. That makes sense and everything,

but what doesn't make sense is that Apple

M2 MacBook Air costs brand new—

the base model is like $1,000 for all of

that, and you're paying nearly double or

nearly 40% more than what you'd be paying

for one of these, an ROG Ally, which is

only about $600 now. It's been discounted

quite a lot. So $600 for this versus

$1,000 for the MacBook Air M2 which has

a chip that underperforms the Z1 Extreme

in almost every single benchmark apart

from battery, and maybe slightly ahead in

single-core processors. And it just makes

me not want to get the MacBook Air M2

anymore. I really wanted to get it. I was

actually thinking of going to the Apple

Store and just getting it because then I

have a bigger screen, 13-inch, because I

wouldn't get the 15-inch. 13-inch, nice

big screen, which is better than the

7-inch. Nice sleek-looking body, nice

keyboard, everything's nice packaged into

one unit compared to having this and the

external keyboard and my wireless mouse

and the separate stand. It's all a bit of

a mess with everything separated like

that, but with the MacBook Air, I could

have everything in one nice sleek design.

But it's over $1,000 and the chip doesn't

even blow this out of the water. I thought

the M2 chip would be so much better and

more powerful and be better for editing my

YouTube videos than this thing is. But it

turns out according to the benchmarks,

it's not. You're going to get worse

multi-core performance, worse graphics,

and the worst thing is it's not Windows,

so you can't really play Steam games on

it. How can I play Rainbow Six and Diablo

4 on the MacBook Air M2? You can't unless

you fiddle and hack around with it. You

can only play the Apple Arcade Store

games, which are kind of rubbish. A lot of

people would say if you're looking for a

lightweight, portable, powerful computing

machine that can fit into your backpack,

then the MacBook Air has historically been

a great choice, great value for money,

great power and performance. But with

these little handheld devices coming out

these days like Legion Go, Steam Deck,

ROG Ally, the Chinese ones like the GPD

Win Max, with these little tiny handhelds

coming out with these powerful new AMD

Ryzen 7 series chips and Z1 Extreme chips

which actually blow the M2 out of the

water, I don't see why you'd want to buy a

MacBook Air over one of these little tiny

handheld gaming devices. You might be

thinking, well, I'm not a gamer, I don't

play games, I just need a MacBook for

productivity. Well, you can do that with

the handhelds. You just plug in a keyboard

or an external monitor and it will still

be cheaper than a MacBook Air. In the

video today, this video, I said the

MacBook Air is $1,000. It's actually not,

it's like £1,000, which in dollars is like

$1,200, $1,300.

That's more than double the price of an

ROG Ally, and the Steam Deck is even

cheaper and can probably get similar

results. So yeah, I really wanted to get

the M2 MacBook Air Midnight, but because

it is double the money of the ROG Ally and

it has worse performance, or only slightly

better performance in some areas— I was

expecting the M2 chip to just completely

destroy the Z1 Extreme, but it seems like

that's not the case. I think for a more

fair comparison, you'll have to compare

the Z1 Extreme chip to the M2 Pro or the

M3 chip, which are this year's Apple's new

silicon. M2, you know, to be fair, the M2

chip is a year old, and in technology, in

the world of technology, tech that is a

year old gets outperformed by tech that

came out this year, obviously. And the

tech world moves very quickly. But the M3

and M2 Pros, they're just too expensive.

The M2 from last year is already still

over $1,000 to get the MacBook Air. The

MacBook Air— I mean, the MacBook Pro with

the M3 chip is— you're looking at nearly

$2,000 at that point. It's nearly 4 times

the cost of an ROG Ally. It's getting

ridiculously expensive. So that the

MacBook Air M2 chip would have, what,

double the price more expensive,

slightly worse chip in some areas like

graphics and multi-core. But it looks

really nice and it's got a very nice big

screen, and that are the only— those are

the only benefits. And for those reasons,

I don't feel like I can justify buying a

MacBook Air M2 chip anytime soon, and I'll

be sticking with my ROG Ally.