While I’m no fan of artificial benchmarks, real-worlds tests can be a useful way to measure the relative performance of different PCs. Here’s one example that should seem familiar as it’s included in many reviews, and it represents a real-world workload: Use Handbrake to encode the 4K video Tears of Steel into a Full HD MP4 using its “Fast 1080p 30” preset.

I performed this test on four computers I have or will soon review:

Each PC is running the latest native version of Handbrake (Arm64 on the new Snapdragon X-based PCs) and each encoded the 6.3 GB 4K source video into a roughly 480 MB Full HD video. There were no other apps running at the time of each test.

The results answered some questions. And held a few surprises.

One of the things I was most curious about was whether the Snapdragon X-based PCs would throttle performance while on battery. I figured they would, as that’s how Windows typically works. And sure enough, they did.

I was also curious whether the Surface Laptop’s slightly better processor (with its dual-core boost capabilities) would out-perform the less impressive Yoga Slim. And it did, but only on battery. When they were powered, both PCs delivered nearly identical results.

The MacBook Air comparison is obvious enough. But unlike the PCs, the Air isn’t actively cooled, and so it will throttle the processor performance when needed. But this encoding test didn’t seem to phase it, and as expected, its battery and powered scores were roughly identical.

Finally, the Yoga Pro 9 is an outlier with its incredible Core Ultra 9 H-series processor and Nvidia discrete graphics, but I wanted to include it to show that big iron still has its place if all you care about is raw performance.

As for fan noise, it was as expected: The Yoga Pro 9 sounded like a jet airline for the duration of both encoding runs, the two Snapdragon X Elite-based PCs fired up their low humming fans, and the MacBook Air was completely silent.

Here are the scores.

Yoga Slim 7x 14 (Snapdragon)
Battery: 8:33
Power: 5:14

Surface Laptop (Snapdragon)
Battery: 7:20
Power: 5:11

MacBook Air (M3)
Battery: 6:23
Power: 6:44

Yoga Pro 9i (Core Ultra 9 H-series, Nvidia)
Battery: 4:08
Power: 4:06

I only did one pass of each test, so it’s unscientific, and I’m sure there’s a margin of error in there. But it’s still an interesting comparison.

And none of these are horrible. The Snapdragon X-based PCs outperformed the MacBook Air, but only on power. The Yoga Pro 9 trounced them all, of course.