Microsoft is using the new Snapdragon X Elite silicon in its latest Surface laptop (and 2-in-1) hardware. Now PhoneBuff is out with a battery test to see how the M3 Pro MacBook Pro performs against the Surface 7.
The MacBook Pro vs Surface 7 isn’t quite an apples-to-apples comparison but PhoneBuff picked the two as they’re both $2,000 laptops from each company with many of the same features.
Those include 14-inch displays with 120Hz refresh rates, similar form factor, and the latest high-end silicon from Apple and Qualcomm.
But there are a few differences that make the battery test nuanced. The MacBook Pro features a higher resolution display at 3024 x 1963 vs the Surface 7’s 2404 x 1536. And the Apple laptop has a 70 Wh battery while the Surface has a 54 Wh one. The MacBook Pro also has a 6-speaker sound system while the Surface has stereo speakers.
Top comment by Jason Stover
These aren't the best models to compare. It should be the MacBook air 13" M3 16gb RAM and 512gb SSD for $1499 vs the surface pro x elite 13" 16gb RAM with 512gb SSD for $1350.
In fact that's the very model Microsoft was targeting.
This has now similar resolution and power requirements.
I think everybody has already seen all the tests and the surface did better in battery. Mac did better with single core speeds, surface did better with multi core speeds and gaming almost shouldn't be considered for either of them, as neither is are options for anyone serious about gaming. If they are, they'd be using either a console or PC with a decent dedicated video card. As it currently stands, that's where gaming is still at.
The M3 Pro MacBook Pro led the Surface 7 through the test with more battery life until the gaming portion. However, another difference is that the M3 Pro ran the Tomb Raider benchmark at 2-3x the frame rate of the Surface laptop.
That ended up killing the MacBook Pro battery 7 minutes before the Surface 7 died.
In the end, PhoneBuff notes that a 7-minute difference is within the margin of error and if the MacBook Pro hadn’t run such high frame rates, it would have outlasted the Surface laptop by over 30 minutes.
But on the flip side, the Surface 7 did impressively well with a smaller 54 Wh battery. Check out the full test below:
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