Why the MacBook Air reigns supreme over this Copilot+ PC

Microsoft’s new Copilot+ PC initiative has some very good laptops in its initial run. The HP OmniBook X and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x are two solid machines with very good Windows on Arm performance and battery life.

But the MacBook Air 15 with Apple’s M3 processor is an excellent laptop in its own right and dominates in efficiency. Can the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 replace it as the best thin-and-light machine?

Specs and configurations

The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 has a very long name but only two configurations. The least expensive lists for $1,950 but is currently on sale for $1,450 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X1E-80-100 chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 16.0-inch 3K OLED display. For $2,250 — $1,750 on sale — you get the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100 and a 1TB SSD.

The MacBook Air 15 has just one chipset option, the 8-core CPU/10-core GPU M3, and with 8GB and a 256GB SSD costs $1,299. All models use the same 15.3-inch 2880 by 1864 Liquid Retina (IPS) display. Upgrading to 24GB of RAM and 2TB of storage brings a $2,499 price tag.

So, the Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 is less expensive at the high end, particularly when on sale, but it also comes with less RAM and storage. Note that Samsung also offers a 14-inch version of the Galaxy Book4, but we didn’t review that model. It’s $1,850 ($1,350 on sale) with the same configuration as the 16-inch base model.

Design

The Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 (Galaxy Book4 from here on out) is a rather mundane laptop in terms of its aesthetic. It has rather traditional lines and angles and nothing that makes it stand out — except for large bottom bezels. It comes in a Sapphire Blue color with lighter keycaps, but otherwise this is a pretty boring design. The MacBook Air 15 maintain’s Apple’s blockier look that still manages to come across as more elegant. It has four color options, including Midnight, Starlight, Space Gray, and Silver. All have black keycaps that make for an attractive contrast.

In terms of build quality, both of these are well-made machines. We’re talking about all-aluminum chassis and lids with very little if any bending or flexing. Both are extremely thin and light for larger laptops.

One area where the MacBook notches a major win is in its Magic Keyboard and Force Touch haptic touchpad. While the Magic Keyboard is relatively shallow, it enjoys crisp, precise switches. The Samsung’s keyboard feels a lot like Apple’s now-defunct keyboard with butterfly switches that felt like typing on a block of wood. And its mechanical touchpad has poor palm recognition, erratic swiping, and loud clicks.

Connectivity is the opposite. The MacBook Air 15 has just two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a MagSafe 3 connection for power. The Galaxy Book4 has the same number of Thunderbolt 4 ports but then a couple of legacy connections and a microSD card reader. It also has more up-to-date wireless.

Both laptops have 1080p webcams, and as a Copilot+ PC the Samsung has enhanced Microsoft Studio Effects software for AI-assisted background blur and other features. It’s powered by a neural processing unit (NPU) that runs at 45 tera operations per second (TOPS) compared to the 18 TOPS of the MacBook Air 15’s Neural Engine.

Performance

The Galaxy Book4 uses the second-fastest Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, the X1E-84-100. Like all Snapdragon X Elite versions, it has 12 CPU cores (eight performance and four efficient), but it runs at the fastest speed of 3.8GHz with a 4.2GHz dual-core boost. It has the Qualcomm Adreno GPU that rungs at 4.6 TFLOPS. The MacBook Air 15 has an 8-core CPU/10-core GPU, and less is published about its specifications.

In those benchmarks that run natively on Windows on Arm, the Galaxy Book4’s platform, the Qualcomm chipset is considerably faster. These results are from the 13-inch MacBook Air M3, but the 15-inch model will have similar (if maybe slightly better) performance. The Galaxy Book4 is 27% faster in Geekbench 6 multi-core and Cinebench 2024 multi-core, while being 5% and 12% slower in single-core. The M3’s GPU is 13% faster in the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark that’s native on both Window on Arm and macOS.

In productivity workflows, therefore, the Galaxy Book4 will be faster. The M3 chipset has various CPU optimizations for certain creative tasks like video encoding and decoding, which when combined with the faster GPU will make the MacBook Air 15 faster in certain creative apps like Adobe’s Premiere Pro.

Display

The MacBook Air 15 has a very good 2880 by 1864 IPS display with excellent brightness and wide and accurate colors. The Galaxy Book4 had wider colors but they weren’t quite as accurate. Of course, it had the technology’s perfect blacks for near-infinite contrast.

Either display is more than good enough for productivity users. Creators will also like both displays, although the Samsung’s accuracy — which is low for OLED — would give some users pause. The OLED panel will be the best for media consumption.

Portability

Both laptops are insanely thin and light, with both being thinner than most laptops, let alone those with larger displays. The MacBook Air 15 has a slight edge in both metrics, but nobody will notice in actual use. They’re still large machines, but they won’t weigh you down.

Battery life, though, is a different story. Although the Qualcomm chipset is aimed at being incredibly efficient, and it is when compared against Intel’s Meteor Lake chipsets, Apple Silicon remains the efficiency leader. The MacBook Air 13 with the same M3 chipset lasted for 19.5 hours in both our web browsing and video looping benchmarks. The Galaxy Book4 lasted for 12.5 hours and 14.5 hours, which are better than most Windows laptops but well behind the MacBook Air 15 that might last slightly longer than its 13-inch counterpart.

If multi-day battery life is important to you, then the MacBook Air 15 is the clear winner.

The MacBook Air 15 maintains its top spot

More than any of the Microsoft Copilot+ laptops we’ve reviewed, the Galaxy Book4 is the least impressive. It has a boring aesthetic, its keyboard and touchpad are disappointing, and while it’s faster than the MacBook Air 15 in some tasks, most users won’t be able to tell the difference. Its OLED display has some advantages but not as much as you might expect.

At the same time, the MacBook Air 15 is more attractive and feels better in hand, and its battery life is so much better. All of these conclusions would apply to the MacBook Air M3 13-inch compared to the 14-inch Galaxy Book4. Apple still makes the better laptop.