> After spending time on Apple’s M1/M2 Macs (coming from a large x86_64 desktop), going back to x86_64 feels like a regression, both in performance and battery life.
I have a Thinkpad X1 with a Lunar Lake CPU, running Fedora. Battery life is comparable to the Mx Macbook Pros I've owned or used. Performance is not as good on synthetic benchmarks, but more than good enough for my needs, even when running VMs or containers.
I have a Strix Halo laptop, HP ZBook Ultra G1a. (HP is a weird brand. I'm not a loyal customer, but every once in a while they create a product with really good reviews, I buy it, and it delivers.) Performance is almost on par with Apple's best, but battery life under light load is much worse :P, 6:30 or so.
Under full load, battery life is an hour or so, similar to Apple actually! If the numbers I've seen are correct, they also use a lot of power under full load.
Also, thank $deity for engineered noise signatures. Whooshing is not so bad. Whining fans are the worst. Last heard in better laptops several years ago.