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   I just watched Linus' video on the new co-pilot plus Snapdragon laptops, and I
had to hop on today because I'm pretty disappointed. His conclusions differ
significantly from our own, which by itself is totally fine. But I feel his
video highlights a wider issue on YouTube right now. YouTubers are rushing out
hype videos on trending topics, without spending the time to ensure that their
research matches their conclusions, and without clarifying who should actually
be buying the product that they are pitching.

  In his video, there were many examples where his conclusions were missing key
tests necessary to justify them, or where his own test results did not support
what he was claiming. Laptops are major purchases, and we as influencers have a
responsibility to be transparent, clear and thorough with our advice. Even from
the moment his video opened up, I felt uncomfortable. He started with this giant
hoopla about how his video was unsponsored, so he can say whatever he truly
feels.

  Gone are my sponsor obligations to Qualcomm about their new Snapdragon X Elite
chips. I can say everything I want. Folks, you are smart people. He was
literally sponsored by Qualcomm to talk about these very processes in another
video that went live three weeks before.

  Do you think that where the Qualcomm is paying for that specific video, keeping
a paying customer like them happy, may affect the way you speak about their
products? Come on. So Linus fallacy number one. These laptops have shocking day
one completeness.

  One of the first major points that Linus implies in his video is that most
applications work as they should. In fact, he states it three times throughout
his video, including in the all important intro and conclusion. Shocking day one
completeness, talking lack of jane for a first gen product, has been largely
flawless. His own findings did not match these bold statements and neither did
ours.

  We found application compatibility for this new architecture was lacking for
those who use specialist applications and or enjoy gaming. He mentioned testing
solid works, but he didn't cover testing any other professional applications. We
tested a ton. Everything from SketchUp Pro for interior designers to virtual box
for cybersecurity folks all the way to record box for DJs. We found that there
were many of these applications that did not work.

  Even many of the dobes applications used to advertise some of these laptops
right now do not work. And when it comes to gaming, Linus spends a good amount
of the video stating that many games do not run on these laptops. Requires EVX 2
support simply won't open, or if a game has kernel level anti-cheat. League of
Legends, the game I personally play, does not work.

  He even did a follow-up live stream a day after his video was published to test
the games. And that stream many games failed. They even saw physics issues in
games that technically ran but ran poorly. Doing a live stream to test
compatibility is a great idea.

  100%. We did one, but shouldn't he have done it before publishing his review
where he stated to over a million people how largely flawless these laptops are?
That's what we did. In fact, at the end of his video he asked you to like the
video for him and Alex to switch to these laptops as their daily drivers.

  We used these as our daily drivers before making our video. How else can we tell
you what they are actually like? And by doing that we discovered issues that
real world users may experience. For example, on a web conference call our
Surface laptop 7 just completely switched off black screen.

  I would not have found that issue if we just did a quick test of its webcam.
Anyway, in his video he continues to demonstrate that there are significant
performance hits when running non native applications, ones that must be
translated. His results were indeed similar to ours, showing a far greater
performance hit than what early stage YouTube videos showed like Dave 2D's. But
again, how can Linus conclude so confidently that these laptops have...

  Shocking, day one completeness. Especially at the opening of his video, which we
know a lot of people will drop after watching. Finally, Linus fallacy number 2.
These laptops have incredible battery life and power efficiency.

  And the battery life makes every other processor company blush. To justify his
claims he showed us a single test of running these laptops on battery, playing a
low resolution YouTube video. He did not show us any examples measuring battery
drain during performance tasks. One of our biggest findings with these laptops
was that when you run high performance tasks on them, their performance per watt
becomes much worse.

  So to an Intel processor rather than an Apple one. And this significantly
affects their battery life. Instead, he highlighted the excellent battery life
of the HP Onnibuk, but he didn't show you that the Onnibuk significantly
throttles its performance when on battery. In fact, the day after he launched
his video, HP issued us a note that there is currently an issue with the Onnibuk
around performance on battery.

  One that may be fixed in the next Windows update. He should have noticed this in
his testing and not highlighted the Onnibuk as an example of great battery life.
There are HP Onnibuk X able to crack 15 hours. And here's what we said.

  This is if you take out the Onnibuk's result by the way. That laptop is an
exception because its performance is dropped by a ludicrous amount when on
battery. Furthermore, when it comes to comparing the power efficiency between
these laptops processes when on battery that is, you need to normalize for the
size of the laptops battery. These laptops all have different sized batteries.

  Only then can you start to see how efficient they actually are. He didn't do
this at all. In fact, he didn't even measure power draw, not even when plugged
in. He just shows you that hardware info doesn't work which again is in conflict
with his conclusions that these are largely flawless.

  Instead, he assumes power draw based on the manufacturer's specifications. This
is a nice thumb in the air, which we used in our early stage Snapdragon video.
But there are two issues with his analysis. Firstly, many laptops boost their
processes power during more watchage than what the manufacturer specifies.

  So, this analysis could be incorrect. And secondly, it isn't really an analysis.
He doesn't show you the power draw of the other laptops that he is comparing
this one with. If he did, you'd be able to see how much more power efficient the
MacBooks are.

  Why didn't his team just do what we did and go on by the tools necessary to
measure power draw from the wall? I'd be shocked if he didn't already have such
a tool in his giant lab. How can you claim so confidently that these laptops are
so efficient without running these tests? There's no denying both the sheer
efficiency and the shocking day one completeness of the entire package.

  The final issue that I want to raise is how performance is communicated. He
comes across overwhelmingly positive, but his findings don't really match that.
Yes, he does show that these laptops have very strong multi-core performance,
but he also shows that they are behind Apple's M3 in single core. And Apple's M4
is right around the corner.

  And he also demonstrates that these laptops are really unsuitable for most
gaming, at least right now. Either games just don't run, or the laptops
performance is too low to be viable, but they don't seem to come through in his
overall excitement for these products. For example, at one point he emphasises
the strong gaming performance of these laptops integrated graphics. Now the raw
performance of the Snapdragon chips, very impressive, rivaling both AMD and
Intel's integrated graphics.

  Out of all laptops right now, both those with just integrated and those that
have dedicated, these laptops are probably the worst to buy if you are a gamer.
And on performance, he also made assumptions about the various exolete skews. He
implied that laptops with Qualcomm's lowest end exolete chips have poorer
performance due to their lack of dual core boost. This is the slowest variant of
the exolete chip, which entirely lacks dual core boosting and has the lowest
multi-core speed.

  But he didn't test this or have any data to back it up. We did test it. What we
found is that these laptops performance is far more dependent on how much power
the manufacturer feeds to them. You should not be buying one of these laptops
expecting more performance just because it has a higher tier Qualcomm exolete
processor.

  Look, I'm not saying we do perfect testing either. Of course not. We are a small
team and we like Linus' team are human beings. But we try to be transparent with
you.

  These results are not statistically significant. We definitely need to do more
testing, but they're the best we've got for you right now at this early stage,
and I would call them directionally correct. He did the opposite. At the
beginning of his video, he stated, look, I want to be crystal clear.

  We do like these new Snapdragon laptops for many types of buyers, but not all.
And we do agree with many parts of Linus' video, like how close to useless AI on
laptops is right now. This is the number of times that we used AI outside of
explicitly testing it for this video. A lot of people are laptops are big
purchase.

  All of us YouTubers owe it to you to be as thorough in our analysis and as clear
in our recommendations as we can. Rather than just broadly hyping up a piece of
tech with sweeping statements with little justification. Linus is a leader and a
pioneer in this industry, and he has more resources at his disposal than any
other tech YouTuber. And that is why it's just so disappointing for him to come
out with a video like this.

  It just feels half-baked and is pretty misleading for a lot of buyers,
especially as game is nexus, just called him out on this sort of thing a mere 10
months ago. And with that said, I'm going to end by just turning my focus to my
own team to ensure that we can do the best job that we can, as that is something
that I can control. As laptop reviewers, we will continue with our policy of
performing every task that we do on the laptops that we are reviewing. That way
we can tell you about our experience using them, whether it's writing our
scripts, editing our videos, playing our favorite games or coding our custom
built website.

  And we will not rush out videos other than perhaps this one. So continue to
expect that our videos will come out a week or so after the hype-tuber ones. We
want to keep creating content that you can trust. Trust to make the right buying
decisions, or as Linus would say, largely flawless.

  Till next time, go do something awesome with your day and I will catch you
later.