Are Apple's MacBooks actually overpriced

now that they've raised their prices?

Well, we're going to answer that in this

video because right here I have the M5

MacBook Air that's now $200 more

expensive, so it starts at $1,300,

making it 100 bucks more expensive than

the new 2026 Dell 14S,

which is now actually made out of a lot

of aluminum. It actually feels very

quite nice. So, in this video we're

going to answer that question by

comparing everything in terms of the

designs, the build quality, the

displays, the performance, the SSDs, the

ports, and also the battery life because

these two are charged up to 100%, so I'm

going to unplug and yes, I've set the

brightness to around the same and I'll

have the specs up on screen so you can

see the differences. And by the way,

this is actually the 300-nit touch OLED

option, which is more expensive than the

standard, but you can see you have touch

support, which of course the MacBook Air

does not have. This is also OLED, which

when you turn down the lights and watch

[music] content, it looks absolutely

awesome compared to the standard LCD

very gray display that the MacBook Air

has. The one advantage here though is

that it actually goes up to 500 nits of

brightness, so it gets very, very bright

in comparison to this OLED. But still,

just looking at the quality alone, I'd

have to give the win to the Dell in

terms of the display. The only downside

is that you do have more reflectivity,

which you can see side by side with the

top cam. This is a lot more reflective.

Now, the second thing I want to get into

is the design and the build quality. It

is all aluminum all the way around. It

is so much nicer than the older models

used to be. Props to Dell for bringing

aluminum to all of your models. And the

quality is actually quite nice. Just

pressing down on the keyboard, you do

see some flex, but it's no more flex

than you get on the MacBook Air. This is

actually very, very nice and solid. Good

job, Dell. However, I am leaning more

towards the MacBook Air because it just

feels nicer overall. I like how the

hinge is kind of more minimalistic. The

trackpad, however, goes to the MacBook

Air because it has Apple's magic

trackpad with the force touch. It's even

all the way around, whereas we do have a

diving board, which is quite annoying

and it gets very hard to click up

towards the top, so it is not even.

[music] So, I prefer the MacBook. Of

course, having the TUV certified sticker

on here, Intel stickers, it is a little

bit annoying. It kind of takes away from

the luxury feel. And in general, the

Dell 14S is heavier and thicker than the

MacBook, so I think the overall design

winner is the MacBook Air. However, the

winner in terms of ports is actually the

Dell 14S because with the MacBook Air,

you have two Thunderbolt 4 ports and

MagSafe for charging, but here in the

14S, you have the same two Thunderbolt 4

ports, you have two USB A's, and you

also get an HDMI, which you have to pay

for the MacBook Pro over on the Apple

side to get that HDMI port. So, so much

selection you get with the Dell 14S.

Now, I also want to test out the

webcams, and just looking at the Dell

14S,

this is actually a really nice quality

webcam. Let me know how the microphone

sounds down below.

And then over here on the MacBook Air,

you can see we have Center Stage turned

on, but it does look a little bit soft.

Surprisingly, I actually prefer the look

of the 14S, so great job, Dell. And now,

of course, we've got to do our classic

speaker comparison.

>> Take me somewhere

>> [music]

>> unfamiliar.

Bring me back to where

we started.

>> [music]

>> Get me out of

my head.

>> [music]

>> All right, wow guys. I was not expecting

that. The Dell is a lot louder than the

MacBook Air. This does have a better

sound stage overall. It's a little bit

wider, but it doesn't really have that

much bass or mids. So, with that extra

volume, I think this is actually more

usable in the real world. That's

impressive. And now let's finally get

into performance starting off with the

SSD [music] speed. I have

CrystalDiskMark and AmorphousDiskMark

Bench open up right here. They're both

512 gig SSDs. The only difference is the

[music] 14S actually has a replaceable

slot. All right, not bad. Even though

Apple just upgraded to PCI Express Gen 5

SSDs on the M5 series, the 14S is not

that far behind.

>> [music]

>> The Air is only 10% faster in terms of

the read and a much larger 42% faster in

terms of the write speed. Now,

regardless of which one of these laptops

you end up buying or even with your

current laptop, they can all handle the

AI tool that I've been using the most

for real work, ChatLLM by Abacus AI, who

sponsored this video. Now, what I like

the most about Abacus AI is that you

have access to the top LLMs the moment

they're available like ChatGPT 5.6,

Claude Fable 5, Gemini 3.1, and more in

a single subscription that only costs 10

bucks a month, so you're not jumping

between a bunch of different

subscriptions. You can use it for

everything from image and video

generation to having a deep agent build

an app or a website even if you don't

have any coding experience. You just

describe what you want in the prompt and

it gets to work. I actually used it to

completely rebuild my side business's

website and it's now live and handling

real traffic. So, if you're looking for

a genuinely great AI tool, definitely

get Chat LLM by Abacus AI by going to

chat.abacus.ai

or clicking the link below to get your

first month for only seven bucks. And

now let's move on to CPU performance

with Geekbench 6. Of course, these both

have 16 gigs of RAM. This has the new M5

chip, which is a very fast. And this

thankfully does have a new Intel Panther

Lake chip, but unfortunately, it's only

the Ultra 7355.

You can upgrade to the X7, but that's

definitely going to cost you quite a bit

of money. And dang, this is where we

start to see the differences. 58% faster

single-core performance on the M5, but

then 54% faster in terms of multi-core

as well. 17,000 on the M5. That's

actually around what the best X7 Panther

Lake gets, at least the most common X7

model. So, now I want to test

Speedometer 3.1. And since this is based

on single-core performance, we're

getting a massive 65% faster score in

this test. And now let's get into the

graphics performance, which on the M5

Air, this is actually the Bend

eight-core GPU model, so it's not the

upgraded 10-core. While on the Dell 14S,

this is the 355, which does not have

that really nice X7 graphics. It's just

the standard Intel graphics. So, let's

run this test. And wow, that is insane.

Almost three times higher score in terms

of the optimized metal compared to

OpenCL on the Dell 14S. [music]

I'm actually going to run 3DMark Steel

Nomad Light Unlimited test, which is a

very nice gaming benchmark. And there

you go, we have our results, and it

looks like the M5 Air is 2.15 times

faster in terms of the score or the FPS.

So, that is quite a big [music]

difference, even with this being the

binned eight-core and also fanless. And

now, I do want to test web design

performance within Figma. This is a

project provided to us by 500 Designs,

one of the best design and marketing

agencies in the US. All right, it is

done. 2 minutes and 1 second on the 14S.

And the M5 Air just finished a minute

and 43, [music]

so a little bit faster on the M5 Air.

And now, let's get into photo editing

with Lightroom Classic. Both of them are

using full GPU acceleration, so full

support. And wow, guys, the M5 Air

finished two and a half times faster

than the Dell 14S. I think that must be

because of the unified memory

architecture, which uses the RAM more

efficiently and allows it to be more

balanced and not bottlenecked like we're

seeing here. And now, I'm just going to

select one of the photos and I'm going

to do an AI denoise [music] test with

the same settings on both. So, let's

click 1 2 3. [music]

Denoise. All right, the M5 just

finished. Wow, that took surprisingly

long on the 14S with that Intel Panther

Lake chip. A minute and 11 seconds

compared to just 17

seconds on the M5 Air. Holy smokes.

That's literally over four times longer

for denoising the same single image. And

now, let's test video rendering in

Blender. This is the Party Tug splash

[music] screen. We're going to do Cycles

GPU compute, which thankfully on [music]

here, we can use one API for GPU

rendering, so that's very nice compared

to Metal ray tracing on on M5. Let's go

ahead and render image. And there you

go, they're done. It took a minute and

11 seconds on the M5 Air, 2 minutes and

30 seconds on the Dell 14S. So, over

twice as long, almost 2 and 1/2 times

longer. And the last thing I almost

forgot about is AI performance, which is

getting very popular now. And wow, look

at that. Even though the single

precision is faster on the M5 Air, the

half precision and quantized

are both faster on this Intel [music]

Panther Lake chip, which they are known

to do quite well in terms of Geekbench

AI for AI performance. And just for good

measure, I'm going to go ahead and run

it on the NPU and the neural engine to

see if that changes anything. And dang,

look at that. 57,000

quantized score on both of them.

Basically even with half precision being

a little bit faster on the M5 and single

precision being, what is that? Close to

twice as fast, 80% faster. So, I guess

the NPU and neural engine do perform

even better than the GPU. And now,

finally, it's been around 2 hours of

reviewing and testing all the features

and the performance, and it's time to

look at the battery life. Let's look

over here on the Dell 14S. We have 68%

battery life after 2 hours. And moment

of truth for the M5 MacBook Air, what do

we have? 73%.

Wow, that's actually not too far off

with the M5 Air just being a little bit

better in terms of battery conservation.

And that's actually pretty impressive

considering that the battery size is

larger on the Dell 14S. So, the Air is

actually doing more with less, and it's

actually performing a lot better in so

many of those different tests,

especially the real-world test where it

was basically two times faster or even

more in the case of Blender and photo

editing. Let's [music] answer the

original question. Are Apple's MacBooks

now a rip-off with the $200 more

expensive

>> [music]

>> MacBook Air that's now $1,300?

Well, as you guys saw, these actually

compare quite well, [music] and

especially for that performance, it is

just mind-blowingly

fast. But, Dell has gone a long way from

their Inspiron in terms of their design,

which is now the 14S with this really

nice all-aluminum design, which feels

very nice and luxurious, very premium at

a lower price point of $1,200,

especially since you get an OLED

display, which looks [music] awesome,

feels amazing compared to the MacBook,

which is still LCD, and we're likely not

going to get OLED until 2028 [music]

with the M7 version. So, we still have

time to wait on OLED, or you can get it

now with the Dell. Also, props to Dell

for loading this up with a nice [music]

port selection. That's one of the big

advantages that you get over the MacBook

Air. There's also the upgradeable SSD.

So, if you're somebody who really is

utilitarian, you like a lot of function

and freedom [music] with your laptop,

this is actually a better choice in that

way. But, in terms of the overall value,

I do think if you're okay with macOS, I

think it's actually worth spending the

extra $100 to get the 13-in M5 MacBook

Air instead [music] because it is just

so much faster in terms of the

performance. It is thinner, it is

lighter, and it is giving us better

battery life. So, with that said, let me

know your thoughts on all of this down

in the comment section below and which

one you would personally buy and why.

And thanks for watching. You can

subscribe above for more videos like

this one and check out one of those two

right there.