Intel made their own Macbook

Since when does Intel make their own laptops!? And why did they wait so long? Because their collaboration with XPG, the Xenia Xe, may just be a Macbook killer...

- I know right?

Trust me, when I first saw this thing, I was just as confused as you. It says Intel made it in the title of the video, but, Intel doesn’t make laptops, they make excuses, for why AMD is making them look bad.

- But, maybe this isn’t a bad look.

I mean, part of the reason that Apples M1 MacBook’s are so good is because Apple already designed basically everything in it themselves and then just took it one step further designing a processor. Well, Intel on the other hand already designed processors. So they just came at it from the other direction and created this laptop. That looks just like a MacBook. It’s a bold strategy cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for em. With Glass Wire you can keep track of the weird stuff that connecting to your PC, even when you aren’t using it.

If a strange device joins your WiFi, you’ll be notified instantly. Get 25% off using code LINUS at the link below. I should clarify, Intel has actually made their own laptops for years, just in secret. For example, back in 2011, Intel released their specifications for what they called an Ultra book. A super thin and light Windows notebook that didn’t compromise on performance or battery life. In order to get laptop manufacturers started with the concept, Intel provided them with a reference model that they could use as a starting point for their own custom designs. Because let’s be honest, some of these laptop companies need help to not design laptops that look like a Deceptions.

I’ve actually been hands on with a handful of these kinds of concept devices in what I call the secret CES sweep over the years, and the frustrating thing for me is that a lot of the time, the reference or concept device looks way closer to something that I would actually want to buy than any of the things their partners end up building and apparently Intel feels the same way because in 2019, they decided to make a reference design that was more or less ready for the consumer and announced the NUC 9 Extreme Laptop Kit. Like desktop NUCs, these White books came without storage, memory or an operating system, which were intended to be added by Intels partners who would also tweak the system settings and software before releasing the laptop under their own brand. Giving birth to the MAINGEAR Element, Electronics MAG-15 and the XPG Xenia. Which brings us to this model. This is the XPG Xenia Xe, essentially a tweaked version of Intels new NUC M15 Laptop Kit.

While its predecessor was based on the six core Core i7 9750H and a discreet GPU, this one sports Intels latest Quad core i7-1185G7 with, as the name indicates, Intels Iris Xe graphics. Now the last one was designed as a straight up gaming laptop but this model is what XPG calls a lifestyle gaming Notebook. While Ultra books were meant to compete with the MacBook Air, this is a reference model for Intels new Evo brand, which aims to take on the MacBook Pro line up with better performance for professional uses. I’m thinking, now there’s been a few visual giveaways, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a MacBook Pro,

from 2015 anyway.

- [Producer] Oh got em again.

- And that’s not the end of the world.

The minimalists in the office can definitely appreciate the Xenia Xes simple, straightforward design with its CNC machined aluminum shell but even though I just explained it to you guys, I still don’t know what this thing is. What is lifestyle gaming?

And how is it that Windows laptop makers just cannot seem to capture that Apple magic?

Put this thing next to a MacBook and its just looks cheaper. Not at all like our beanies from lttstore.com, which still look great, if not even better. But let’s look a bit closer and the Xenia Xe quickly starts to make up some ground. I mean, for one, in addition to the two thunderbolt 4 ports, there’s actually two USB type A ports of the 10 gigabit variety, as well as HDMI and a headphone jack, so you don’t have to keep your bag stuffed with dongles. XPG has supplied 16 gigs of LPDDR4X memory and a one terabyte S50 PCR Express GEN4M.2SSD, so it’s nice and snappy and it’s got Windows Hello along with proximity sensors that wake the laptop as you approach, leading to one of the smoothest log in processes that we have ever encountered.

As for performance, the Core i7 1165G7 in here is a step down from the early model 1185G7 powered machine that we looked at back in September, but the only real difference between those two chips is slightly lower clock speeds and sure enough, the gaming story here is similar. The Xenia Xe managed to squeeze out three one frames per second in Shadow of the Tomb Raider at lowest settings and 26FPS at medium, actually matching the performance of that early unit. Driver updates probably helped with that, but its impressive. Ultra settings had a frame read in the hundreds, are a far off dream for on board graphics still, but a 1080p and low to moderate settings, competitive multi-player games, like Rocket League, CSGO and even Rainbow Six Siege are totally playable.  I said it last time and I’ll say it again, the fact that were running these on integrated graphics, from Intel no less, is astounding.

Onto the lifestyle side of lifestyle gaming, I guess, maybe, for us that means more traditional benchmarks. In Lux Mark, the Xenia Xe out performed every laptop in the lineup of Notebooks from our M1 MacBook’s review and in Cinebench and Geek bench, while it didn’t beat the MacBook’s, it came real close, while beating the XPS13 2-in-1, an excellent laptop built on the same processor. Photoshop runs like it should, while scrubbing 4K footage in Premier is pretty smooth at half preview quality. And in our Handbrake Hardware H 265 test, while the Xenia Xe didn’t beat the MacBook’s, it finished the encode in almost half the time of the XPS 2-in-1, even though they have the same model of CPU in them.

I guess that means Intels thermal and power solution is quite a bit beefier, even if it did spike up to 96 degrees under full load and hovered around 90 degrees once the, thankfully quiet, fans kick in. The Xenia Xe is thin and light enough to be easily tote able, it’s got enough battery to last you through the work day, into the evening and even beyond if you’re nice to it and it’s got a beautiful IPS touch display that can open all the way to 180 degrees, with four far field mics on top, so you can talk to either Crotona or Alexa and see the light bar below the track pad light up which would be great if the screen wasn’t 1080p, the integrated webcam wasn’t so bad.

- And that their fancy microphone array sounded a little bit better.

- I give it a B then for lifestyle. But the performance story is pretty good.

 I mean, we’ve given Intel a pretty hard time for dropping the ball on the past year or so, so it’s a treat to see an Intel Notebook compare so favorably to Apples M1 machines so soon after being put to shame. It’s also interesting that this laptop outperformed the Dell by such a degree. Like what the heck Intel?

Why have you been hiding the fact that you can apparently make a straight fire laptop just like Apple. Don’t hide that under a bushel. You gotta let that light shine, bro. Now to be fair, Intels already doing that by releasing the NUC M15 through partners like XPG and the pricing seems to reflect their confidence in this machine. The Xenia Xe starts at 1359 US for the Core i5 config and 1549 for this Core i7 model, which is actually not bad for a premium laptop.

It’s cheaper than a MacBook. We did find a couple of laptops with the same processor for around half the price online, but, as we saw on our benchmarks, the processor isn’t everything. These cheaper models have half the storage, less memory, much less battery life and no thunderbolt. So the Xenia Xe seems to tick a lot of boxes for someone who wants a clean, MacBook like experience, but with Windows. Intel has freeloaded a couple of bloat wares, but one of them is a simple driver update utility with aesthetics that don’t assume you’re the most bad ass gamer to ever hit the inter webs and the other is a G Force experience style graphics utility that lets you update drivers and tweak global graphics settings like Adaptive Tessellation, Retro Scaling and Smart VSync.

So I dare say this laptop might be the Windows laptop for MacBook fans. Now, we’ve talked a lot in this video about Intel, but let’s not forget this is being released under the XPG brand, so it’s true that Intel did the bulk of the work designing it, but that isn’t to disparage XPG or the other companies that Intel works with to release these models. XPG told us that the process of getting Intels reference design ready for the market is a collaborative one.

The two companies work together to make decisions about components, the bios and software configuration and the packaging, but XPG also knows that at its core, this is an Intel design and they think it’s really cool that Intel wants to help them and other up and coming laptop makers work towards developing their own fully custom designed laptops. I mean, this is only XPGs second laptop they’ve ever released and the first one was also an Intel NUC.

So if Intel can drive the Windows laptop market forward with excellent, ready to go designs like this one, while continuing to work with partners on custom designs, who knows?

They might just be done with dropping the ball. They might even be picking it up. Maybe?

Just like I’m picking up the Segway 2R sponsor. DROP at THX came together to create the DROP THX Panda wireless headphones. With them, audio quality is no longer reserved for folks with wires. They claim they’re the world’s most distortion free wireless headphones and from my experience, that actually sounds pretty darn believable, these things are sick. They’re closed back headphones so you won’t be dealing with any distractions and they use THXs triple A amplifier technology.

They boast 30 hours of wireless life, dual microphones, Bluetooth connectivity, compatibility with digital assistance and you can even get a detachable gaming mic. They weigh just 375 grams and you can check em out at the link in the video description. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out our coverage of, oh yeah, ASUSs upcoming laptops. They had some, quote, unquote, CES news to announce. They got super high refresh rate displays, external graphics, all kinds of cool stuff.

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