4 Premium Features Windows Laptops Still Have Over MacBooks | Digital trends

Apple’s MacBook line has exploded in recent years, with its Silicon chipsets delivering top-notch performance and efficiency. The MacBook Pro, in particular, is faster than many Windows laptops, more durable than most, and has an excellent mini-LED display. There are many good reasons to choose a MacBook over a Windows laptop in today’s market.

But all is not lost for the Windows platform. Even aside from the upcoming Snapdragon Here are the four that I keep coming back to.

Windows Hello

Modern MacBooks feature Touch ID, which uses a fingerprint reader to enable sign-in and authentication, such as authorizing purchases and entering credentials in Safari. It works well and is highly secure.

However, Microsoft has taken the concept even further with Windows Hello. This feature also supports fingerprint readers, but it extends the paradigm to in-device PINs and facial recognition. Yes, it’s true. Many Windows laptops come with infrared cameras that can map a user’s face and use it to log in. And all methods are backed by a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that uses a cryptographic processor to keep everything secure.

Apple has its own facial recognition system, Face ID, which it uses on iPhones and iPads. In some ways, Apple’s technology is even better. But until Face ID comes to MacBooks, Windows laptops will offer a different, literally hands-off way to sign in quickly and securely.

OLED panels

OLED displays offer several advantages over the best MacBooks have to offer. OLED has wider and more accurate colors, as well as the highest contrast. Apple’s most competitive displays are the mini-LED panels in modern MacBook Pros, and these offer higher brightness and better support for high dynamic range (HDR). But they can’t compare to the inky blacks and bright, vibrant, accurate colors of OLED.

Perhaps the best thing about Windows laptops and OLED displays is that the technology is available on very affordable machines. You can buy a Windows laptop like the excellent Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Q425 for less than $1,000, with fast processors and plenty of RAM and storage. To get the best Apple displays, you need to spend $1,500 or more.

OLED also offers faster response times. While Apple’s mini-LED displays go up to 120Hz, some OLED displays run at even faster refresh rates, but with ultra-low response times. This means you won’t see any ghosting, especially when gaming. Apple’s mini-LED displays (like all examples of this technology) can also suffer from slight “blooming” in bright scenes, and while this isn’t as much of an issue with newer panels, OLED has no problem at all.

Overall, OLED is a better technology for most people, and Apple agrees: it adopted tandem OLED technology in the new iPad Pro which achieves the same brightness as mini-LED with all the other advantages of OLED. This technology will eventually come to MacBooks, perhaps even in the next generation, but for now, Windows laptops have the advantage.

Games

Speaking of gaming, this is the area where Windows arguably has the most significant advantage. Apple’s M3 chipset introduced various improvements to integrated GPU functionality, including hardware ray tracing and mesh shading, as well as Apple’s new dynamic caching, which aims to optimize memory allocation . This, combined with the speed of the new GPU cores, makes the M3 Pro and M3 Max, in particular, fast enough for modern titles.

The problem is that there still aren’t enough native games capable of taking advantage of all this power. The number of AAA titles running natively on the Mac can probably be counted on two hands, which severely limits the MacBook as a gaming platform. This is certainly an area of ​​growth, but it still remains a long way to go.

Windows does not have this problem. Every new PC game title is naturally available on Windows. And Windows gaming laptops can be equipped with the blazingly fast Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 mobile GPU, which is still significantly faster than Apple’s best. Add in a wider range of displays running at incredibly high refresh rates and low response times, including spectacular OLED panels, and it makes the Windows laptop another thing entirely aimed at gamers.

Serious gamers should buy a Windows laptop, period. Yes, the MacBook Pro will offer better battery life, but if gaming is important to you, Windows is the only way to go.

Touchscreens

Apple offers a line of iPhones and iPads with touchscreens, but it flatly refuses to add touch to MacBooks. Apple’s argument is that touchscreens are ergonomically flawed in that we are not designed to hold our hands in front of a laptop screen. This is a silly argument, because offering a touchscreen doesn’t mean giving up a touchpad or mouse. Touch is a secondary input method on a laptop, not a primary method, at least when using clamshells.

On the other hand, touchscreens are a must-have among Windows laptops. They are standard on many models and optional on even more. And of course, you can buy Windows 2-in-1s in detachable or convertible tablet form, which offer iPad-like touch experiences.

I like touchscreens for a variety of reasons. They’re great for occasionally pressing a context button, and I like to rest my arm along the edge of a Windows laptop and use my thumb to scroll through long web pages and other documents. I do this a lot, and it’s incredibly comfortable and arguably more ergonomic than using a touchpad or mouse. And sharing a screen with someone is much easier when they can reach out and do things rather than trying to get into touchpad position or steal your mouse.

Maybe one day Apple will overcome its reluctance to offer touchscreens on MacBooks, and maybe even offer a 2-in-1 machine. However, neither is guaranteed, or perhaps even likely. So touchscreens are an advantage that Windows laptops could keep forever.

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