A few years ago, if you wanted a standard laptop — to work in a browser, send e-mails, work on documents, flicker social media, and so forth — I had a single recommendation: buy a new MacBook Air.

I have always preferred using Windows, always purchased Windows laptops, and didn’t want to push people away, but powered by Apple’s in-house Apple Silicon, there was no Microsoft-powered product that could keep up. Apple had changed the entire architecture that MacOS and their chips ran on, so — instead of using an x86 system — they now used an ARM architecture that you would usually see running a phone or a tablet. It was a bold move and hard to pull off, but the benefits were immense. “Apple Silicon” Macs were more powerful, more efficient, quieter, cooler, and longer lasting on a battery than anything else on the market, and by no small margin — and, despite that, they started at under $1,000.

It was an easy single recommendation because if you were in the market for a notebook laptop and didn’t buy a new MacBook Air, you were due for institutionalization.

Thankfully, the gap has closed in the remaining years, and Windows laptops have caught up, but not uniformly.

Namely, the great strength—and weakness—of the Apple ecosystem is that they own everything. They make not just the laptops but also the chips that power them and the operating system that runs on them. The result is that you have much less control over your product than on a comparable Windows device, but, in exchange, Apple’s hardware is far better tuned.

Windows, on the other hand, is an operating system made by Microsoft. It runs on laptops made by many different companies, powered by either Intel, Nvidia, or AMD chips, using either a traditional x86 architecture or the nascent ARM version. This gives you a lot more choice as a consumer, but it also means that Windows can’t change direction quickly, and it took them a lot longer to develop an architecture to compete with Apple.

There are now two different architectural options: ARM laptops powered by Snapdragon or traditional x86 laptops powered by new efficient AMD chips. Having tried laptops from both camps — the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge and Asus Zenbook S 16 — I can tell you that they have their strengths and weaknesses.

The most significant difference, above everything else, is battery life. The Zenbook S 16 is efficient, and with the screen on full brightness, it will get me around a full work day, depending on how hard I’m pushing it, and that’s fine but not mind-blowing. By contrast, a Snapdragon-equipped laptop — like Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop or the Samsung I reviewed — will still have about 50% battery left doing the same tasks. Used lightly, it can run into your third workday without touching a charger.

This incredible battery life is unnecessary for most people’s workflow, but ridding yourself of battery anxiety is a delight. These laptops are also pretty power efficient, and though it can be challenging to find precisely which Snapdragon chip best balances raw performance, tuning, and power input, you can’t go wrong. As long as you have at least 16GB of RAM, it’s certain to perform well.

However, they aren’t perfect. Namely, there are few premium laptops available currently with Snapdragon chips; power caps limit their performances, and they still have some software compatibility issues, meaning that some software you might use and rely on may not work on them.

If you primarily work in the browser, that’s no problem, and there are a range of excellent Snapdragon-powered laptops available. But if you use a range of x86 applications, need more power, want a more premium design, and still want to benefit from new efficiencies, the near AMD-powered x86 laptops are pretty incredible. I should know; after returning my Asus Zenbook S 16 review unit, I bought one for myself.