Where does this leave Core M?
The release of Core M was exciting. It promised something that manufacturers have wanted to offer for years, but never could: super-thin, featherweight, fanless computers with exceptional battery life. Intel has delivered on the first three, but our results prove that Core M often doesn’t always deliver in endurance. While more efficient, its gain relative to a standard Core processor is at times slim, and the small notebooks it enables often have tiny batteries.
Performance makes the results more troublesome. In Geekbench, a Core M system often scores somewhere between 20 and 25 percent below a standard Core processor. The Lenovo ThinkPad T450s, for example, hit a multi-core result of 5,918. The Asus Zenbook UX305 only hit 4,445 in the same test. Why sacrifice performance if doing so doesn’t always mean better battery life?
To Intel’s credit, Core M does achieve three out of four of its goals. Sitting the T450s next to the UX305 makes the design gap between them clear; Lenovo’s system, though barely more than eight-tenths of an inch thick, looks like a brick by comparison.
Whether you’ll enjoy the benefits of the Core M processor is entirely dependent on how you use your notebook. If you generally stick to moderate web browsing, watching media, and editing simple documents, it could be the way to go. Its performance is sufficient for those tasks, and its efficiency is best in those situations. Throw a heavier workload at the chip, though, and its advantage is drastically reduced.
People who need a light system for simple work will enjoy Intel’s power-sipping chip. For others, though, its benefit will prove elusive.
