For CS students MacBook pro or Thinkpad? (proved)

if you are a CS student and stacked between MacBook pro or ThinkPad, reading this article will solve your problem.

In this article, we’re going to expose to you, 10 tests we made on MacBook and ThinkPad. So we will share with you the numbers of each test.

The quote says

” people lie but numbers don’t ”

so keep reading to know which is the best laptop for you.

Before going to details we’re going to put a MacBook pro and ThinkPad under 10 different tests:

• Test 1:price
• Test 2: battery life
• Test 3: weight
• Test 4: Thickness
• Test 5:powerfulness
• Test 6: touch screen support
• Test 7 : storage
• Test 8: noise
• Test 9 : warranty
• Test 10: battery life in gaming

And finally, we’re going to evaluate depending on the results that will be going to get. In other words, we would classify which is the best laptop for CS students MacBook Pro or ThinkPad.

In this test, we’re going to pick ThinkPad X1 Carbon as the best competitor of MacBook Pro.

Price

To compare the prices we’re going to pick the standard visions of each laptop. That is to say, we’re going to compare the primary or the basic version of each model.

So you can find the starting prices of the MacBook Pro I think pad X1 Carbon in the table below.

According to the results that we noticed on the table we find that’s ThinkPad X1 is cheaper by $150 than the MacBook Pro. $150 is not a big difference but for students, it’s something noticeable.

With $150 a computer science student can have a high headphone quality and earphones to use. So it will be better for making online courses or studies online.

So cannot deny that ThinkPad is more affordable for CS students than MacBook Pro.

Battery life

The result that you are going to see about battery life tests are under intensive use which means:

• browsing internet
• watching videos
• running code and compiling some projects.

We didn’t include gaming because we will let for a single test, you will find it in the next paragraphs.

Theoretically MacBook Pro and ThinkPad X1 Carbon can last more than 18 hours for a single charge, but that differentiates from how intense the student is working on the laptop.

Here are the results that we found.

The results above on the table show that MacBook Pro performs well and has good battery life. To clarify, it exceeds a Thinkpad x1 Carbon by 2 hours of difference which is interesting and noticeable.

The reason for that is the MacBook M1 chip is considered the most efficient and Powerful processor in the world. It consumes half of the power that an intel processor consumes.

At its maximum power, the M1 chip doesn’t exceed 30 watts while the intel processor reaches up to 60 watts of consumption. So this is the key to why MacBook has the best battery durability in the world.

weight

The test that we made it so close to students, we didn’t just compare the device or laptop weight but more than that will compare also the charger weight of each device.

The goal was is to show you as a computer science student how much of the total weight you’re going to carry on your back.

So there are the results in the table below.

So as we can see on the table above the MacBook Pro is heavier by 200 grams than the Thinkpad. Moreover the MacBook Pro charger he’s also too, heavier by 215 grams.

So the difference of the weight that you will carry as a computer science student on your back between MacBook Pro and ThinkPad X1 Carbon is 415 grams, including the device and his charger.

415 grams is the weight of 2 headphones and 1 earbud together. So you will notice the difference on your back when you wear the backpack between these two laptops.

Thicknes

If you carry t a lot of textbooks or notebooks having a thin laptop is an obligation surely you will look for something thin that you can hold on your backpack.

This is is so noticeable for students who love to wear messenger bags, these bags are already stretched and don’t have a lot of space for thicker things.

MacBook Pro and ThinkPad X1 Carbon are both thin but there is a tiny difference between them that you could find in the table below.

0.20 mm is not a noticeable difference of thickness, but a comparison test of the tiny amount of difference is going to be countable. That is to say to finally be able to know which is the best laptop for CS students MacBook Pro or ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

15mm is great you can put your laptop in any stretch bag without having any issues. This is it’s so comfortable when you pick or carry with you a lot of textbooks and notebooks at the same time.

So the MacBook Pro and ThinkPad X1 Carbon arent going to be an obstacle for a CS student.

Powerfulness

In this test, we will see which is the powerful laptop that has the better CPU performance. In other words which is the faster laptop MacBook Pro or ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

The test that we made has two aspects:

• Single-core test
  
• Multicore test

===> The singer core test means the run performance of lighter applications like browsing watching video reading or typing etc.

Multicore test==> means the test performance of all the heavier applications like gaming that needs a double core CPU capacity to deal with them.

This is what we found after testing MacBook Pro and ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

according to the test, we find that MacBook is more powerful by 40% more than ThinkPad x1 carbon, and this is no doubt about that. MacBook M1 processor is not only more powerful than Think pad x1 carbon but is number one in its category.

we made an experience between:

• MacBook pro
• Thinkpad X1 carbon
• XPS 13
• surface laptop studio
• hp dragonfly

and here are the result of this case study.

Even though the MacBook pro beat some gaming laptops that students love. But students have to understand that we are talking about the M1 MacBook pro silicon chip, not the intel MacBook version. Because MacBook Pro comes in two versions.

• MacBook pro M1 apple chip processor

• MacBook pro intel chip processor

Touch screen support

The MacBook Pro doesn’t support a touch screen while a ThinkPad X1 carbon support it, the only touched screen apple products are iPads.

The Thinkpad X1 carbon can be good for taking notes or browsing on the internet with your finger, but as a computer science student, you have to know these two following things about the ThinkPad x1 carbon $1149 version.

• you can’t use a screen alone as a tablet it is not like a surface pro .

• The ThinkPad hinges don’t exceed 180 degrees so you can’t rotate completely for 360 degrees like the surface pro.

Storage

The same models come with the same storage, 256 SSD so there is a difference between the two devices.

Noise

in this test we used a decimetre, which is a device that allows you to measure sound intensity. you can also use your phone to do that there are many apps to install.

We made a noise fan test between MacBook pro and Thinkpad x1 carbon and we found surprising results as you see in the table below.

As a CS student, you will not expect that the MacBook Pro is almost 2 times noisy as Thinkpad x1 carbon but the test has proved that.

As we said the M1 MacBook processor is the best, it doesn’t warm like an intel processor, we found in our test that in the maximum performance the MacBook pro chassis doesn’t exceed the 40 °C while the Thinkpad reach 50°C.

40 dB is not noisy that much, while some laptops reach up to 60 dB like gaming laptops, But when we compare it to MacBook we find a big difference.

for students who love silence, the MacBook Air doesn’t come with any fan. So you won’t hear anything, is completely silent. You could watch this video for more information.

warranty

This is not a test, but it will be a comparison between MacBook pro and Thinkpad x1 carbon warranty that the company will provide for you as a CS student.

Normally laptop companies don’t exceed 1 year in guarantee but for ThinkPad X1 carbon things are different you could see the table below.

it is amazing for a CS student to have 3 years of warranty owning a ThinkPad x1 carbon, you will spend 75% of your computer since course under the insurance of the company.

So if something happens to your laptop in the first 3 years you won’t be forced to spend from your pocket to fix a laptop. So it is a big kick to MacBook pro and apple on the ass.

Battery life in gaming

this test is made to drain a battery for consistent hours of gaming, we put MacBook pro in front of the Thinkpad, and here what we found

both MacBook pro and Thinkpad have good battery durability for games, they are not great laptops to play any video games but if you trade them with gaming laptop you will impossibly have this battery durability.

if you play with a gaming laptop you won’t have more than 2 hours of battery life, gaming laptops drain so quickly. For students who are interesting in gaming laptops, they could read this article.

Conclusion

So it is time to know the winner laptop in this battle between MacBook pro and Thinkpad for CS students.

we will summarize all the data noticed in this article in the table below.

1 ==> means better

0 ==> means less

After gathering the scores we found that:

the best laptop for CS students is Thinkpad X1 carbone

with 6/10 on the score test.

while The MacBook Pro comes in the second position with 5/10 which means one single point was the difference.

But the main thing that I personally see that make ThinkPad better than MacBook are:

• warranty time
• price
• weight
• Touch screen support

so you have enough data to decide which one is good for you.