Apple M1 laptop
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 5 laptop processors
Recommended for fast, cool, efficient performance that beats most x86 laptops and stays capable for years. Critics note weaker GPU results and gaps in software and Linux support.
Recommended for fast, cool, efficient performance that beats most x86 laptops and stays capable for years. Critics note weaker GPU results and gaps in software and Linux support.
65 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 58
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 58 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 8.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Outperforms Intel and AMD laptops
“After the M1, my casual home laptop started outperforming my top-spec work laptops.”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “RAM is so expensive, Samsung won't even sell it to Samsung” “even in compat mode the M1 ran faster than equivalent contemporary Intel chips”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “What happened to Transmeta, the last big dotcom IPO” “the m1 did blow a normal windows laptop out of the water there”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Terminal Latency on Windows (2024)” - Comment from 1 Nov 2025 on Hacker News
- Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Asahi Linux Progress Linux 7.0”
Still fast enough years later
“M1 redefined the low-end. It will remain a great choice in 5 years”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “New OS aims to provide (some) compatibility with macOS” “Heck even my M1 still 100% suffices for everything I wanna do.”
Comment from 6 Mar 2026 in “First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In” “It has the same performance as the M1, which is still a beast.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “MacBook Neo” - Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon”
- Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Apple Readies a Low-Cost Laptop to Rival Chromebooks and Windows PCs”
Excellent performance per watt
“Apple's M1 chip shows you don't need x86, which consumes more electricity and runs cooler for computing.”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Rob Pike Goes Nuclear over GenAI” “Performance per watt at least at that task has to be an ocean of a difference.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “UCLA discovers first stroke rehabilitation drug to repair brain damage” “The M1 was (well, is) a marvel and absolutely smokes a 3090 in perf per watt.”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Microsoft to Stop Sharing Revenue with Main AI Partner OpenAI” Cool, quiet, long battery life
“I work on compilers, often maxing out all the CPU cores, and have stopped carrying the power adapter altogether.”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2” “I've never had a machine feel so great for so long before!”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock” “fast, fanless, cool, and extremely long battery life”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
No clear edge over AMD Intel
“has no appreciable hardware advantages compared to an AMD or Intel laptop”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Qualcomm acquires RISC-V focused Ventana Micro Systems” “AMD was actually more efficient under load”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Fedora Asahi Remix is now working on Apple M3” Weak software and Linux support
“the software was not optimized and did not work correctly for the M1”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “iPhone Duo” “we have a very-nearly-right kernel for the M1”
Comment from 18 Feb 2026 in “Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 6.19” “the chip comes with zero documentation”
Comment from 27 Mar 2026 in “Rank the 50 best Apple products”
Other laptop processors people recommend
The four most recommended other laptop processors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M1 laptopThis page | 58 | 7 | 89% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Apple M5 Max | 53 | 17 | 76% | 13 | — | Approved |
| Snapdragon X Elite | 34 | 45 | 43% | 9 | 2 yrs3 owners | — |
| Intel Panther Lake | 32 | 14 | 70% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Intel Lunar Lake | 17 | 6 | 74% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 70 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the software was not optimized and did not work correctly for the M1”
“I work on compilers, often maxing out all the CPU cores, and have stopped carrying the power adapter altogether.”
“Despite Apple having the best hardware around, they still manage to slow down M1 devices on Sequoia”
“I do remember the M1 chips being uniquely capable in this aspect compared to later chips”
“Bought an M1 64 GB for 2000 euro’s second hand a year ago. That was sweet”
“which is designed to sandbox all coprocessors from the main CPU and RAM via IOMMUs”
“Agreed, the Linux laptop story is pretty dire compared to Apple hardware.”
“That was the first chip I encountered that managed to do something useful without a discrete GPU.”
“performing at least 15% faster than M1 and 10% faster than M2 in single core performance”
“Performance per watt at least at that task has to be an ocean of a difference.”
“M-series GPUs (not just the M1, but even the latest) haven't managed to match or even come close to the perf”
“The M1 was (well, is) a marvel and absolutely smokes a 3090 in perf per watt.”
“M1/M2 easily outperform a broad class of x86 laptops”
“the M1 chip is the greatest achievement of apple since the iphone”
“To make the M1 transition so clean took a lot of software excellence”
“the m1 transition was so clean it made everyone else look like they were guessing”
“the chip comes with zero documentation”
“I've never had a machine feel so great for so long before!”
“I use an M1 daily, and for work just an M1 Pro and both are fine.”
“It has the same performance as the M1, which is still a beast.”
“fast, fanless, cool, and extremely long battery life”
“There were only 2 game changing upgrades for me. One was hard disk to SSD. The other was x86 laptop to M1.”
“I am still using it today and I prefer it over desktop PC.”
“Heck even my M1 still 100% suffices for everything I wanna do.”
“a qualitative leap over previous Macs and really every other laptop”
“we have a very-nearly-right kernel for the M1”
“AMD was actually more efficient under load”
“Apple's M1 chip shows you don't need x86, which consumes more electricity and runs cooler for computing.”
“how far behind the M1 (which came out 5 years ago) all the non Apple laptops are”
“has no appreciable hardware advantages compared to an AMD or Intel laptop”
“Apple didn’t double their laptop market share from like 10% to 20% when the M1 series came out”
“After the M1, my casual home laptop started outperforming my top-spec work laptops.”
“Apple M1 was shaky but all the groundwork was there and it took off.”
“M1 is implemented as-is with much of the silicon's onboard accelerators entirely dark.”
“M1 redefined the low-end. It will remain a great choice in 5 years”
“even in compat mode the M1 ran faster than equivalent contemporary Intel chips”
“the m1 did blow a normal windows laptop out of the water there”
“the "old" M1 is still a challenge to cheap computers now”
“the lunar lake at same wattage barely competes with M1”
“the speed increase when I upgraded to an M3 was easily worth it”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.