What workloads do you run on the laptop and the mini? Do you feel any tangible/noticeable speed improvements (outside of benchmark numbers)?
Very Simple workloads
Browser (lot of tabs), outlook/zoom/teams, excel (not too heavy), word etc.
As for the second part, I guess I have been at this for long enough to not give a rat’s a$$ for any kind of benchmarks any more
The difference for me has been purely on account of other things.
1) Zero delay resume each time (although Intel macs too never took more than a few seconds)
2) The general zippiness is more than noticeable . Also given the current gap between other systems and this, the performance should remain adequate for a fairly long time (while apps get heavier over the years, they still need to in line with the average system performance )
3) The battery life is actually better than what I had hoped (which was high to begin with).. I never used to get the review quoted battery life on any laptop i have brought... possibly due to the short bursty nature of the workload above with a lot of alt-tab (cmd-tab).. This one actually goes higher than what the reviews say
4) The heat, or rather the lack of it. The system remains cold (uncomfortably so) even under fair amount of multitasking while on long video calls .
This part is speculative but the general longevity of iphone/ipad logic boards (very rare to hear of a failure on those ) coupled with 3 and 4 above should mean that the device should have a good life..
Add (2) to it and I have a feeling this should comfortably last long with good usability