I may or may not be super knowledgeable on the subject have the KDE Slimbook team considered going full with ARM chips instead of the x86_64 processors?
I keep reading how ARM is more "efficient" and lower power consumption altogether. I also noticed that some Windows-laptop devices are shipping with ARM as well. (Windows on ARM not being new if you have been following Microsoft closely)
Arm is mostly more efficient, but the overall performance is not there apart from Apple silicon. You can get some laptops with qualcomm chips and they're weak - basically an underpowered netbook class. The competition is missing because of a deal between qualcomm and MS for Windows laptops (https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/23/22798231/microsoft-qualc...). So if you want to do something serious, there's very little choice.
Then there's the issue of running Linux on SoC where Qualcomm and others are not super keen on providing open support. M1 is going to get reverse engineered support for all the devices first because they offer hardware people actually want.
So, 8 core QC is beaten by a mid range 6 core Intel. Might be a reasonable choice if it actually ran Linux and various other things (bsd/vmware/etc) out of the box, but since it doesn't, it looks overpriced unless you prioritize windows and battery life or want a windows/arm machine for a specific purpose.
AKA, on the general market it doesn't look particularly competitive, even when compared with these amd 5700U's which also slightly best it and are frequently found in ~$600 laptops.
I don't think an H series i7 would be considered midrange (it has a 45W TDP, and will only really be seen in workstation/gaming laptops). The Qualcomm processor is not terribly impressive, but being on par with a 45W i7 is still very promising.
Out of curiosity Apple M1 Chips being ARM-based (I own a m1-powered laptop) I... honestly haven't really noticed any slow down while using ffmpeg but granted I don't do encoding/transcoding a whole lot and my usage of editors like Affinity Designer/Photos is pretty basic.
But on that note I feel like a budget laptop for the masses with ARM-chips would be quite the spot for many people include my father. he doesn't need any application just being able to use a browser. ( I guess, a more open, less shady Chromebook-like equivalent).
Well, I guess I just say this because my experience with the m1 chip has been way over the top to the point I haven't really noticed any slow down with docker/vscode/etc etc.
Apple seems to be a couple of generations ahead of every other ARM vendor. e.g. the Qualcomm SQ2 doesn’t seem to bad on paper but it’s several times slower than the m1 and barely competitive with the more power efficient AMD chips.
Wasn't NVidia making tablet-scale ARM chips (Tegra) for a while? It seems like they would know how to address this niche, but somehow it hasn't materialized.
I keep reading how ARM is more "efficient" and lower power consumption altogether. I also noticed that some Windows-laptop devices are shipping with ARM as well. (Windows on ARM not being new if you have been following Microsoft closely)