I feel like Intel is being dismissed much too quickly. I purchased 2 laptops in the last few months at about the same price, one having the latest-gen-available Ryzen and one having the latest-gen Intel. Here is a benchmark comparison of the chips:

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-1135G7-v...

The Zen 3 and M1 chips are unfairly being compared even in recent articles to 10th gen Intel chips when 11th gen is widely available. Considering there is an actual node change at the 11th gen it’s clear from the benchmarks that Intel has not actually fallen behind AMD —- they are neck-and-neck.

Considering the lack of disparity in benchmarks, though I am a long-time AMD fan (see my tongue in cheek username), I still think Intel is the better choice at this time for laptops. The reason is that the ACPI and general driver situation for Zen 2 and 3 is very bad. Power management and hibernation are totally unstable on Linux and Windows. I like my Zen 2 laptop for the better multithread capacity (slightly faster compile times!) but the Intel laptop is likely to last much better given that it will not destroy its own battery. The AMD machine discharges in a day even when hibernating, and in a matter of hours when sleeping.

Intel still has a chance to catch up. It all hinges on how fast they can move to 7nm. And given the “chip shortage” (i.e. limited capacity and likely yield/production issues at TSMC), Intel is well positioned to continue to dominate the market for quite a while by dint of having its own supply chain.