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PC fanboys love to complain that Macs are just so much more expensive than a PC.

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But as we've demonstrated a handful of times in the past, in many cases it's actually just as

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expensive to custom build a PC with the same specs and features as a given Mac. The problem though

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is that Macs often don't perform as you would expect given their specifications. So today's video

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is a deep dive into what's going on and why. Now as you probably already know Apple designs their

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own computers and when I say designs I mean designs. They're slim, they're lightweight, and

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they've got specs that make your eyes light up and go ooh. But in the pursuit of sex appeal they often

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don't do those sometimes very impressive specs justice. The reason? Thermals. Now this is a little

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bit strange, but I'm not going to go into too much detail about that. The reason is that the Macs

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are just so much more expensive than a PC, and they're just so much more expensive than a PC.

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I'm not going to go into too much detail about that. The reason? Thermals. Now this is a little bit strange

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for reasons that we'll get into more later, but watch this. I can fire up quite literally any

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stress test. This is prime 95 right here. And within moments I will have temperatures rapidly

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approaching a hundred degrees. The point at which most Intel CPUs will throttle back their clock

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speeds in order to protect themselves from damage. How can they get away with this? Well Apple's done

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a little bit of trickery here and adjusts their clock speed to the clock speed that they're

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used to and adjusted the voltage and fan curves in macOS so that they can hit a higher thermal

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threshold without throttling too far below Intel's advertised base clock. But even at room

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temperature, it's on a knife's edge. And in boot camp, those tweaks get thrown out the Windows,

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pun intended, which means the voltages are higher and the threshold for throttling triggers

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sooner, making for a sluggish mess of an experience overall.

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This actually made waves back when the 2018 MacBook Pro launched, because Apple accidentally

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didn't have those tweaks enabled in macOS, meaning that the Core i9 equipped model throttled well

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below base clock at 100 degrees. Now they promptly fixed it, but is it fixed, or is it just software

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trickery to mask a bad design? To find out, we designed a little test. We compared the MacBook Pro

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mini running the blender classroom rendering test,

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using their stock cooling solutions at room temperature

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against the exact same two machines

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inside a custom chill box of our own creation

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that we held well below ambient temperatures.

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And what's obvious from our test is that

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in Apple's pursuit of sex appeal,

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they're leaving a significant amount of performance

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on the table for their users.

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Now the obvious retort might be,

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yeah, but that's a totally unrealistic scenario.

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Would a laptop PC achieve these results?

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And in fairness, the answer in many cases is no.

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Most notebooks, PC and Mac alike

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with Intel HK series chips thermal throttle,

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but many of them to a lesser degree.

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Part of the problem boils down to Intel's delays

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in getting their 10 nanometer production going.

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And this is compounded by their recent pattern

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of releasing processors

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with TDPs.

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So this is the amount of heat

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that they're supposed to output

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that are spec'd much lower than they actually should be.

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They've even done this

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with some of their desktop processors.

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Essentially what they're doing right now then

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is stuffing more and more cores

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into the same package size as before,

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but with the same transistor size,

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meaning that they're generating more heat.

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That means that the only way for a manufacturer

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to rein in these chips,

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is to test them themselves,

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then overbuild their cooling solution,

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which clearly can actually be done.

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It's just that Apple isn't doing it.

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And the thing is that even if you don't care

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about getting every last drop of performance

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out of your computer,

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this creates other problems too.

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A computer, any computer for a fact

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will fail more quickly when subjected

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to higher operating temperatures over its lifetime.

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And this can come about

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in a whole host of different ways.

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Just ask Lewis Rossman or for that matter,

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anyone who's owned a 2011 or 2012 MacBook Pro

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with a dedicated GPU.

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Not only is heat bad for the chips themselves,

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the ones producing it,

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it's actually also unhealthy for the board

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that they're attached to.

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Hotspots on a PCB can and will cause flexing and warping

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as the materials repeatedly expand and contract,

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which can in turn lead to BGA components,

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breaking away from their solder pads.

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And that's to say nothing of the health

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of any surface mount components nearby,

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like capacitors or resistors.

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All of which would require either a time consuming repair,

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or if you go the official route,

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a costly and wasteful replacement of the entire board.

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So then what gives?

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Why would Apple do this to their hardware?

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Well, when it comes to the performance question,

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it seems to be because for a large enough proportion

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of their customers,

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the looks and the status symbol of owning the machine

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are just more important

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than whether it's actually quick off the line.

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Although on that note,

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one innovation in recent CPU designs

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that has masked Apple's negligence

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is the advent of Turbo Boost,

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Intel's name for a technology

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that dramatically boosts the clock speed of a CPU temporarily

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during short bursts of activity,

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like while loading a webpage or launching an application.

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Turbo Boost allows machines like their 2015 MacBook

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to actually feel pretty snappy in day-to-day use,

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but require literal water cooling

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to reach peak performance in heavy workloads.

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As for the reliability issues,

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honestly, my best guess is that they just don't care.

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I'm sure like any insurance company,

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they've done the analysis of their failure rates over time

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to ensure that AppleCare customers

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are covered by the policy that they bought.

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And then as for the ones who didn't buy AppleCare,

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huh.

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Guess you should have bought AppleCare.

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It's not like you can take your business somewhere else

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if you want macOS.

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The real head scratcher here for me though,

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is that Apple considers it okay

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for even their professional grade computers

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to throttle like this,

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but not for their flagship iPhone.

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You can run games or benchmarks all day long on this thing

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and never lose any performance to heat.

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Compare that to competing Android handsets

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and you've got yourself actually a very compelling reason

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to buy an iPhone.

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So why this difference in philosophy?

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Oh, sorry.

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Oh, you were waiting for an answer.

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I actually don't have one.

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But what I will do is I'm gonna put that on my list

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of things to ask my good friend, Tim Apple,

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if he ever agrees to sit down for an interview with me.

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Although I sincerely doubt that's ever going to happen

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because I'm going on the record now

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saying that my next question then will be,

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why do you advertise your products

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in ways that you know for a fact are misleading?

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The 2018 MacBook Pro's product page

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is a great example of this.

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So you can see 4.8 gigahertz touted as the CPU speed upfront.

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But you probably won't notice that further down,

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the base clock that this machine struggles to maintain

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by the way, is just 2.9 gigahertz,

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a difference of almost 40%.

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That performance disparity is gonna take the MacBook Pro

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from feeling quick and snappy while surfing the web

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to feeling sluggish and unresponsive

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the moment that you start a render and it stops boosting.

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And that's not even considering the dedicated GPU.

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You run both the CPU and the GPU simultaneously,

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like in a game or a hardware assisted video export,

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and you're in for a pretty bad time.

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One of the most frustrating aspects of all of this

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is that they're blatantly doing it on purpose.

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In our recent video where we used liquid metal

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thermal interface material on the MacBook Pro,

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we found that even with better cooling,

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temperatures were the same.

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So Apple took advantage of the extra thermal headroom

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by keeping the fans low for as long as possible,

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instead of attempting to boost the CPU's performance

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for longer.

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I mean, I get it.

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Nobody wants their fans to ramp up like a jet engine

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just because they loaded a big file in Photoshop

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that made the CPU work for five seconds.

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But if we're running

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an all core load, we're hitting 90 plus degrees

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for more than that,

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the system needs to kick its fans into overdrive

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in order to protect itself.

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As for why Apple doesn't just equip its machines

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with processors that are more suited

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to the form factors that they target.

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Remember guys, a slower CPU that doesn't throttle

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is not slower than a faster one that does.

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We're not sure why they don't do that.

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The only answer we can come up with is,

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is that Apple is targeting the less tech savvy market

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with their promises of magical, high performance,

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thin design, lightweight and low noise,

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all with stellar battery life.

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But you simply can't avoid the laws of physics

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and there is nothing magical about what they're doing.

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So thanks for watching guys.

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If you disliked this video, you know what to do.

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But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed

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or maybe consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

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We'll see you in the next video.

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Bye.

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Also consider checking out where to buy the stuff

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we featured at the link in the video description.

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To be clear, it's not a terrible machine,

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just thermal throttles.

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Also down there is our merch store,

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which has cool shirts like this one

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and our community forum, which you should totally join.