How much throttling is there without a fan under sustained load?

[Wolfpup]

like using Handbrake, misbehaving webpages, whatever else?

 

[Howard2k]

The passively cooled M4 SoC makes the competition look old - Apple MacBook Air 13 M4 entry review

Notebookcheck test/review of the entry-level Apple MacBook Air 13 M4 with 16 GB RAM and a 256-GB SSD.

www.notebookcheck.net

It will depend on your environment to some extent too, but NotebookCheck did a pretty good review here:

Processor​

Like the other variants, the base model of the M4 SoC features 10 cores (4x performance, 6x efficiency) and can briefly consume up to 20 watts at its peak. However, the value then drops to around 8 watts within a few minutes. For our CPU benchmarks, we focused on the current versions of Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench, which run natively on all three platforms (Apple, Windows x86/ARM), enabling very good comparability.

The test device's benchmark results were very good overall. In the Cinebench multi-test, the M4 SoC had to admit defeat to the actively cooled Snapdragon competitors, as its reduced power consumption naturally came into play during the long test (M4 in the MBP 14 was 21% faster here, for example). However, the gap to the Snapdragons was quite small, and the Lunar Lake competitors fell significantly behind. Even after half an hour, its CB Multi score only dropped by 13% to 710 points. In the shorter Geekbench multi-core test, on the other hand, the M4 SoC came out on top.

At the moment, the current M4 generation has a clear advantage when it comes to single-core performance, and the same can be said for Apple's cheapest laptop. The competition is at least two generations behind in this respect. Its performance remains constant in battery mode.