Build quality, keyboard and displays are consistently reviewed as being nicer for the Neo than that price range of windows laptops.

> Single-thread performance is the only remaining measure where the M5 is king

This is admittedly the measure that most correlates with perceived responsiveness and quality of user experience

> You can also beat the Neo on every measure by comparing it to $700 Windows laptops. https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/dell-xps-13-2026-review

This shows the Neo winning on benchmarks, except for file transfer speed.

The Dell laptop wins on file transfer speed and got 14 hours of battery time versus the Neo's 13 hours.

I don't understand how you read that article and concluded that the Neo got beat on "every conceivable measure"

> You can also beat the Neo on every measure by comparing it to $700 Windows laptops

Can you count how many (out of 9) measurements the windows laptop beat the Neo in that article?

Did you read the article you linked? The neo beats the performance of this dell laptop in several of the listed benchmarks.