Ultra-thin?
"The company did claim that the M2's CPU is 1.9x faster than Intel's 10-core Core i7-1255U while using the same amount of power, but while this may be a more appropriate comparison, the fact is that Apple doesn't have a CPU for ultra-thin laptops that is as powerful as Intel's best."
Well, that's kinda arguable. It's not as powerful *at peak power consumption*, indeed. But it seems unlikely that a CPU in any "ultra-thin" chassis is going to be able to consume 50+W of power for any significant amount of time.
You'd have to run extensive real-world benchmarks to be sure, but I would be pretty surprised if an ultra-thin laptop with the i7-1255U actually outperforms an ultra-thin M2 laptop in a long-running, high CPU intensity test. I'd expect, rather, that the i7-1255U one would blaze out of the gates for ten minutes, then fairly quickly be throttled down to a substantially lower speed to prevent overheating.
You can run a CPU at 50+W in a laptop for a long time, but it won't be an ultrathin one. It'll be a much thicker workstation-type one.
For good performance in an ultra-thin, you *really really need* high performance-per-watt, because it's just not possible to clear a lot of heat out of a chassis that thin.