Your laptop may not be as fast as you think

Take a look at the product page of your current (or favorite) laptop anywhere on the internet. On the manufacturer's website, on the electronic outlet's website, on the used laptops section on Facebook Marketplace, and wherever you look you will see values like 3.8 GHz, 4.6 GHz, or even 5.2 GHz.

But sometimes you will be able to see a caveat. That those speeds actually 'up to' or 'turbo'. Anyway, who cares if it's 'up to'? Your internet at home is also 'up to' X Mbps, but it's up to spec (or maybe 10% slower) pretty much all the time.
And turbo - that sounds cool, so it's a fast processor (it says i7 on the sticker, so it's the best right?) and it comes with turbo. Who could possibly ask for more?

Perhaps those users who kept reading 'fine print' at the bottom of the product page. And they noticed that apart from 'up to' clock speed, there is also a 'base' clock speed. And those 'base' values look painfully slow. Especially on thin&light laptops, they could be as low as 1.1 GHz. So what's going on? Is my brand new 3000€ laptop really running at clock speeds that would be considered unimpressive back in the late 1990s?

The reality is that your processor is running at 4.6 GHz. Sometimes. And it's also running at 1.1 GHz.
Sometimes. And it's also running at clock speeds between those two. Most of the time.

When you are editing a Word document or watching Youtube, you don't need top speeds required by the most demanding games and applications - 1.1 GHz will do you just fine.
And when you're running that complex Excel macro or visiting for a moment that extremely detailed location in Minecraft - the processor will run at 4.6 GHz to make sure you don't experience any freezes.

That's why laptops feel just as responsive as desktops (that run at much higher base clock speeds). Higher base clock speeds in desktops are mostly due to relative easiness of cooling desktop parts - put a slightly bigger fan and you won't have any problems dissipating 120 Watts of heat. Whereas in laptops 40 Watts is considered a lot. So laptops don't operate at full speed (and therefore don't generate as much heat) most of the time. But they can get fast, when necessary.

However, there is a serious limitation to such an approach. In tasks that require the processor to be under load for longer periods of time (such as video editing, CAD works, or even longer and more complex Excel calculations) the processor won't be able to sustain turbo speeds for too long.
In most cases, it will still run significantly faster than the base clock, but nowhere near max turbo. And very close to a maximum safe temperature.

Yes, there is also a heat and durability problem. All processors have their 'safe' temperatures. Many of them will list their safe temperatures as high as 105°C. So you can run your processor at that temperature and it won't break... during the warranty period. If you think about using your thin&light laptop for let's say 5 years, it's unrealistic to expect it not to suffer from such high temperatures, as thin&lights were not designed to be under constant load.

So is your life destined to be an endless chain of misery, filled with laptops that can't do any serious work and overheat after 2 years? Fortunately no - it's perfectly possible to design a laptop that is thin and light, and powerful. But that usually requires the highest quality cooling components and more complex design than 'that one basic laptop chassis that we haven't changed for the last 10 years'.

So if you need a laptop for tasks that require a lot of power for extended periods of time, expect to pay significantly more for those 'professional-grade business laptops'. Or live the life of shame with thick, heavy (and in most cases tastelessly colorful) gaming laptops.