If it is similar in battery life to a dGPU machine at low load, then it's not using 1W package power, or it can do 1W but it's useless such as with Icelake's great do nothing battery that plummets the instant you do more than the simplest 1 tab text browsing.
It still means there's a significant battery life cost of doing a big iGPU.
Well sure. I mean the memory bus is still twice as wide, even if you force it into the lowest power state for both products that won't change. It will always use more power.
Same situation as M4 vs M4 Pro/Max, mind you. The latter have slightly worse idle power for the same reason.
Ok, that's a positive I did not consider. Still you are redesigning for additional 128 lanes on the board which increases both layout complexity and actual cost.
As opposed to designing the board to accommodate for an additional chip with it's
own 128b bus, yes.
You can pair any CPU with the dGPU, Intel and AMD. I'm not talking about user flexibility, that has gone the way of the dodo since 15 years ago. dGPU is part of the board but it's still mostly separate.
Designs using AMD and Intel chips feature two different motherboards. That's still two distinct boards you need to design.
Or at least that used to be the case. Nowadays, even for different Nvidia GPUs you need to design different boards again. In the case of Blackwell, 5060 and 5070 need a different board design to 5070Ti and 5080. I believe the same is also true for Ada, below 4080 is a different board design.
This is the reason why the G14 is shipping with both Phoenix and Strix Point this year, and why the low end models get both Phoenix and last year's chassis, while the higher tier models get Strix and the slightly larger chassis. Because they have totally different motherboards too.
So I'm afraid that flexibility you're talking about has already gone the way of the dodo.
So to get their top config iGPU on desktop APU you need to buy a $350 chip, and for poor performance(respectable for an iGPU, but). And you look at the pricing on their graphics division, including the rumored ones for RDNA4.
"Poor performance"?
It is within 5% of the 4070m at "equal" power - 60w package power vs 60w package power or 80W vs 80W. "Equal" power, as in Strix Halo includes both CPU and GPU, whereas 4070m is dGPU only.
There is no world where this is "poor performance".
And what they are suddenly going to give you significant discount over Nvidia on their halo APU?
How much do people believe Nvidia's portion of the total cost is? $1000 for RTX 4070 mobile?
When did I ever suggest that Nvidia is taking $1000 for a 4070?
Again, this pricing is firmly on ASUS. And it's the reason why comparing the Z13's pricing to bargain bin 4070 laptops being discounted ahead of 2025 models going on shelves is a fool's errand. The only thing this pricing shows is that ASUS take advantage of the fact that they know they have a product no-one else really competes with (a 13" laptop capable of console tier gaming performance), and factor it into their pricing.
It shows that you cannot compare the Z13's pricing to those aforementioned bargain bin 4070 devices and claim Strix Halo is far too expensive to make sense.