There definitely are good build quality laptops out there, like the Zephyrus lineup

Sure there are. That was not my point. My point was that when you buy an x86 laptop that ticks all the boxes that a MacBook does, you pay a similar or higher price.

My own laptop is a 2022 model of zephyrus g15. It was released a few months before m2 released. The CPU is a Ryzen 9 6900HS, that is just 4-5% slower in cinebench, and a 3070-ti gpu. The GPU is 20% slower than m2 max, but the laptop also cost only 2.4k, compared to 3.1k of M2 max. The battery lasts around 4-5h during video playback on the dedicated GPU.

Let's compare it. Your laptop is a little cheaper, but it also has a 2560x1440 display with a peak brightness of 300 nits, compared to 3546x2234 with a peak of 1600 nits on a 16" MBPro. The MacBook has over twice the number of pixels and is over 5 times as bright. You get 4-5h video playback, the 16" MBPro gets 22 hours of video playback. The MBPro has 3 40Gbit Thunderbolt ports, yours has zero.

I'm not saying it's a bad machine, but the higher price of the MBPro is justified by what you get.

Haven’t tested the energy saving method as I use it for work and I have locked it to max power settings.

Yet another thing I don't have to waste any thoughts on, there is no such setting on the MBPro, it's fast and power efficient. It also never throttles and is always silent. Can you say the same?

I have a 14" M1 Max, it's driving 2 external displays (4k and a 5k2k) and is used as a development machine. I regularly run big compile jobs that really puts load on the system. I'm not sure if the fans even run, because I've never heard them.

Edit: oh, and the zephyrus laptop is actually lighter than 16" MacBook pro

Sure, it's 200 grams lighter but it's also a smaller laptop. 15.6" screen vs. 16.2" screen. The 14" model is lighter than the zephyrus with the exact same performance as the 16" model, just with a smaller screen and 'only' 17 hours of video playback on battery.