He left out "at the same bitrate", but that is what he meant.For high quality 1080p encodes at medium to higher bit rates, x264 generally produces a result equal to x265 and exceeding hardware encoders.
AMD VCE is a hardware encoder and does not produce the same quality output as the software encoders used by HandBrake. x264 easily beats AMD VCE h.265 in quality of output with the currently available hardware. x265 is a software encoder that does produce higher quality than x264 under the right circumstances. But as BradleyS said, there are circumstances where x264 can equal x265 in quality at the same bitrate.