Snapdragon X Elite processor. What’s special?

Every major company that makes top laptops is trying to convince us that we’re in a new era of computing—the era of the ‘AI laptop.’ Artificial intelligence is here, everyone.

Now, there are many laptops with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors available for purchase. You can find them from big brands like Microsoft, Samsung, Asus, Acer, HP, Dell, and Lenovo—all the well-known names are on board from the start.

Laptops using these Snapdragon processors get a special badge from Microsoft called ‘CoPilot Plus.’ This means they unlocked a bunch of AI features in Windows 11, with even more expected in the future.

Some features are useful, while others might be less so. But the best part is that you don’t need to care about AI software features for the Snapdragon X Elite CPU to be one of the most exciting laptop technologies in years.

What makes the Snapdragon X Elite special?

NPU stands for ‘neural processing unit.’ It’s a part of the processor chipset designed to handle tasks used in the new and popular field of generative AI that you’ve likely heard about.

We’re talking about chatbots and image generation—the kind of AI that excites business owners and makes the rest of us worry about our jobs.

This chipset is also much closer to a mobile phone-style design than the previous standard. It’s not the first time Windows has tried this type of processor in a laptop, but the first attempt was pretty disappointing (except for the longer battery life). This second attempt is much, much better.

What AI features do laptops with the Snapdragon X Elite get?

  • Cocreator in Paint lets you create AI artworks based on your own doodles and the style you choose. It’s fun to use, but not groundbreaking.
  • Recall takes screenshots of your activities over days and weeks. The idea is that you can ask CoPilot about what you did, searched for, or worked on weeks or months ago.
  • Camera controls can blur the background in video meetings. While this isn’t new, using AI hardware makes it much less draining on the battery.
  • Live Captions can translate audio in another language into English (or another language) with subtitles.

For most people, these features aren’t enough to justify upgrading their laptop. They’re mostly based on OpenAI technology, and we didn’t find any of them too impressive when reviewing the Surface Pro 11th Edition and Samsung Galaxy Book Edge.

How good is the battery life of the Snapdragon X Elite?

 

 

However, if you’re not too worried about the AI stuff, the battery life of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is a specification that might grab your attention. The claims are that they get you anything between 14 and up to 26 hours with the model-dependent model, which significantly demonstrates what an Intel chipset laptop can provide.

 This also extends to light duties. The battery ended up lasting just shy of 14.5 hours in my own YouTube streaming test with the Surface Pro 11th Edition, beating Microsoft’s own claim by close to half an hour. However, these laptops are not as good at delivering battery life per watt as the best MacBooks with Apple M-series CPUs. That part makes sense: gaming drags the battery life down all the way to just two hours and will also drain faster when you’re doing high-speed downloads (on a 200MB connection).

 In general, the battery life while using the Snapdragon X Elite is good and doesn’t consume a lot of power for regular activities. It will, however, consume more power than you might believe from just the CPU alone, and some other parts drain even heavier on the battery.

What apps can the Snapdragon X Elite use?

 

 

We got long battery life in the last generation of Windows laptops powered by Qualcomm processors, like the Snapdragon 7c. However, those laptops were hard to recommend because they couldn’t run many apps or games, and the ones that did work often didn’t run well.

That’s different with the Snapdragon X Elite. Using one of these laptops feels much like using one with an Intel or AMD processor. Want to install Steam? No problem. You can download any.EXE app installer file from the internet and run it.

We’ve encountered remarkably few (but not zero) issues with app compatibility at launch, even though these systems use an additional software emulation layer to function. A few apps or games crash more often than we were used to with an Intel-powered laptop. You might also face issues with peripherals that don’t work straight out of the box with Windows 11 without additional software.

Some patience may be required, so if you can’t stand tech headaches, you might want to wait a bit before buying into this new processor’s software package. It’ll improve over time.

Snapdragon X Elite vs. Apple M-Series vs. Intel Ultra

Despite using an emulation layer to get software working, the Snapdragon X Elite’s CPU performance is similar to that of an Intel Core Ultra processor. These were released just a few months earlier and use a lot more power than the Snapdragon.

There are a few different versions of the Elite floating around too, with different clock speeds and core counts. But overall, the power available is roughly comparable to an Apple M2 chipset.

Gaming power, based on our testing, isn’t quite as good as the latest Arc-integrated graphics from Intel. But it’s better than the Intel Xe type used in low-voltage Intel chipsets and older generations. You can play games like The Witcher 3 fairly well, even the “next-gen” update version (which we got the best results with), but Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t run so well (and it crashed a bunch). Gaming is good for an integrated solution, but this isn’t a real gaming laptop replacement.

On the Windows 11 front, the Snapdragon X Elite offers performance comparable to that of an Intel or AMD laptop but with better battery life. And there’s no obvious performance loss on battery with the Snapdragon laptops we’ve tested. That’s not the case with AMD, which is also known for its longer-lasting laptops, which use throttling to control power drain.

When shopping, you should also be mindful that there’s a step-down alternative to the Snapdragon X Elite, the X Plus. The Elite has two more cores, so it’s a bit more powerful.

To get the very best performance out of a Snapdragon X Elite PC, you want software natively made for the system. This will take a while to appear, and some apps naturally won’t ever get a dedicated ARM (the architecture the Snapdragon uses) version.

Snapdragon X Elite laptops aren’t cheap either. They start at over the four-figure mark at launch, and you can get just as powerful Intel and AMD PCs for less at the time of writing. Of course, all the Snapdragon X Elite launch models are reasonably high-end designs, not budget ones.

The future of these Snapdragon laptops is much less clear than that of Apple Macs with M-series processors. It was clear that those were the future, almost from the start, because Apple controls the hardware, the software, everything. Windows laptops are more fragmented, so there’s a real question mark over how we’ll feel about these Snapdragon PCs in a few years.

What Snapdragon X Elite laptops are available?

Acer Swift 14 AI

Acer offers a competitively priced all-rounder with an OLED screen and a straightforward design, except for the light-up AI logo on the touchpad.

Asus Vivobook S 15

Asus has recently added a sense of fun to its Vivobook laptops with a single-zone RGB key backlight and substantial keys, making them a playful yet practical choice.

HP Omnibook X

This HP model features an LCD touchscreen with a durable Gorilla Glass top layer, though it lacks the contrast of an OLED. The 1TB storage upgrade is also reasonably priced.

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7

One of the best all-round AI laptops, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 boasts a high-capacity 70Wh battery, an OLED display, and a substantial keyboard. There’s also an “X” version with 32GB of RAM, but it comes at a higher price.

Microsoft Surface Laptop

This is one of the more affordable options, and like other Surface models, it looks great. However, the base version only has 256 GB of storage. Upgrading the storage diminishes the price advantage compared to the competition.

Microsoft Surface Pro

The Surface Pro stands out for its hybrid design with a detachable keyboard, making it the most flexible of the Snapdragon X Elite laptops. It supports a pen stylus, but adding the keyboard and pen can make it quite expensive.

Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge (14 and 16)

Samsung’s unique advantage is exclusive access (for now) to the most powerful version of the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, offering superior gaming performance. This laptop is top-quality all around, although the keyboard is shallower than most.