Snapdragon X Elite powered laptops could be Windows' answer to Apple Silicon with multi-day battery life

Your next Windows laptop might not be powered by an Intel or AMD processor but could be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. Windows PC makers have been waiting for a robust solution to take on the Apple Macbook Air, which is one of the most popular laptops in the world. The battle has further intensified since Apple moved entirely to Apple Silicon. In response, Microsoft and Qualcomm have joined forces with PC manufacturers to rethink the Windows PC.

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Microsoft is betting heavily on Windows devices powered by Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus as they are the first Co-pilot+ PCs to hit the market. Microsoft has specified the hardware requirements for Copilot+ PCs, which include an NPU capable of at least 40+ trillion operations per second (TOPs), 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and 256GB of UFS/SSD storage. The company announced the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 recently and these devices are available in India as well.

Apart from Microsoft, established laptop manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, and Samsung have launched multiple devices powered by Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus across the world. Honor and Xiaomi are also expected to announce their devices shortly. After a series of initial setbacks and challenges, Windows Arm PCs are finally ready for prime time.

Back in 2021, Qualcomm acquired NUVIA, a Silicon Valley company, founded by ex-Apple engineers which was developing custom CPUs for data centers and servers. Qualcomm subsequently announced that it plans to bring the technology to flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops, and digital cockpits. The new Oryon CPU in the Snapdragon X Elite devices is the brainchild of that acquisition. The X series chips feature between 10-12 CPU high-performance cores, support high speed LPDDR5X RAM, high speed storage, built-in Adreno graphics and a dedicated NPU for AI workloads.

Asus Vivobook S 15 OLED is one of the first devices based on Snapdragon X Elite to launch in India and the highlight is the 15.6-inch 3K 120Hz OLED display which is a treat to the eyes. The 16:9 aspect ratio is ideal for multitasking. It packs the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB of storage. Despite being a 15-inch laptop, it weighs just over 1.4kg and offers 2 USB-A ports, 2 USB Type-C ports, HDMI out, microSD card reader and a headphone jack. Asus claims over 18 hours of battery life, and I was easily able to use the laptop for multiple sessions spread across days with a single charge. The only area I found lacking was the absence of a touchscreen, as the Vivobook comes with a non-touch display while most other devices feature a touchscreen. It is priced at INR 1,24,990 and is available on Flipkart and offline stores.

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On the performance front, Qualcomm claims that the new laptops are significantly faster than the competition in terms of CPU and NPU performance while consuming lower power. It even competes closely with the latest Apple M3 MacBook Air in every aspect. Coming to battery life, these devices can last anyone for a day or more when used in balanced profile and even more if used in power saver mode. Even if you need a charge, most of these devices can be charged by a USB Type-C charger and you don’t have to lug around your hefty power brick.

Microsoft and Qualcomm have made some significant progress in the apps department by getting most of the popular apps used by consumers, to run natively on the platform. On the productivity front, Microsoft Office, Libre Office, Slack, Dropbox, Zoom, TeamViewer are supported. For content creators, popular apps such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Affinity Photo, GIMP, Canva, and CorelDRAW run natively. Adobe Premiere Pro and After Affects native support is expected to arrive later this year but users can use the X86 version through emulation.

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For content consumption, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Spotify and VLC Media Player are supported. I tried running Microsoft Visual Studio, VS Code and PHP Storm and everything worked as expected. There are still some Apps that are not compatible with Windows on Arm but Microsoft has developed an emulation layer called Prism which lets you run legacy X86 apps on the new architecture for apps that are yet to be supported natively.

If you have been wanting to get a Windows laptop that can take on a MacBook air, the time is finally here. While the first wave of laptops launched cost upwards a lakh in India, things might get very interesting next year when devices might launch in the $600 or Rs. 60000 price point.

Snapdragon X Elite certainly marks a new dawn for thin and light Windows laptops which have been plagued by heating issues, poor battery life and often underpowered when compared to the Apple MacBooks. Windows laptops are finally on par with or even better than Apple MacBooks and the future looks promising. With Intel Lunar Lake and AMD Strix Point based laptops also launching later this year, I am very excited about PCs after a long time.

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