Here are the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptops
Here are the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptops
Snapdragon X CPUs come to the Dell, HP, Acer, and Lenovo laptop
Qualcomm has said plenty about its Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus processors, but the actual laptops that will be powered by these next-gen ARM CPUs have been a mystery – that is until now.
Dell, HP, Acer, and Lenovo have all announced their first fleet of Snapdragon X-powered laptops. Now thankfully the majority of these new Snapdragon X laptops aren’t just familiar models sporting Qualcomm chips instead of Intel CPUs. Many manufacturers have introduced new, slimmer models with noteworthy screens, and reasonable prices to boot.
These new Qualcomm laptops also meet Microsoft’s new Copilot+ laptop standard, which all entails a NPU (40+ trillion operations per second) with a rearchitected Windows 11. Microsoft promises any Copilot+ PC will be 58% faster than the Macbook Air M3. Read on to learn more about the first line of Snapdragon X Elite and Plus laptops.
Acer
The Acer Swift 14 AI may well be the best-looking Qualcomm laptop. It features a slick aluminum chassis that reminds me of the Google Chromebook Pixel. Under its lid, the Acer Swift 14 AI features a large 14.5-inch WQXGA (2560x1600) IPS display with a 120 Hz refresh rate, and the hinge tilts back to 180 degrees. This laptop also notably has a high-res 1,440p webcam and AI-boosted conferencing tools in Acer PurifiedView 2.0 and Acer PurifiedVoice 2.0, which promise to make web calls clearer.
Internally, the laptop can be equipped with either Snapdragon X Elite or Plus processors, plus up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The Acer Swift 14 AI comes at a surprisingly low starting price of $1,099 despite its high-end specs.
Dell
The highlight of Dell’s lineup is the new Dell Inspiron 14. It features a thinner and slimmer chassis than its existing Intel counterpart. It measures 0.66 inches thick and weighs 3.17 pounds, making it one of the smallest laptops in Inspiron’s history. The laptop also comes fitted with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Plus X1P-64-100, featuring 10 cores that can also boost up to 3.4 GHz.
The Qualcomm-powered Dell Inspiron 14 can also be fitted with up to 64GB of LPDDR5x dual channel 8,400MT/s memory and up to 4TB of SSD storage.
Dell has also fitted the Dell XPS 13 and Dell Latitude 7455 with Qualcomm chips as well. Both laptops can be optioned with a higher-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite X1E-80-100. The Snapdragon X1 Elite comes packing 12 cores, which can boost up to 3.4 GHz altogether or two cores can push up to a higher 4GHz speed.
Either chip also comes with Qualcomm Adreno graphics, which we know from our testing is powerful enough to run games like Control and Redout III. Both processors also come with the same Hexagon NPU to handle generative and AI tasks like image generation and live-captioning.
HP
HP hasn’t just introduced new Qualcomm-powered laptops, the computer maker has also revamped its product lines. HP says they’ve streamlined part of its consumer and enterprise laptops with the new OmniBook and EliteBook lineups.
On the consumer end, the new HP OmniBook X 14 is a premium 14-inch laptop featuring a 2.2K (2,240 x 1,400) resolution screen. It can be configured with Snapdragon X Elite processors with up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage – the latter of which is the most capacity we’ve seen on these early Qualcomm-powered laptops.
The enterprise-leaning HP EliteBook Ultra G1q features the same screen and processor as the OmniBook X 14. However, it storage and and memory options are limited to 16GB of RAM and up to a 1TB SSD, respectively.
Lenovo
Lenovo similarly has introduced one consumer and commercial laptop with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6.
The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is a thin media machine equipped with a 14.5” OLED touchscreen and 4 speakers packed into a package that measures 0.5 inches thick and weighs 2.82 pounds. The OLED screen is the headlining feature as it not only gives you infinite contrast but also up to 1,000 nits of peak brightness and a 90Hz refresh rate. You’ll find a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor in the Yoga Slim 7x with up to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x will start at $1,199 and it will arrive soon in June 2024.
The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is a Snapdragon X Elite laptop made for work. It can be equipped with a staggering 64GB of memory, plus up to 1TB of storage. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 will be available in June 2024 starting at $1,699.
Overall, laptops coming with Qualcomm chips look just as well equipped as Intel- and AMD-powered machines with a few offering very impressive screens at lower prices than Intel laptops. Only time and our forthcoming reviews will tell us how well Qualcomm’s new ARM processors for computing do, so stay tuned for more as we’re sure to get our hands on some Snapdragon X laptops in two weeks at Computex 2024.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.