Roundup: Snapdragon X Elite Windows laptop first impressions, performance and battery life preview

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: Review embargoes have lifted, painting an early picture of how the Snapdragon Elite X stacks up against x86 machines powered by AMD and Intel as well as Macs featuring Apple's own Arm-based silicon. Today the first wave of laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series processors have hit shore, so it's time to take a look at Microsoft's Copilot+ PC initiative up close.

Let's get the bad news out of the way first.

These first Copilot+ PCs come with some early adopter compromises, meaning they won't necessarily deliver everything we've been hoping for right out of the box. Microsoft recently postponed its controversial Recall feature following intense criticism, and it could take a while before native Arm versions of apps arrive.

Still, there's a lot to like from the get go and it starts with raw performance. In multi-core testing on the Asus VivoBook S 15 using Geekbench 6, several publications including Tom's Guide noted impressive performance that outpaced Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air.

In Cinebench 2024, the Snapdragon X Elite-equipped VivoBook turned in a single-core score of 108 and a multi-core score of 956 at Notebook Check. For comparison, a MacBook Air 15 M3 scored 142 points in the single core test, but just 589 in the multi-core run.

Tom's Hardware, one of the only publications we could find testing something besides the VivoBook – in this case, a Microsoft Surface Laptop 15 – showcased the laptop's capabilities in Handbrake.

Here, the Snapdragon X Elite smoked a ThinkPad X1 Carbon running an Intel Core i7-155H with a time of 2:39 versus 8:57 (lower is better).

Tom's uncovered decent gaming performance as well. Baldur's Gate ran fine when locked at 30 FPS, and if you're willing to lower the graphics settings, Devil May Cry 5 had no problem ticking along at 60 frames per second.

The sailing wasn't as smooth for Windows Central. Most games the crew tried to grab from the Windows Store refused to download as they were only compatible with x86 processors. Games from Steam would download, but the first three they tried – Apex Legends, Halo MCC, and Halo Infinite – errored out with a CPU incompatible message.

They lucked out with GTA V, however, which averaged around 65 FPS at 1080p. Spider-Man Remastered at low-medium settings @ 1080p was also playable, but averaged closer to 40 frames a second.

Tom's briefly touched on AI workloads with Geekbench ML, where the Surface Laptop 15 lagged behind the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with a score of 2,160 versus 2,834. Windows Central found it to take just under 10 seconds to generate images using the Photos app, and had nothing but praise for the enhanced Windows Studio Effects.

Battery life is another strong suit for Snapdragon X Elite.

Windows Central got 14 hours and 16 minutes out of their VivoBook using PCMark 10's battery life test. Matthew Moniz on YouTube squeezed 14 hours and 40 minutes out of his VivoBook test unit, and Dave2D clocked 10 hours and 46 minutes from his Asus laptop.

After a full 12-hour day of mixed usage, Tom's Guide saw their VivoBook's battery dip down to 47 percent.

Normally we'd have a wider variety of systems to include in a roundup like this but with Microsoft pulling support for Recall at the last minute, several publications were reportedly late in receiving review samples.

Still, it's an impressive start to the new era of Arm for Windows and we can't wait to see how things turn out once Microsoft gets its ducks in a row.

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Roundup: Snapdragon X Elite Windows laptop first impressions, performance and battery life preview

 

[HardReset]

Cinebench 2024:

Snapdragon X: 108/956
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370: 124/1525

Nothing to see here. ARM still has long way to go,

 

[BobHome]

Yup, typical M$:
1. Rush it to market.
2. Over the next year, get (most of) what was promised pre-launch working with it.

 

[SRB]

Since most x86 programs are NOT recompiled for ARM, why do I see no mention of how well WART (Windows on Arm) worked with said x86 programs? I know I have some games, utilities, and devices that are not compiled for ARM, and the claim to fame for Windows on ARM is that it will run X86 code without a hitch.

As another site mentioned, I'll give up an extra 8 hours of battery life in order to run ALL of my software and hardware.

 

[CBTex]

Glad to see the battery life is good. For me, on a laptop, battery life is more important than ultimate speed. This thing is plenty fast enough for my next work pc.

 

[daffy duck]

I'm sure performance will improve quite a bit. A lot of those apps aren't optimised or native to ARM, drivers will improve etc. I would never buy into a brand new architecture within 12 months of release. Also next year we get Nvidia and Mediatech (not sure about that one) coming to ARM. Additonally, I'm waiting to see what Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake H/HX and Strix Point/Halo perform like especially battery.

The thing that sucks for ARM for us photographers their won't be many decent native apps. Adobe won't ever do an ARM version nor will the smaller players like Affinity or On1. I'm not running emulation period.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Since most x86 programs are NOT recompiled for ARM, why do I see no mention of how well WART (Windows on Arm) worked with said x86 programs? I know I have some games, utilities, and devices that are not compiled for ARM, and the claim to fame for Windows on ARM is that it will run X86 code without a hitch.

As another site mentioned, I'll give up an extra 8 hours of battery life in order to run ALL of my software and hardware.

Emulator is called Prism and it's discussed in the embedded videos.

 

[toooooot]

Great battery life indeed. It would be interesting to see Qualcomm providing an alternative to Apple's computers.

 

[i like foxes]

No gaming no dice . I dont care about battery life .

 

[ferrellsl]

I'm sure performance will improve quite a bit. A lot of those apps aren't optimised or native to ARM, drivers will improve etc. I would never buy into a brand new architecture within 12 months of release. Also next year we get Nvidia and Mediatech (not sure about that one) coming to ARM. Additonally, I'm waiting to see what Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake H/HX and Strix Point/Halo perform like especially battery.

The thing that sucks for ARM for us photographers their won't be many decent native apps. Adobe won't ever do an ARM version nor will the smaller players like Affinity or On1. I'm not running emulation period.

Who in their right mind uses Adobe products after the news from this past week?

 

[Watzupken]

I think the results are encouraging for what I think is the first official effort to run Windows on ARM SOCs. Previous attempts were nothing more than experiment to slap a mobile phone SOC in a laptop form factor running Windows with minimal optimization. In any case, I am not expecting this to mimic the success of Apple's M1 because Qualcomm simply does not have the hardware and software integration like Apple.

 

[frqiszen]

I'm sure performance will improve quite a bit. A lot of those apps aren't optimised or native to ARM, drivers will improve etc. I would never buy into a brand new architecture within 12 months of release. Also next year we get Nvidia and Mediatech (not sure about that one) coming to ARM. Additonally, I'm waiting to see what Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake H/HX and Strix Point/Halo perform like especially battery.

The thing that sucks for ARM for us photographers their won't be many decent native apps. Adobe won't ever do an ARM version nor will the smaller players like Affinity or On1. I'm not running emulation period.

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are already available on ARM64 and Premiere and illustrator should be released in the next 10 days

 

[Farkinell]

Will we ever see an ARM laptop with a dGPU?

I appreciate this removes any battery advantages but being able to only fire up the dGPU in graphically intensive tasks has been possible for some time now.

Having a 12 hour work laptop that has the responsiveness of a MacBook in day to day applications but be able to actually play a few games (even for just a couple hours) is my dream machine.

 

[rmcrys]

Who in their right mind uses Adobe products after the news from this past week?

That!

I left Adobe products for quite some time now as they were the:
1) most expensive
2) more bugs
3) worse and heavy code
4) for many years no GPU hardware acceleration on windows and it’s one of the worst (heavily CPU dependent)

So…why bother. The last set was for private use and only after comparing to a open source Bryson of it, I saw that the Adobe product was just taking 5x longer because it had only GPU acceleration on macOS and just barely. WT.? I paid hundreds of euros for a thing that (sadly too late) I made with open source 5x faster… never again.

After having so many possibilities and alternatives, I won’t buy Adobe (and eventually Asus) ever again.

Either way, these ARM chips and buyers will only have to win:
- the performance and battery life is already fantastic
- more apps will get their code updated and compiled to ARM, which will gain 10-17% performance
- drivers and firmware will improve with further speed gains
- battery life will improve

What may not improve much: GPU performance. Through drivers and firmware and native ARM we may see 10-20% gains but that’s it. Compared to most new x86 and Apple M, it’s still a little short…

Who knows? Maybe Qualcomm and game developers really put some effort and money on it and they’ll get even greater improvements. Nvidia and AMD sometimes get >20% speed boost just with drivers

 

[Knightley 1]

Since most x86 programs are NOT recompiled for ARM, why do I see no mention of how well WART (Windows on Arm) worked with said x86 programs? I know I have some games, utilities, and devices that are not compiled for ARM, and the claim to fame for Windows on ARM is that it will run X86 code without a hitch.

As another site mentioned, I'll give up an extra 8 hours of battery life in order to run ALL of my software and hardware.

I would say then this is not aimed at you, if you have specific needs. These elite laptops are for your casual users who want a premium device without any sacrifices, like battery or performance. I am that audience.

 

[Knightley 1]

No gaming no dice . I dont care about battery life .

These devices are not for you as you stated. It is for the everyday user that wants a nice balance of performance and battery life. Gaming is not in that equation, at least yet

 

[ZedRM]

Since most x86 programs are NOT recompiled for ARM, why do I see no mention of how well WART (Windows on Arm) worked with said x86 programs? I know I have some games, utilities, and devices that are not compiled for ARM, and the claim to fame for Windows on ARM is that it will run X86 code without a hitch.

There isn't any. Comparability doesn't seem to be high on Microsoft's list of priorities, which is very sad(read pathetic).

As another site mentioned, I'll give up an extra 8 hours of battery life in order to run ALL of my software and hardware.

A lot of people are 100% with you there.

 

[ZedRM]

I would say then this is not aimed at you, if you have specific needs.

No, they have very general needs that Windows on ARM can not provide for. Without the X86/X64 compatibility layer, this platform is a fail, end of story.

 

[SRB]

Emulator is called Prism and it's discussed in the embedded videos.

Apologies, but I read because I don't have the patience for videos and ads. While we're at it, I haven't really found a complete and in depth review.

Regardless of what it's official name is, the only solid information about it that I've seen was in some pre release articles that said it is badly broken.

 

[daffy duck]

Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are already available on ARM64 and Premiere and illustrator should be released in the next 10 days

Well colour me surprised. I guess it's only Linux that is the true bastard stepchild. Well that's piqued my interest a bit more. I suppose though, since they support ARM on Apple, it wasn't a surprise. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[daffy duck]

Will we ever see an ARM laptop with a dGPU?

I appreciate this removes any battery advantages but being able to only fire up the dGPU in graphically intensive tasks has been possible for some time now.

Having a 12 hour work laptop that has the responsiveness of a MacBook in day to day applications but be able to actually play a few games (even for just a couple hours) is my dream machine.

Do a search about things like MBs and dGPU for ARM. It's possible but ARM doesn't support DX12, so unless game makers also make Vulcan/OpenGL version does it matter?

 

[toooooot]

There was no magic. We got a great cpu/gpu that eat very little power, allows to play pc games (low med settings) but that is where it stops.
But. If they work hard, and somewhere along the way, 3-4 years later they can produce a laptop with the same power requirements but much stronger graphics, that will be much closer to dethroning many rivals including Apple. This is one of the main arguments I hear for apple: "it lasts all day."
Qualcomm is on the right way

 

[frqiszen]

There was no magic. We got a great cpu/gpu that eat very little power, allows to play pc games (low med settings) but that is where it stops.
But. If they work hard, and somewhere along the way, 3-4 years later they can produce a laptop with the same power requirements but much stronger graphics, that will be much closer to dethroning many rivals including Apple. This is one of the main arguments I hear for apple: "it lasts all day."
Qualcomm is on the right way

The "it lasts all day" and "it performs the same on battery" are super compelling reasons to get a Mac ... Thought I can't stand the interface. I have an Alienware laptop that lasts 50 minutes on battery while working on after effects while sounding like a jet engine. Meanwhile a MacBook lasts all day

 

[Nictron]

Glad to see the battery life is good. For me, on a laptop, battery life is more important than ultimate speed. This thing is plenty fast enough for my next work pc.

12-14 hours of reasonable performance is what is needed. Most of the laptops we procure that should run for 8+ hours can't even run Outlook, Office suite, Teams and our main audit application without hitching all the time. Moving to high performance does not even get 4 hours of run time on battery. These are 12 and 13 series intel U series CPUs.

 

[hwertz]

I'd love to try one with a Linux distro on it! They have full software coverage (like 98-99% of the packages a typical distro has available to install on x86/x86-64 are available on ARM; and for outside stuff, of course due to the high popularity of the Raspberry Pi, that's also ARM so you have a decent shot at 3rd party stuff having an ARM version too.) box86/box64 apaprently work quite well for running x86/x86-64 to the point that steam etc. run fine on it. The GPU drivers are apparently very good, so wine/dxvk/vkd3d and Steam Proton do give Windows games full DX9/10/11/12 support. Since the Mesa Gallium "Ardreno" 3D driver is ALREADY feature-complete and doesn't have known bugs, Qualcomm has specifically said they will address bugs that affect gaming if any turn up. And if you figure out how to hook up a GPU with thunderbolt or get an ARM desktop and stick one in the PCIe slot or whatever, the open source drivers are fully portable so both AMD and Intel GPUs should work fine; and Nvidia had shipped their binary drivers for ARM Linux for many years, full OpenGL, full Vulkan, full CUDA.

I ran a Acer Chromebook 13 with a Tegra K1 (ran Chrubuntu of an SDCard rather than the ChromeOS.) So, the SDCard of course meant the disk I/O speed was bad. But the machine got 22 hour battery life under typical load, 12 hours FULL LOAD (like video encodes.) It was reasonably quick (quad core 2.2ghz ARM, and GPU about dead even with a GTX650.) I'd still be using it if the entire computer hadn't basically disintegrated (after 1.5-2 years, like within 2 weeks of each other, the case started getting these cracks, the power connector got funky, the battery quit holding a charge, the touchpad got weird, and the SD Card slot started acting up.. or possibly the card went bad? I don't know, whatever. )

I've read the Qualcomm Mesa 3D driver has full OpenGL AND full Vulkan support in Linux (like same number of extensions and options supported as the AMD driver...), and Qualcomm has SPECIFICALLY said (since the driver is already feature-complete) that they'll specifically target bugs that affect games. It has full DX9/10/11/12 support in Wine and Proton. I think it might even support raytracing (although I imagine you might want to leave it off for performance reasons.)

(Are you sure this isn't DX12 compatible in Windows? I thought it was?) "Ardreno" driver is an acronym for Radeon, the GPU in these is directly descended from the Mobile Radeon ATI was developing when AMD bought them out (part of the terms was to spin off the mobile unit to another company, so Qualcomm got it.)

As for dGPU? Well, I know for a fact Linux's open source drivers run on non-x86/x86-64 fine; I've used regular ol' GPUs in the distant past on PowerPC, Alpha, PA-RISC (ironically not an ARM), and no problem. Mesa Gallium 3D drivers are fully portable. Nvidia's driver has been available for ARM Linux for a long time.

I read last year about some company shipping an ARM workstation (with like a 144 core ARM or so.. tons of RAM slots... tons of SATA and NVMe ports... and plenty of PCIe slots.) Someone asked them "Well, ARMs are not known for having a strong GPU, and this chip doesn't either. What'd you do about that?" "It's got PCIe slots, we put a 4090 in it."