This Snapdragon X Elite laptop is ALMOST perfect 🥲

This Snapdragon laptop is *almost* perfect. And using it over the past couple of months has convinced me that, even for really demanding creative work -- we're right on the cusp of Qualcomm being a really viable alternative to x86.

That's not just because the Honor MagicBook Art 14 is a fantastically performant laptop with a unique webcam-based party trick. It's also because the compatibility gap between Windows on ARM and x86 has narrowed significantly since I first looked at a couple of the early X Elite laptops last summer.

And it's also running a higher-tier X Elite than most of the competition, plus 32GB of RAM -- double what you get in the vast majority of Qualcomm-powered computers. All of that adds up to a Windows PC that sips power, looks great, lasts all day AND comes super-close to matching Apple Silicon in video editing and the like.

0:00 Intro
1:00 Hardware Basics
4:31 Performance & Compatibility
9:00 The Verdict

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[Garrettdx]

I didn’t realize these chips had 42 MB of cache. That impressive.

[jaystanheiser]

This laptop looks suppperr good! The detachable camera is on another level of innovation.

[crazyelf]

The main bottleneck is the ARM vs x86 compatibility issues that remain ongoing.

[mattiasanderssonSWE]

Done a bit of video editing on my Galaxy Book4 Edge in Capcut (with only 16GB memory, no problems what so ever).
Capcut runs natively on ARM. Davinci works as well, but is a more demanding app.

[soragranda]

The moment they show how good the second generation cores were on the 8 Elite... it pretty much killed all the hype for the X elite ones... not to mention since this year we are expecting the third gen with a hopefully more mature translation layers.

[wia_wia-mt]

I hope that soon, Qualcomm release a second generation of X Elite with at least better CPU, GPU and with same efficiency of the current generation or even better.
Also Microsoft must accelerate the optimization of the Windows on ARM.

[drfleka]

Today's AMD and Intel mobile chips are pretty close to Apple's in capability and performance per watt.

[justpeachy_]

This would be absolutely perfect if it had Linux on it!!

[AmsZero]

That music is nothing but annoying! WHY

[Pircla]

Great video but heavily disappointed that you didn’t talk about tdp !

[neilduffy]

I see your model is the UK english keyboard layout... but it doesn't appear to be available in the UK?

[backpacksash]

Luminar Neo sucks on this laptop. Even the advertised version for Arm, only available in the Microsoft Store. Upscaling never finished in Luminar Neo for Arm. I would like to love that thing, but I need to keep working on my Macbook Air M4 13"....but I'm not a fan of macOS. This is why I was looking for this Magicbook Art 14. At least Google Drive is now working...so we see progress here. Everyone who buys a snapdragon x elite now is an early adopter and can't expect perfection.

[XtergoBlue]

Qualcom isnt the problem, microsoft is.

[Wolvey]

I’m quite jealous, I wish I could get one in the US. It looks like my dream laptop, love the aspect ratio!

[Gabeyre]

All Day battery is just a marketing term with SD laptops. They dont exist.

[giannisiliopoulos]

in another year or so i think i ll have a look to these arm processors despite my apple ecosystem....

[survivor]

my lenovo thinkpad with x elite is just great creator laptop, highly recommended.

[pranavjs]

What about davinci? Does the adreno gpu get recognised?

[petouser]

Does anyone know how the compatibility is with non-mainstream, non-commercial apps? Like, idk, ffmpeg, kdenlive, free PDF applications, Microsoft office alternatives, Lightroom alternatives, video players like mpv or mpc-hc, old apps from the Windows 8.1 or 7 era, indie applications in general? If Windows for ARM is able to play all applications flawlessly, I'm convinced. Currently, the performance to price ratio is very convincing on the Snapdragon chipsets.

[hendrx]

I really wanted it but a reflective display is a big no