The Truth about Snapdragon X Laptops…

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Elite X processors promise to be big on performance and little on battery drain, but can they possibly live up to Qualcomm’s lofty claims?

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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 - Intro
0:54 - Odoo!
1:07 - Where did Snapdragon X come from?
2:54 - Battery Life
3:30 - Performance & Emulation
7:35 - Gaming
8:55 - CoPilot+
10:45 - Final Thoughts
11:29 - Odoo!
12:28 - Outro

[calvinmills]

I almost didn't click this video because Linus was in the middle and not on the left of the thumbnail.

Edit: to worst part is, I didn't watch the video when I commented. I came back to it a few hours later.

[illuminati]

The audio recording difference was insane!

[Jallerblue]

This has been a weird two weeks as these reviews have started coming out.
I pre-ordered an X1E Surface Laptop soon after the announcement because I actually work at a chip company that makes ARM processors, so I was excited to experiment with it.
It came in on June 18th and I've been running this machine into the ground trying different applications and use cases out. It's been so much fun getting to find out all of these quirks before reviews are out.

I definitely hope situations like this don't happen in the future with little to no review embargo periods before other high-profile tech releases, but in this specific case, it was a lot of fun for me.

[peterstainburn]

Stress tests really show the weakness of these processors. They are very snappy when cold but once they are saturated with heat from a stress test then the clock speeds plummet. Even the x84 variant drops down to clock speed of about 2.2GHz under a full load stress test. Thermals are about 78-80C in these conditions and for some reason the fans don’t really spin up fast when they reach these temps. If it is a thermal restriction then hopefully a bios patch to allow for faster fan speeds might fix it. But that clock speed drop really hurts its performance.

[norbsobil]

Please show benchmarks while
1. Plugged + High Performance Profile
2. Unplugged + High Performance Profile
3. Unplugged + Low Power Mode

[NoKi]

Given the performance and the extended battery life, Snapdragon X feels like a good pitch to university students. I'd buy it a few generations down the line when they refine the other aspects of the chip.

[james.a.h.]

I learn more from the comments than the video. Thanks guys.

[gavrook]

You forgot to mention the price, these laptops are priced like MacBook Pros not their equivalent AMD/Intel models. That is to say basically double

[chaitanyamore]

Finally i can play clash of clans on it

[thatchinaboi]

Apparently, none of the major music production software can run on ARM, despite the promise of "full compatibility" via a translation layer.

[Mattski_]

I'd just like to say, the way you've changed graphs, made it a lot easier to understand them. I really like the little white pulsing dots, showing the results of the laptops you were talking about. I also like the colours of the FPS graphs as it took your vision to the 1% lows which are the most important thing but still had the average shown in muted grey.

[cynicist]

One thing a lot of people don't mention is the standby time. I have the Lenovo Slim 7x, which I received a week ago. When I took it out of the box, I charged it to 100%. I have not had to charge it this whole week. It is still at 35% at the last time I suspended it, and it may use 1-3% battery overnight.

So not only is it insanely efficient during use, but you also don't need to worry about it dying on you while you are away. I'll never use an x86 laptop again. In fact, I wish there was an ARM desktop chip with discrete GPU support. Thanks Qualcomm!

[AZisk]

where is the ultimate battery test ? :)

[DrSkiba]

I tried the Samsung Book4 Edge 14" and, by god, we did not have the same experience with the Qualcomm processors. The Samsung Book4 Edge is loaded with x86/x64 Samsung bloatware and the battery life is absolutely terrible -- 8 hours at most, but regularly just getting 6 hours. Throw that one at the labs team, I'll be standing by with popcorn.

Watching this after Josh new release video this hour. Ooo..

[Bobur]

How's the battery life on linux for the snapdragon? Software/kernel level power management can make quite a big difference os to os.

[subrezon]

Now I need someone to test Linux on that thing.

[notlekrut]

Can't believe you didn't do performance tests on battery... where's the heavier workloads unplugged? where's the battery life on heavier workloads? where's performance per watt comparisons? I'm seeing Qualcomm pushing higher power budgets, but throttle more aggressively in battery compared to M chips. The same performance plugged/unplugged is a huge deal on current macbooks. You won't be able to determine that from a battery test that is only a youtube playback

[FindSimpleGuides]

Impressive test results on Snapdragon X Elite chips. Love that we're seeing more competition in the processors market especially in terms of power efficiency and performance.

[FelipoGoncalves]

i have a Dell XPS 13 here for testing. the fact that I changed the power on windows to performance, and unplugged the power cord and the performance didnt change, was amazing. a bunch of tests went so well, so i can recommend the xps 13 (apart from pricing maybe).