We might see 10 to 12 hours of battery life on Snapdragon X Elite-powered Windows laptops similar to MacBooks. In terms of efficiency, Qualcomm says the Snapdragon X Elite matches the peak performance of an x86 processor at 68% less power, which is huge.

Snapdragon X Elite 80W (Qualcomm CRD, Linux) Snapdragon X Elite ( Qualcomm ZH-WXX, Windows) Snapdragon X Elite ( Galaxy Book4 Edge, Windows) Qualcomm is also working on Snapdragon X Plus with 8 Oryon CPU cores that would compete against the base Apple M2 and M3, and may also bring 5G connectivity on the go. Leaked Snapdragon X Elite benchmarks indicate that the 23W variant of SD X Elite with 12 Oryon CPU cores sits somewhere between the Apple M2 Pro and Apple M3 Pro. However, the performance was not up to the mark, hence, many PC makers chose to skip ARM processors on their laptops. Later in 2017, the Windows on ARM (WoA) platform moved to Windows 10, and till now, Microsoft has launched several devices with Qualcomm’s ARM-based processors. Microsoft started adopting the ARM architecture in 2012 with Windows RT.

Performance-per-watt became the leading metric to judge a processor. And so the race to reduce power consumption began while delivering better performance. The tide turned when Apple announced its in-house Apple M1 chip in 2020, based on the ARM64 architecture, delivering desktop-class performance and unparalleled efficiency. It was dismissed as a replacement for the x86 architecture to deliver desktop-class performance. Thus, came the ARM architecture that promised unrivaled efficiency and great performance, however, it was initially used on low-compute devices like smartphones. The problem became so painfully obvious that everyone started to look for an alternative. Windows laptops have been meme-fied to the point of being labeled as “hot garbage” and “junkware”. Not to mention, the sluggish performance is often compounded by the use of slower HDDs and Microsoft’s increasingly bloated Windows OS. And even if it did at the start, the battery life deteriorates quickly. In my experience of using Windows laptops for more than a decade, I’ve never seen a laptop offering a battery life of more than 3 to 4 hours. While Windows laptops offer good performance, they are also, well, known for offering the worst battery life. However, efficiency has been one of its biggest challenges, leading to more power consumption and heat generation. Fast forward to today, and a majority of Windows PCs are powered by the x86-64 architecture.įor nearly four decades, the x86 architecture has proven well, scaling performance to meet the demands of modern computing on Windows. Later on, AMD implemented the 64-bit architecture in the early 2000s. Intel developed the first 32-bit architecture processor based on the 8086 microprocessor. The x86 architecture has been powering Windows since the 1980s.

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