- Qualcomm has officially taken the wraps off its new Snapdragon X CPU
- This processor is very power-efficient, as you might expect
- However, the low price is key here, promising to deliver Copilot+ PCs at around $600
Qualcomm has revealed a new Snapdragon chip to power more affordable Copilot+ PCs at CES 2025.
The new CPU is simply called the Snapdragon X – sitting underneath the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite SoCs – and it’s designed to enable laptop makers to sell AI notebooks in the $600 range.
Qualcomm had already primed us for the arrival of this vanilla chip, but this is its official revelation at CES.
The 8-core CPU has the same NPU (with 45 TOPS) required to qualify as the engine of a Copilot+ PC, and Qualcomm claims that the processor “delivers up to 163% faster performance at ISO-power than our competitors.”
More broadly, Qualcomm asserts that: “Snapdragon X is an ideal solution for students, freelance workers, and budget-conscious consumers who need a reliable and powerful laptop that can keep up with their busy lives.”
We’re told that laptops with the vanilla Snapdragon X chip will be on shelves in early 2025, so presumably in the next month or two. Leading laptop makers will support the chip, as you might expect, which includes Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo portables, in the $600 price bracket as mentioned.
Analysis: All part of the Copilot+ PC masterplan
Coming back to the performance claim Qualcomm aired above, the comparison is made against an Intel Core 5 120U – a Raptor Lake-U CPU from a year ago. It’s something of an odd choice, given that the Snapdragon X is a Copilot+ PC targeted SoC, and has that beefy NPU – and the Intel processor doesn’t – but it’s more about the laptop price bracket than anything else (and Lunar Lake doesn’t have an affordable equivalent, not yet anyway).
The Snapdragon CPU is clearly nicely power-efficient compared to that Intel chip, but this is just one benchmark, and as ever, first-party claims in press releases like this need to be taken with a good handful of seasoning. That said, it’s no surprise that a piece of Snapdragon X silicon would do well in terms of efficiency, as the rest of the family does a very good job on this front.
The key element here is the price, though. When Copilot+ PCs first emerged, they were exclusively Arm (Snapdragon) machines, and they were also very pricey. Over time, with the Snapdragon X Plus, those price tags came down (to more like $800), and with this new vanilla Snapdragon X, these AI laptops are now going to become truly affordable (and perhaps feature more heavily on our list of the best laptops).
Remember, if these Copilot+ PCs emerge at around $600, when they go on sale down the line – during this Black Friday (it’ll be here before you know it) for example – we could see some really tempting bargains.
Whichever way you dice it, this is a win for the consumer, and these much more affordable Arm-based laptops are doubtless part of Microsoft’s bold predictions for the success of Copilot+ PCs.
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