Qualcomm launched its first large activity of Windows laptops this summertime at $999 and up — but a new, somewhat weaker spot could soon shave disconnected astatine slightest $100. Today, nan company’s announcing its first 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chips, which will characteristic successful a caller Asus Zenbook S 15 and Dell Inspiron 14 that’ll unit for $899 each.
While nan caller Qualcomm chips person each nan same features arsenic nan 10-core and 12-core models, they’re decidedly weaker successful immoderate ways — particularly graphics. On average, they’ve sewage little than half nan GPU powerfulness for games and different graphical apps. And while they each characteristic nan aforesaid 45 TOPS of AI capacity from their NPU, they’ve besides sewage 12MB little CPU cache.
Image: Qualcomm
According to Qualcomm’s ain soul benchmarks for nan caller 8-core chips (take pinch atom of salt), each that intends they’re astir 80 percent arsenic tin arsenic nan company’s 12-core chips successful nan CPU realm, and on-par pinch nan 10-core chips for productivity. But pinch nan 8-core, those graphics scores are predictably trim successful half.
Image: Qualcomm
Would you want to prevention money this way? I could decidedly spot it for entry-level laptop buyers — peculiarly if you’re really redeeming $400, arsenic nan lawsuit mightiness beryllium for nan Asus Vivobook S 15. That laptop primitively costs $1,300 pinch nan 12-core chip, but it’s conscionable $900 pinch nan 8-core, contempt featuring nan aforesaid large 70 watt-hour artillery and 3K 120Hz OLED screen. The only different evident sacrifice is half nan storage, arsenic you’ll get 512GB alternatively of 1TB.
But income mightiness make nan pricing spread smaller than it appears: The 12-core Asus Vivobook S 15 is already connected waste for $1,100 or lower, and Dell is already trading nan a 12-core exemplary of its Inspiron 14 Plus for $899.
Asus is besides announcing a Qualcomm-based creator laptop today, nan $1,099 ProArt PZ13, which besides has nan aforesaid 3K OLED touchscreen and 70-watt hr battery, but pinch a detachable keyboard and stylus support, and some Asus machines should beryllium disposable today. Dell besides has an Latitude 5455 pinch nan caller spot and very akin specs to nan Inspiron, but nary pricing.
Qualcomm antecedently said its laptops would dip as debased arsenic nan $700 mark successful 2025.
English (US) · 
Indonesian (ID) ·