Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon X2 laptops are here — and they brought a new friend

In September, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme, the laptop chips that, it claimed, would beryllium “the fastest and astir businesslike processors for Windows PCs.” They mightiness yet springiness Intel and AMD a tally for their money. Now, CES 2026 is bringing america the first actual laptops based connected some that silicon and the Snapdragon X2 Plus — a brace of just-announced chips aimed astatine much fund machines.

PCs pinch the X2 Elite and ones pinch the X2 Plus should some get astir the extremity of the first quarter, Qualcomm spokesperson Cassandra Garcia-Bacha tells The Verge.

Qualcomm isn’t promising peculiar value points for illustration it did successful 2024, when it proclaimed it’d bring the costs of a Snapdragon X laptop down to $700 — which makes sense, I suppose, as the world RAM shortage presently has PC prices successful flux. You’ll person to watch this week arsenic various PC makers do — and don’t — denote those prices themselves.

But Qualcomm elder head Mandar Deshpande tells maine that Snapdragon X2 products are “trying to onshore successful akin aquatics lanes” to the erstwhile generation, whose “Elite” tier started astatine $1,000, “Plus” astatine $800, and “X” astatine $600 and up.

While the Plus chips won’t person rather the powerfulness of the X2 Elite, it sounds for illustration they’re nary slouch. Though the 10-core and 6-core variants person less CPU cores than the Elite (which boast 18 and 12, respectively), Qualcomm claims they tin still swipe the level pinch a competing low-power Intel Lunar Lake aliases Arrow Lake spot successful some CPU capacity and efficiency:

And for AI tasks, they still incorporate the aforesaid 80 TOPS NPU arsenic Qualcomm’s higher-end chips. It claims they’re “the world’s fastest NPU for laptops successful its class”:

That said, the Plus won’t person astir arsenic overmuch GPU for gaming and different graphical tasks. Overall, Qualcomm says you’re looking astatine up to 35 percent CPU gains and up to 39 percent GPU gains complete a previous-gen chip, depending connected whether you’re looking astatine the 10-core aliases 6-core model, and we liked the Snapdragon X Plus-powered 12-inch Microsoft Surface Pro, arsenic 1 example.

Twenty-nine aliases 39 percent GPU gains mightiness sound respectable, but it whitethorn not beryllium capable to make these bully for gaming, and it’s thing compared to the 2.3x gains Qualcomm boasts for the Elite — and the 6-core spot has dramatically little GPU wave than moreover the 10-core chip, astatine conscionable 0.9GHz versus 1.7GHz.

Qualcomm does opportunity the Plus requires up to 43 percent little powerfulness than the erstwhile gen, though, pinch “multi-day artillery life,” and promises they won’t driblet capacity erstwhile you’re connected battery. And moreover the Plus tin support up to 128GB of LPDDR5x memory, not that manufacturers are apt to wound successful this RAM economy!

If you scheme to crippled pinch a Qualcomm + Windows laptop, you’ll beryllium pleased to perceive the institution says it’s ramping up graphics driver support. It’s not promising day-and-date updates for each basking crippled arsenic they launch, but Deshpande says Qualcomm is presently pledging quarterly driver updates and already supports immoderate 1,400 games, covering 90 percent of “the astir played crippled titles.” Its Snapdragon Control Panel app should automatically support GPU drivers up to date, and the drivers should natively support DX 12.2 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.4, and OpenCL 3.0.

While Deshpande says some the Plus, for illustration the Elite, tin standard to astir immoderate wattage for a wide scope of designs — remember, portable capacity is astir cooling arsenic overmuch arsenic aliases much than the spot — he says astir should autumn successful the 12–35W letter cover of accepted thin-and-light laptops, location whitethorn beryllium immoderate fanless designs, and we mightiness spot mini PCs that adhd an further 10W of headroom for other performance, too.

Qualcomm won’t talk astir operating systems different than Windows (say, SteamOS) aliases Windows connected Arm handhelds today, though. There’s “a batch of liking connected different operating systems, we’re looking astatine that, we’re moving connected processing immoderate of those solutions and everything, but CES is not the clip we’re announcing support,” says Deshpande.

But location is 1 hint: We should support an oculus connected the 2026 Game Developers Conference for imaginable Windows handhelds, Garcia-Bacha tells me. GDC 2026 will tally March 9th to 13th.