Qualcomm has unveiled the latest addition to its X Series of laptop CPUs, with the new Qualcomm X Plus 8-Core range offering a lower spec than previous X Elite and X Plus 10-Core chips, making them ideal for super thin and light laptops. With their incredibly low power consumption, yet capable CPU and GPU components, these new chips should usher in a new wave of ultra-portable, incredibly long-lasting but still (just about) gaming-capable laptops.
While the best gaming laptops still predominantly use either AMD or Intel CPUs, and focus more on gaming performance than battery life, Qualcomm‘s new Snapdragon X chips are carving out a place for gamers who need to prioritize battery life but occasionally want to play too.
As its name suggests, the Snapdragon X Plus 8-Core range consists of two eight-core variants of the Qualcomm X Series, the XIP-46-100 and XIP-42-100. These join the existing X Plus 10-Core chips that have (you guessed it) ten cores and the X Elite chips that have 12 cores. These aren’t the only differences, though.
As well as a lower CPU core count, the X Plus 8-Core chips have a reduced-spec Adreno GPU. Where the X Elite line has a GPU able to power along at 4.6 TFLOPs – that’s 1012 or 1,000,000,000,000 floating point operations per second – the X Plus 8-Core is reduced to either 2.1TFLOPs or 1.7TFLOPs. For comparison, typical entry-level desktop graphics cards, such as the RTX 4060 or RX 7600, have TFLOP ratings of around 20TFLOPs. Meanwhile, the integrated graphics on AMD’s rival Ryzen AI 300 processors top out at around 12TFLOPs and Intel’s Lunar Lake hits 3.8TFLOPs.
Along with the completely new 8-Core range, there’s also a new addition to the 10-Core range, with a variant that doesn’t include a boost clock for its CPU, but is otherwise identical to the existing 10-Core model.
So, it’s clear the X Plus 8-Core won’t be a gaming powerhouse, but it will still allow you to run some 3D games at low settings. We recorded a 3DMark Wild Life Extreme frame rate of 23.5fps on the slightly more powerful 2.1TFLOPs model, as shown below, and a frame rate of 19.2fps for the 1.7TFLOPs model. It will also run any 2D games with which it’s compatible. What’s more, this chip is able to drive three external displays with up to a 4K resolution running at 60Hz.
For those champing at the bit for Microsoft’s new CoPilot+ and other AI features, you’ll also be glad to know that Snapdragon X Plus 8-Core also includes up to 45TFLOPs of neural processing power from its Hexagon NPU. This will allow for on-device AI workloads, saving the need to use cloud-based AI services for certain tasks.
By far the most appealing aspect of these chips, though, is their low power consumption, which should translate into long battery life. Qualcomm doesn’t provide specific TDP figures for the new chips, but does make some bold claims about battery life. For instance, it claims the 8-Core will double the battery life of the Intel Core Ultra 155U while running a Teams video call. The company says it will also last 77% longer while watching YouTube and generally outlast its competitor in a wide range of scenarios.
Meanwhile, existing X Elite laptops regularly last for over 20 hours of non-stop use. With the lower clock speeds and overall performance levels of this version of the X Series, we can expect to see even longer battery lifetimes.
In fact, the likes of Dell have already announced new laptops with incredible battery life figures. Its new Latitude 5455 supposedly lasts for 27 hours, though this is all but matched by Dell’s new XPS 13 laptop that uses the new Intel Lunar Lake platform, with that machine claiming 26 hours of battery life. Prior to this, though, the likes of the old Dell XPS 13 lasted for around 14 hours, so both Intel and Qualcomm are making huge strides in this regard.
What’s more, these chips have been shown to reliably hold on to the last few percent of their battery and not mysteriously run out of battery while your laptop is in your bag. It’s no longer a gamble to put a Windows laptop away on standby with only 20% battery life – with Qualcomm’s chips, you still have days of use left. We’ll just have to wait and see if the same holds true of Intel’s new chips.
The crucial factor to note about all of Qualcomm’s X Series processors, though, is that they’re based on the Arm CPU architecture, rather than Intel’s x86 architecture. That means the chips don’t natively support all the apps you normally run on Windows, as these expect an x86 CPU. Instead, these CPUs use on-the-fly emulation to convert applications to run on the Arm CPU cores.
While that may sound daunting, application support and performance have so far proven excellent on X Elite chips. The most obvious blockers at the moment are some prominent Adobe applications, such as Adobe After Effects, which aren’t yet supported, and games that use kernel-level anti-cheat also don’t work. That means that, while the vast majority of games do run, popular multiplayer titles such as Apex Legends, CS2, and Fortnite don’t work.
Half a dozen manufacturers have already announced new laptops using these chips, including the Asus VivoBook S 15 shown below, so you can expect a flurry of long-lasting, thin-and-light laptops to flood the market from today onwards, with prices starting from just $799. You might not be playing Black Myth Wukong or Star Wars Outlaws at 4K on these machines, but for a secondary machine for on-the-go gaming, they look set to giving traditional AMD and Intel-based laptops a serious run for their money.
For more detail on the sort of games that are likely to be ideal for playing on these new laptops (though do check before downloading them), check out our best laptop games guide, which includes a host of games that either don’t put a huge demand on your GPU or are well suited to the limited form factor of a laptop.