street hunting
What I’m working on this week: I’m working on PC desktop gaming testing and enjoying Vampire Crawlers on the Steam Deck while having playoff hockey playing in the background during the evenings.
When Qualcomm announced his first generation of snapdragon Systems on chip (SoC) in 2023I had perhaps one of the most lukewarm opinions here at Windows Central.
Well, it turns out that the Snapdragon ARM-based PC silicon started a revolution of sorts for Windows PCs (as my editor-in-chief Daniel Rubino correctly predicted), pushing Intel and AMD standards out of the spotlight where they have lived for years.
was the Zenbook A14coming in early 2025, I think it made our team take a longer pause and reconsider where we rank Snapdragon X laptops. The A14 was incredibly light, incredibly durable, and was an incredible value.
I don’t discount the work ASUS put into the laptop design, but I don’t see how this type of device would have been possible in 2025 without Snapdragon X.
Snapdragon X2 arrives and I try Qualcomm chips for the first time
Yes, I dabbled with Windows on Snapdragon using the first-generation Qualcomm chips, but it wasn’t until Lenovo sent me their Yoga Slim 7x (Gen 11) in early April that I was actually able to get a full experience of the new Snapdragon X2 Silicon.
Now that my Yoga Slim 7x (Gen. 11) Review is published, it’s time for you to put the PC in its box and return it. but me so I don’t want. Let me explain to you.
Snapdragon X2 Elite performance is better than I expected
Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme (X2E-94) is currently at the top of our benchmark performance charts, and the X2 Elite (X2E-88) I tested in the Yoga Slim 7x sits just below.
It’s better than him Ultra 9 285H Core chip Yoga Pro 9i (Gen. 10) We tried, as well as the newest one.Panther Lake” Intel Core Ultra X7 358H on the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro. The M5 The 13-inch MacBook Air’s chip beats the X2 Elite’s single-core score, but Qualcomm’s chip easily beats it in multi-core performance.
I know, I know; Benchmarks are just a slice of the pie. But for my daily workload, which involves high-resolution photo editing, heavy web browsing, streaming, writing, spreadsheets, video calls, constant use of Slack, and a few other random things, the Snapdragon X2 Elite barely broke a sweat.
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The only time, and I mean the only time, I heard the fans turn on was during a Cinebench rendering test using all the cores on the chip. Otherwise, it was completely silent on and off the charger.
That’s the other thing: I endured noticeably slower performance without the charger for years using Intel and AMD chips. That doesn’t happen with the X2 Elite.
The efficiency of the Snapdragon X2 Elite changed the way I work
My office desk is where I usually work, whether on the laptop I’m currently testing or a desktop minicomputer and docking station setup. Occasionally I take a laptop to a different room to work for a few hours when the sun is shining.
Once I discovered that the Yoga Slim 7x could last a full work day without needing to be plugged in, with Windows 11’s superior performance profile to boot, I got a lot more work done away from my desk without having to search for an AC adapter.
As I noted in my review, the Yoga Slim 7x with Snapdragon X2 Elite has a 70Wh battery. I found it through Windows Battery Report that execution times averaged just over 14 hours before plugging it in. A week of daily use later, that average only dropped by about five minutes.
This is the best estimate I can give. It’s much more accurate than a streaming video summary or a PCMark 10 test; They have their uses, mainly for comparison, but the Windows battery report is really what you should look at.
With that runtime, I can work all day, stream videos in the evenings, and log in overnight to be ready for the next day. The standby battery life is about 350 hours, so even if I forget to plug it in at night, it won’t be dead when I wake up.
App compatibility issues? What’s wrong with them?
The main argument I see regarding Windows on Snapdragon/ARM means app compatibility. Because Qualcomm chips use an ARM64 architecture, applications designed for x86 chips from Intel and AMD cannot make the transition natively.
There are a couple of things that make this question largely moot. First, there are the efforts of individual developers to create native ARM64 versions of their applications. I love seeing it and I hope those developers know that their work is appreciated.
The other is Microsoft Prism translation layer which allows x86 applications to run on an ARM64 system. Yes, there is sometimes a drop in performance due to the emulation required, but I was lucky enough to avoid it completely.
For a fairly casual Windows user like me, ARM64 app compatibility is not an issue.
My main apps, such as Slack, GIMP, Spotify, Telegram, and Edge, are all native ARM64 apps. Again, this is just a small sample, but it’s getting harder to find apps that require emulation unless you’re getting into specialized things like Adobe Premiere Pro and AutoCAD.
For a fairly casual Windows user like me, ARM64 app compatibility is not an issue. You can check for yourself whether the applications you use are native or emulated in the extremely useful WorksOnWOA website.
What about game support?
ARM64 still has more problems with games, especially if specialized anti-cheat methods are used without native support. That’s a completely different discussion; the Yoga Slim 7x (Gen 11) is not a gaming laptopnor should you try to turn it into one.
Although he The ARM64 gaming experience is going very wellespecially with lighter titles, I still recommend purchasing a gaming laptop with an Intel or AMD chip to avoid problems.
I’m totally sold on Snapdragon X2 and Windows on ARM
Based on much of the negativity I see online, I half expected to receive the Yoga Slim 7x (Gen 11) with the Snapdragon X2 Elite chip and immediately start experiencing problems.
But if you put two identical laptops together, one with Intel/AMD and one with Snapdragon, you wouldn’t immediately know which is which. Over time there would be signs, like how snappy the Snapdragon system feels when the charger isn’t charging and how the Windows battery indicator doesn’t move.
For the average user, the combination of super performance, impressive all-day battery life, and vastly improved app compatibility makes Snapdragon easy to recommend.
That’s before even getting into the costs of the devices. Qualcomm somehow manages to sell its chips for much less than similar specs from Intel and AMD, making Snapdragon X2-powered laptops some of the best value out there.
Yes, I think the idea that the arrival of Snapdragon chips would spark a revolution in Windows PCs was correct. It’s just taking a little longer than expected.
👉 Best Windows Laptops on ARM in 2026: Top-Rated Picks from Surface, ASUS, HP, and More
I want to know what you think about Snapdragon X2. Have you used one of the new chips? Did you try the first generation? How did it go? Let me know in the comments section below!
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