Qualcomm on How Snapdragon X2 Elite Will Shake Up the Laptop Market

Qualcomm, at its Global Highlights Summit in India, showcased the second-generation ARM-based processor for Windows PCs. The new chip was announced globally during the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii.

At the sidelines of this event in Goa, which was entirely focused on the Indian market, Gadgets 360 had the opportunity to speak with Nitin Kumar, VP Product Management - Snapdragon Chipset, Qualcomm, about how the Snapdragon X2 Elite will enhance your laptop experience.

Kumar walked us through the new chips, alongside talking about the market positioning of the all-new Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme chips, highlighting their improved performance, AI capabilities, and power efficiency. The X2 Elite offers significant improvements in graphics, AI, and power efficiency, featuring an 18-core CPU and twice the graphics capability. Notably, the chips support up to 128GB of RAM and are designed for various form factors, including thin laptops and designs that can mimic the Mac mini.

Qualcomm's Nitin Kumar, VP Product Management - Snapdragon Chipset, showcasing the new chip during keynote

The Laptop Market is Heating Up

Firstly, we wanted to understand from Qualcomm how the company defines the target user for the X2 Elite, considering both the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus are in the market. Is it purely for professionals and creators, or do you see it having a broader appeal? Kumar explained, "We announced the first-gen at our Snapdragon Summit in 2023, and the devices started to show up in June of 2024. I know it's hard to believe, but it's only 15 months since the devices have been on the market. Then, in September last year, we added the X Plus eight-core product to the marketplace. And devices started to show off around the holidays of last year. Continuing our journey, we also added the Snapdragon X, which is the entry-level portfolio from a tiering perspective. We announced it at CES, and devices started to appear towards the end of Q1 earlier this year. The launch completed the X Elite portfolio stack, right from the lead to the entry level segment, to fulfil the needs across a variety."

On the launch of the X2 Elite, Kumar added, "We are launching the X2 Elite, and think of it as the follow-up to the X Elite product portfolio. Users migrating to X2 Elite will experience significantly improved performance, enhanced graphics performance, increased AI capabilities, and a more efficient power profile. From a consumer perspective, what they expected from the X Elite architecture, they can now expect and get a lot more out of the X2 Elite."

Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme's Geekbench 6.5 Multi-core benchmark compared to rivals during the keynote presentation

On the timeline of laptops with Snapdragon X2 Elite chips, Kumar said that they expect these devices to be available by early 2026, without specifying an exact launch timeline. Since Qualcomm is working with multiple OEMs for its Snapdragon X2 Elite, we can expect partners like Asus, Samsung, and more to release their latest products featuring the chip by next year.

Is This the Chip That Beats The Competition?

Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme use Qualcomm's third-generation Oryon CPU. This is the same used on the all-new Snapdragon 8 Elite 5 chip introduced at the same Hawaii event for phones.

Spec-wise, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme offers up to 18 cores, comprising 12 prime cores with a clock speed of 4.4 GHz and two cores that can reach up to 5 GHz, marking the highest clock speed for an ARM architecture. On the other hand, the standard Snapdragon X2 Elite gets a similar core configuration. The chip-maker claims that it achieved a 31 percent increase in CPU performance over the Snapdragon X Elite while maintaining efficiency, as the new chip saw a 43 percent power reduction for the same performance. The Adreno GPU is clocked at 1.85GHz.

Qualcomm's Nitin is showing Procyon AI Computer Vision score of the new chipset compared to rivals

The highlight here is the staggering 80 TOPS Hexagon NPU that supports AI tasks with 37 percent higher performance and 16 percent lower power consumption compared to its Snapdragon X Elite from last year. Qualcomm states that this NPU is well-suited for on-device AI processing, particularly for Copilot+ features. The 64-bit NPU architecture also enables AI acceleration for media editing, multimodal content generation, and agentic AI.

For connectivity, it supports lightning-fast 5G download speeds of up to 10Gbps (peak) while also offering Wi-Fi 7 with High Band Simultaneous for peak speeds of 5.8Gbps. Additionally, it comes with dual Bluetooth with Snapdragon Sound support.

Qualcomm's New Laptop Chip Has a New Cool Trick: Meet Snapdragon Guardian

Snapdragon Guardian is the next big thing that's part of the new chips introduced by Qualcomm. Kumar talked about this new tech, "So Snapdragon Guardian is a technology that the X2 Elite platform is bringing into this space. Think of it for either consumers, retailers or enterprises. It's a device management framework or tool that can provide this capability to an enterprise."

"In an environment where your endpoint device doesn't necessarily need to be given on the network or any Wi-Fi network, it can be in a shutdown state, and as long as it has cellular connectivity, the device will have capability for the IT manager to call that device, remotely lock that device, remotely wipe that device, or push a security patch on that device, even when that device is not connected on any wired or wireless network," Kumar further added.

"Cellular network enablement is provided. You can imagine the level of additional security that it provides for enterprise consumers. You can locate your device. If you lose your device, you can locate it and understand where you last had it. It can also add more applications for our retailer partners. So Qualcomm is investing in the standard Guardian technology. And underneath the fundamental work is, of course, leveraging the modem architecture, and it doesn't necessarily need to be a 5G modem at that point. It can be a 4G modem as well, but it leverages the top one strength in cellular connectivity and is tied to X2 Elite architecture," Kumar explained.

Qualcomm has teased 5G connectivity on laptops, and that could be a game-changer. Compared to the original X Elite chipset-powered devices released in the market, the laptops powered by the latest generation X2 Elite seem slightly delayed at the moment. The company also hinted at the possibility of a merger between Android and ChromeOS with Google. On paper, the X2 Elite Extreme appears well-suited for agentic AI tasks and other demanding work, while the X2 Elite should be sufficient for most users. It will be interesting to see when these devices land in local markets, after which we can test them on Gadgets 360 for you. Stay tuned.

Disclaimer: Qualcomm India sponsored the correspondent's flights and hotel stay for the event in Goa.