This is one of the first Windows laptops running Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite chip. After a false start for Windows on ARM-based chips a few years back, this is the beginning of Qualcomm’s big push into the Windows notebook space — promising equivalent computing horsepower to Intel’s latest Core Ultras, but more importantly the kind of power efficiency we’ve so far only seen from Apple Silicon.
The computer I’ve been using it in is Lenovo’s Yoga Slim 7x — one of the new CoPilot+ PCs featuring Microsoft’s latest suite of AI features. And it’s a pretty typical device in this range in that it doesn’t cost the earth, anc yet it delivers a formidable bang for its buck — especially for any kind of day-to-day productivity workflow that ISN’T, for example, video editing or 3D modelling. And even gaming isn’t as much of a non-starter as I’d initially feared. That said, though, compatibility is still somewhat of a minefield in this brave new ARM-based Windows world.
