$700 Snapdragon X PCs will be available starting next year, says Qualcomm CEO

News
By
published

More affordable computers with more efficient chips are coming in 2025.

Microsoft Surface Pro (2024)
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said during the company’s 3Q24 earnings call that the company will launch $700 Snapdragon X PCs by next year. This is exciting news for those looking for budget options, as the most affordable Snapdragon X laptop right now is the $999 Microsoft Surface Pro or Microsoft Surface laptop.

“As we look forward to 2025, in addition to new design wins, our X series product roadmap will expand to address PCs with retail prices as low as $700 without compromising NPU performance,” said Amon (via The Verge).

While you can get the Snapdragon X chip for less than $900, it’s in the form of a mini-PC desktop dev kit focused on programmers and developers building apps for Windows on Arm. It’s also not widely available yet, so you’ll have to sign up for the wait list if you want to get your hands on it. It isn't portable either, so can't boast of one of the Snapdragon X's main advantages - long battery runtimes.

We have no information as to what underlying changes will facilitate $700 Snapdragon X-powered computers. It is easy to assume that this affordable device could be another laptop with a few specs trimmed, as both Intel and AMD offer some of the best sub-$1,000 gaming laptops on the market.

However, we can also look at Apple’s products when considering Snapdragon X computers, especially as they’re being compared against MacBooks when it comes to battery life. For example, the $999 price point for the most affordable Qualcomm Snapdragon X laptop puts it in the same league as the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air.

But if you look at Macs that go for less than $1,000, your two options are the $599 Mac mini with 256GB storage or the $799 variant with 512GB. So, it might make sense for Qualcomm to partner with a manufacturer to create a Snapdragon X-powered mini-PC to take on these sleek little boxes.

Aside from the $700 Snapdragon X PC announcement, Amon also said that we will see more Qualcomm-powered computers at IFA, expanding the list of Microsoft Copilot+ PCs available from the initial launch.

“We expect PC to be the next biggest driver of diversification for the company,” says Amon. Business will be “slow and steady as the market transitions,” he admitted, but we already see some good signs coming out of the woodwork. Amon said that some Snapdragon X PCs have already sold out, while Geekbench also posted on X that 6.5% of Geekbench 6 benchmarks from June 15 to July 15, 2024, were also run on Snapdragon X devices — good signs for Qualcomm, especially as it had launched less than a month before that.

You might notice, though, that Qualcomm’s latest earnings report does not include its laptop business yet. The company says it’s too early to include the numbers yet; but with sales slowly but surely ramping up, we expect Snapdragon X chip to be a significant part of its business in the coming years.

Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

See more CPUs News
8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Notton
    It's actually really easy to hit that $700 price point
    Just look at what an Acer Aspire 3 uses.
    1080p, 300 nit, 60hz IPS screen with good enough for office color accuracy
    Use a plastic chassis
    Omit thunderbolt, or anything faster than a 10Gbps USB connection
    Use a an older and cheaper i5-1135G7, or R5-5700U with DDR4 SODIMM
    Stick to a smaller battery size

    Since X Elite (or more like X Plus) is stuck with LPDDR5X, use a slower and cheaper 5600~6400.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    Notton said:
    It's actually really easy to hit that $700 price point
    Just look at what an Acer Aspire 3 uses.
    1080p, 300 nit, 60hz IPS screen with good enough for office color accuracy
    Use a plastic chassis
    Omit thunderbolt, or anything faster than a 10Gbps USB connection
    Use a an older and cheaper i5-1135G7, or R5-5700U with DDR4 SODIMM
    Stick to a smaller battery size

    Since X Elite (or more like X Plus) is stuck with LPDDR5X, use a slower and cheaper 5600~6400.
    The RAM for x elite chips I think is on the SoC, like a phone chip or Apple Silicon, so you can't just "spec cheaper RAM".

    That being said, Qualcomm is charging vendors half of what AMD and Intel do, plus its rumored that AMD has increased their laptop chip prices to vendors by nearly $100 for their Ryzen AI 300 CPUs. Acer could take their Aspire 3, just swap the main board with Qualcomm and sell it for less with the same margins.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    Other than the low end, sub $900 market, my hope for Qualcomm chips is dead. Their performance is about on par with Apple's M3 and lowest end M3 Pro, but can't pace the M3 Max, plus M4 is around the corner. As much as I hate Apple and will never own an iphone, heres why its just better to stick with macbooks:

    1. Gaming on Qualcomm is years away. Its maybe slightly better than gaming in macOS
    2. MacOS sucks, has its frustrations, but Windows 11 has become far worse and has devolved into an adware/bloatware/spyware OS
    3. Macbook chassis are better than 99% of anything from Windows vendors. Macbook Pro's MiniLED are better than even the best OLED screens. They sacrifice a tiny bit of color & saturation, but can hit over 1,000 nits to give true HDR. I can't find a single OLED laptop screen that reliably hits 500 nits. MiniLED also can't burn in. The only real downside to macbook pro displays is the dumb notch. Macbook touchpads are still the best. Speakers are still the best. Keyboards are good enough. I could go on.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    These will make great little Linux workstations, I hope Qualcomm starts ramping up the motherboards and chips people can purchase.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    kealii123 said:
    Other than the low end, sub $900 market, my hope for Qualcomm chips is dead. Their performance is about on par with Apple's M3 and lowest end M3 Pro, but can't pace the M3 Max, plus M4 is around the corner.
    Since it's their first CPU, the improvements in next year's model should be substantial. With M3 Max, you're also comparing against a wider memory interface, which I expect Qualcomm to have an answer for, in next gen.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    bit_user said:
    Since it's their first CPU, the improvements in next year's model should be substantial. With M3 Max, you're also comparing against a wider memory interface, which I expect Qualcomm to have an answer for, in next gen.
    I'm not hopeful because Qualcomm over promised way too hard. Also, Apple Silicon iGPUs are still significantly ahead of X Elite. More than a single generation.
    Reply
  • ThomasKinsley
    kealii123 said:
    I'm not hopeful because Qualcomm over promised way too hard. Also, Apple Silicon iGPUs are still significantly ahead of X Elite. More than a single generation.
    Never go by a company's promises. A $700 ARM chip is an excellent value proposition for budget Windows laptop users who've long had to endure crummy battery life on hot and power hungry x86 processors posing as efficient laptop chips.
    Reply
  • Notton
    kealii123 said:
    The RAM for x elite chips I think is on the SoC, like a phone chip or Apple Silicon, so you can't just "spec cheaper RAM".
    SoC? It looks like a regular laptop mobo to me.
    That is a far cry from what the RAM looks like on M3 or Lunar Lake
    https://wccftech.com/snapdragon-x-elite-motherboard-in-asus-vivobook-s-15-pictured/
    Reply