In case you have not followed the laptop scene for a while now, Qualcomm has joined the fray and is now competing against Intel and AMD in the Windows laptop race. For the laptops, they are using Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chipsets, both of them sport an architecture that has similarities with their Snapdragon chips on smartphones.
But what is the current status of the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus on laptops now? Is it great for students? Well, let’s discuss it here.
Great efficiency
One of the biggest strengths of the ASUS Vivobook 16 X1607QA is the efficiency and also the ability to run most of the basic applications that you need for school or for office. Unlike previous ARM-based Windows devices before, most apps have better compatibility and since this one has a chipset similar to a smartphone, the battery efficiency is excellent and it can last a whole day without a charger.
Better compatibility
Qualcomm and Microsoft have improved their compatibility of X86 apps and games to ARM processors. While it may not be perfect, we now have a better emulation of X86 apps to the Snapdragon processor of this laptop. While most popular apps now do have an ARM64 version so it runs natively on the processor.
In school, I was able to run apps such as Visual Studio Code which now comes in ARM64 version and then there’s Cisco Packet Tracer as well which is running on X86 that is emulated through the Snapdragon processor and both of them ran just fine.
Affordability
Now that kids are going back to school and everyone needs a laptop at school and this might be a possible device that you can use everyday because again, it comes with Windows and it supports most of the school apps that you need such as Microsoft 365 and more. The price tag which is below CA$ 999 makes it a pretty interesting laptop for school.
AI AI AI!
You’ve probably heard of AI too much in all devices recently but one of the best things about the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors is the support for NPU that can be used for different applications. This helps in the processing on the laptop for some applications including the ones that requires processing thru AI.
