i don’t know if you’ll read this! 8 years ago i remember watching your video when i was 12 years old and looking for a cheap laptop to play minecraft because we couldn’t really like afford anything too expensive, and now at 20 (21 in 2 months) i have found my way back to your channel looking for a good laptop for university/college. it’s nice to see you’re still around, and you look the same age! i hope you keep making videos, and i wish you well 🫂
Currently u are paying for the battery life and heat😆 No other windows laptops currently offer this and Goodluck getting a MacBook with an OLED screen and the same size ssd/ram at this price range
I have trying out a SLEW of laptops for the last 2 months.....the Yoga Book and Yoga's are nice. I wish they used a different colored keyboard on these machines. Feels and looks like a sea of blue if that bothers you. I liked this Slim 7....but pickup and feel the chassis...doesnt feel cheap but doesnt feel super sturdy like a surface or mac. Keep this in mind when purchasing.
Picked one up earlier this week from Best Buy for testing and as a potential travel machine. It's going back as a return as there are just way too many things either not in place, or functioning correct enough for it to be considered usable. Lack of VPN client availability, limited native app support, random display resets, visual artifacts when using external displays, poor performance and only marginally better battery life.
@@typingcat For business use, a VPN is important for clients and Data Protection. If it does not support the designated security Enterprise features it is a deal-breaker.
So close, they're so close. I'm impressed with what these can do. The price is what kills it for me. You can find a reasonably specc'd AMD/Intel equivalent, most likely *with* a dedicated GPU, for that price. Roughly. If they could get eGPU compatibility down and figure out how to use the AI to aid the translation better, I think these could be absolute performance beasts. That price, though...
Wait three months, and these will dumpster dive in value. You should pick them up close to half-price secondhand. The new M4, AMD and Intel will hit these hard as all of them will be better in every metric.
@@andyH_England All computer hardware dumpster dumps in value, it's not a question of if, but when. The question is if it fits your needs now. There's always something better 3 months down the line. But never, ever, rely on marketing promises. I think Intel has called their last 5 cpus revolutionary. And AMD has already announced delays for strix, so who knows when that's coming out.
@@TalynOne, I was recommending a delay to see how native app support for ARM progresses, as I am unwilling to believe promises that it will be rainbows and unicorns in a few months; that is more likely translated to slow and arduous over the next year or so...
@@andyH_England Have had mine for about 4 days now, everything I need works, maybe 5 apps are not native but work fine under emulation. Of course people's needs vary from person to person. I don't game on ultrabooks, once you go for gaming then you sacrifice battery life, heat and fan noise and then what's the point of even having an ultrabook. People aren't buying Apple M series laptop to play games.
Sounds pretty good. With the better battery life, I want to be more mobile. I wish they'd offer an option that can take a SIM card and use the cell networks. Why can my iPad do that but not my laptops?
Those models most definitely will come soon. The previous Snapdragon laptops all had 5G on them. I am glad they released versions without 5G because the 5G versions are usually significantly more expensive.
All of these are essentially a non-premium hardware platform based laptops at a premium price. 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD on Windows is also not premium, neither is a webcam from 2015. And to add insult to injury, the starting price in Europe is 1400 euros. If you want 32GB and 1TB, that costs 1600 euros. Literally a handful of people will buy these laptops. I'd much rather buy something like an HP Spectre x360 14" at 1700 euros. But much rather nothing, because AMD Zen5 Strix Point laptops are available in 2 weeks. I think this is a quite messed up market, especially these Snapdragon devices... The more I see, the more I understand why did they feel they have to lean so heavily on marketing.
i have this laptop for web browsing and atreaming and its really good. best non Apple laptop for this use, keyboard is great and OLED screen really amazing. Battery life is next level - a bit better than my MBA M1.
Can you comment more about its speaker quality ? Hows the music or movies listening experience? How much would you like to rate it compared to a macbook ?
@@benhamilton8556 thanks for commenting. How is screen wobble when using touch screen? My very old Surface Pro, by design, never moved when using touch screen or pen. Can't decide if this beats out replacing old unit with a Surface Pro 11. Best regards.
From what I understand right now, there's only an internally created Debian build for the Snapdragon elite. However, they are trying to upstream all the kernel changes now.
I'm not sure, but the reviews suggest most of these X Elite have their bootloader locked by MS. They obviously have invested billions in the gamble on WOA and do not want people to buy them and boot Linux. WSL will be fully ready before the end of the year. I would certainly check before I bought one.
Great video! 👍All things considered, I think M$ dropped the ball on this one yet again. Of course, they can't steer the devs like Apple can, but they took way too long to put it on the market (literally weeks before AMD Strix), still couldn't even provide standard features (WSL, VPN etc.) but spent that valuable dev time on spyware nobody asked for. Considering that efficiency is still nothing to write home about, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits in my book. Switching from a low-power x86 device to Snapdragon is a far cry from Apple's switch from Intel to ARM, which made a huge difference. I guess it did help that they put early reviewers in handcuffs, that pretty much gave away early on that they weren't convinced themselves.
I bought the 16" (80) Samsung Edge 4 and exchanged it for this Lenovo. The confusing thing is that I could have Apple Music on the Samsung, but the Microsoft store tells me that Apple Music isn't compatible with the processor on the Lenovo. Disappointing. The keyboard is VERY nice to type on and I think the speakers might be a little better. I loved the Samsung, but I only really watch RUclips and do some school work on my laptop so the $250 savings kinda seemed worth it. Love having the Face ID unlock vs finger print reader as well. Confused about you pointing out the headphone jack when there isn't one though...
When it comes to smartphones, Qualcomm is notorious for dropping support for their SOC's much earlier than OEMs would like as it makes it difficult to impossible for smartphone makers to provide updates and security patches. This is one reason so many Android phones are rarely supported beyond 2-3 years. Qualcomm better not do that in this market.
Remember that M1 for macs also had a transition period. These are not gaming laptops. Copilot is completely a reason to buy these. I do not agree with you.
I just don’t find it acceptable for a version of Windows to have such lackluster compatibility. I mean even if modern games start getting updates you will still have decades of past software that likely will never work. The move to ARM for Windows is always going to be a mess.
I wonder why people are talking about gaming on a 14" laptop. A laptop of this size and processor is not suitable for gaming. That's like having a Volkswagen UP with a horse trailer - it just doesn't work. It doesn't even fit the use case for a laptop like this. It may be running okay on games that released 10 years ago - but you're not going to "main" this laptop for your Fortnite, CS2, Starcraft, Tomb Raider, GTA5, etc.
@@TalynOne because its a closed ecosystem so i would be at mercy of sony. while on computer i can buy my games at gog,steam and epic i already have a ps4 that is gathering dust. i'm not going to pay 70 bucks a game. not in this economy anyways
@@polarvortex6601 The point of these laptops is productivity and battery life. As soon as you game you make the battery life tank and completely miss the point. And as far as apps, I have over a hundred apps installed, most native, I have yet to find something I care about that I can't run.
Hi Lon, I wonder if you can do a quick test for me with Resolve. I have a surface laptop with the same chip, and I have some stutters editing 4k footage with DaVinci Resolve. On top of that, though, when I make a fusion composition, the mediaOut viewer is empty, even when I attached a background node to it, and add some text. I've been communicating with Blackmagic about this, but it's hard to know if it's just me, or if anyone else is having an issue as well? I know it's in beta, but I'm considering returning this laptop for an x86 laptop with a dedicated GPU. Resolve just feels... Slow for me. I hope my chip isn't busted or something, but the computer is fantastic with CPU tasks, otherwise.
It is an issue. DaVinci is very poor on beta and may take months to become usable. I saw a review yesterday that said after about 30 mins, it would crash and burn. I certainly would not recommend it for creators today. Come back in three months and see. By then, Intel and AMD will have superior devices that run perfectly and have improved battery life.
Other reviews on RUclips mention the same issues you experienced. If video editing is important for you, you should stick with AMD or Intel and a dedicated GPU for now. New AMD Strix Point models, e.g., will be fantastic.
@@Workaholic42 Turns out my return policy is 30-days from purchase. If I'm to return it, I'm thinking of getting the Yoga Pro 9i, fully spec'd out. Stinks I'd be missing the intro to AMD and Intel's new chips (Which those models are ARM models, right?), but I guess I could wait 3-5 more years to jump on board. Blargh. x___x
@@brianmannell9754 don't worry, you could always wait for the next big thing, but if you need it now there are also good options in the current generation
Anyone else with this lappy, mine makes creaky noise when the grill on the back opposite to the fans is pressed 😢. I got it cheap open-box from BB and would like to keep it.
Funny how Apple can emulate Windows games perfectly even on the fanless first gen M1 Macbook Air with just 8gb ram with Game Porting Toolkit 2, but Microsoft can't even emulate their own games on 32gb ram devices knowing their own services and technology. Windows 11 ARM = FLOP. Go for Macbooks if you want ARM performence or battery and Windows gaming.
That's nostalgia glasses, when M1 was introduced gaming was garbage. AVX2 compatibility was literally just added in the latest beta. Apps have just added ARM versions as recently as of last year, for a long time a good chunk of apps had issues.
True, they both target similar demographics. The difference is that X Elites are far more expensive and, therefore, faster, with more premium features like 120Hz, OLED, better speakers, and higher specs.
@@TalynOne I also own a galaxy book2 (arm) tablet + pc from 2019 and it’s useless for anything other than RUclips and see the display now and then. For rest of the tasks it’s sluggish. Now, that they, fixed processor, things might run snappy, but, should we wait for another scheme from Microsoft and partners to fix the crashing software which could take another 5 years. I recommend people to not burn their pockets based on the hype. It’s better everyone stick to intel or amd for now. Only apple is believable on their claims now.
@@vn9528 I own an IBM XT 8088, and it useless, can't even run Doom. That's why Intel sucks. Or maybe your crappy old galaxy book doesn't really compare to a new Elite Processor processor.
Lon, we appreciate your reviews.
I appreciate you watching them!
i don’t know if you’ll read this! 8 years ago i remember watching your video when i was 12 years old and looking for a cheap laptop to play minecraft because we couldn’t really like afford anything too expensive, and now at 20 (21 in 2 months) i have found my way back to your channel looking for a good laptop for university/college. it’s nice to see you’re still around, and you look the same age! i hope you keep making videos, and i wish you well 🫂
It's funny how different 12 to 20 is vs. 40 to 48 :). Thanks for sticking around all this time!
Your reviews matter, thank you for your hard work and dedication🙏
Can't wait until arm64 gain speed and the software catch up. I am totally hooked already.
15:04 I'm glad you covered Linux compatability. Look forward to an update on that.
Once again, Lon, I appreciate your trying to get Linux working on this machine! Mahalo for this report. You and I continue to patiently wait. Aloha!
From a consumer standpoint this should've been incredibly cheap or have more amazing benefits other than battery life
100% agree
Currently u are paying for the battery life and heat😆
No other windows laptops currently offer this and Goodluck getting a MacBook with an OLED screen and the same size ssd/ram at this price range
Also has 15x the stand by.
I have trying out a SLEW of laptops for the last 2 months.....the Yoga Book and Yoga's are nice. I wish they used a different colored keyboard on these machines. Feels and looks like a sea of blue if that bothers you. I liked this Slim 7....but pickup and feel the chassis...doesnt feel cheap but doesnt feel super sturdy like a surface or mac. Keep this in mind when purchasing.
Picked one up earlier this week from Best Buy for testing and as a potential travel machine. It's going back as a return as there are just way too many things either not in place, or functioning correct enough for it to be considered usable. Lack of VPN client availability, limited native app support, random display resets, visual artifacts when using external displays, poor performance and only marginally better battery life.
The hack is lack of VPN client?
@@typingcat For business use, a VPN is important for clients and Data Protection. If it does not support the designated security Enterprise features it is a deal-breaker.
These glitches in Doom actually look nice - it’s some kind of a new art mod gaming experience 😁
Great review, Lon.
So close, they're so close. I'm impressed with what these can do. The price is what kills it for me. You can find a reasonably specc'd AMD/Intel equivalent, most likely *with* a dedicated GPU, for that price. Roughly.
If they could get eGPU compatibility down and figure out how to use the AI to aid the translation better, I think these could be absolute performance beasts.
That price, though...
You're paying for the battery life, heat, and fan noise. I've had the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x for about 4 days now, no regrets.
Wait three months, and these will dumpster dive in value. You should pick them up close to half-price secondhand. The new M4, AMD and Intel will hit these hard as all of them will be better in every metric.
@@andyH_England All computer hardware dumpster dumps in value, it's not a question of if, but when. The question is if it fits your needs now. There's always something better 3 months down the line. But never, ever, rely on marketing promises. I think Intel has called their last 5 cpus revolutionary. And AMD has already announced delays for strix, so who knows when that's coming out.
@@TalynOne, I was recommending a delay to see how native app support for ARM progresses, as I am unwilling to believe promises that it will be rainbows and unicorns in a few months; that is more likely translated to slow and arduous over the next year or so...
@@andyH_England Have had mine for about 4 days now, everything I need works, maybe 5 apps are not native but work fine under emulation. Of course people's needs vary from person to person. I don't game on ultrabooks, once you go for gaming then you sacrifice battery life, heat and fan noise and then what's the point of even having an ultrabook. People aren't buying Apple M series laptop to play games.
Sounds pretty good. With the better battery life, I want to be more mobile. I wish they'd offer an option that can take a SIM card and use the cell networks. Why can my iPad do that but not my laptops?
They delayed the 5G versions as they will push the price up and make them look even more expensive, likely an extra $200.
Those models most definitely will come soon. The previous Snapdragon laptops all had 5G on them. I am glad they released versions without 5G because the 5G versions are usually significantly more expensive.
All of these are essentially a non-premium hardware platform based laptops at a premium price. 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD on Windows is also not premium, neither is a webcam from 2015. And to add insult to injury, the starting price in Europe is 1400 euros. If you want 32GB and 1TB, that costs 1600 euros. Literally a handful of people will buy these laptops. I'd much rather buy something like an HP Spectre x360 14" at 1700 euros. But much rather nothing, because AMD Zen5 Strix Point laptops are available in 2 weeks. I think this is a quite messed up market, especially these Snapdragon devices... The more I see, the more I understand why did they feel they have to lean so heavily on marketing.
Thanks much for posting.
Can you please test, if those copilot is deactivated? This horror crap. Nice vid as always, thanks!
i have this laptop for web browsing and atreaming and its really good. best non Apple laptop for this use, keyboard is great and OLED screen really amazing. Battery life is next level - a bit better than my MBA M1.
Can you comment more about its speaker quality ? Hows the music or movies listening experience? How much would you like to rate it compared to a macbook ?
@@rahulrajendra02 so if the MBA m1 is a 9/10 for speakers, I’d say the slim 7x is a 7/10. Still pretty decent. The screen is so much better though
@@benhamilton8556 Sounds great ! Thanks.
For reading this one is better than the MacBook Pro 14 ? I have terrible eye strain
@@benhamilton8556 thanks for commenting. How is screen wobble when using touch screen? My very old Surface Pro, by design, never moved when using touch screen or pen. Can't decide if this beats out replacing old unit with a Surface Pro 11. Best regards.
Great review. What about the NPU added value on video editing with Da Vinci Resolve?
Snapdragon X Elite 🔋🔋💪
Mine is comming in 32gig, 1Tb with WinPro - plan to dual-boot with Ubuntu.
From what I understand right now, there's only an internally created Debian build for the Snapdragon elite. However, they are trying to upstream all the kernel changes now.
I'm not sure, but the reviews suggest most of these X Elite have their bootloader locked by MS. They obviously have invested billions in the gamble on WOA and do not want people to buy them and boot Linux. WSL will be fully ready before the end of the year. I would certainly check before I bought one.
Great video! 👍All things considered, I think M$ dropped the ball on this one yet again. Of course, they can't steer the devs like Apple can, but they took way too long to put it on the market (literally weeks before AMD Strix), still couldn't even provide standard features (WSL, VPN etc.) but spent that valuable dev time on spyware nobody asked for. Considering that efficiency is still nothing to write home about, the drawbacks outweigh the benefits in my book. Switching from a low-power x86 device to Snapdragon is a far cry from Apple's switch from Intel to ARM, which made a huge difference. I guess it did help that they put early reviewers in handcuffs, that pretty much gave away early on that they weren't convinced themselves.
I bought the 16" (80) Samsung Edge 4 and exchanged it for this Lenovo. The confusing thing is that I could have Apple Music on the Samsung, but the Microsoft store tells me that Apple Music isn't compatible with the processor on the Lenovo. Disappointing. The keyboard is VERY nice to type on and I think the speakers might be a little better. I loved the Samsung, but I only really watch RUclips and do some school work on my laptop so the $250 savings kinda seemed worth it. Love having the Face ID unlock vs finger print reader as well. Confused about you pointing out the headphone jack when there isn't one though...
When it comes to smartphones, Qualcomm is notorious for dropping support for their SOC's much earlier than OEMs would like as it makes it difficult to impossible for smartphone makers to provide updates and security patches. This is one reason so many Android phones are rarely supported beyond 2-3 years. Qualcomm better not do that in this market.
Now android support up to 7 years
@@neddiego2570 which 7 year old phone is currently supported? Please do tell.
Remember that M1 for macs also had a transition period. These are not gaming laptops. Copilot is completely a reason to buy these. I do not agree with you.
But qualcomm recently also said optimization on windows arm is very bad
You should be saying that how much memory is up to the buyer as well. It can be 32gb
Thanks for the review Lon as always!
What about game streaming from GeForce NOW or Xbox Game Pass since Steam looks like a no go?
Game streaming will work fine - no issues there! If there's any application compatibility issues you can go through the browser.
Does your streaming software and video interfaces work on this Arm laptop?
Do you think you might be able to get a laptop with the X Plus? I would be curious to see a comparison in performance.
I just don’t find it acceptable for a version of Windows to have such lackluster compatibility. I mean even if modern games start getting updates you will still have decades of past software that likely will never work. The move to ARM for Windows is always going to be a mess.
So it’s the optimization for the gaming apps and not the laptop itself?
What codec did you use with davinci, or what camera? For the davinci resolve test?
These were H.265 videos from a mobile phone that were converted to the Da Vinci optimized format.
if u look to do another MSI cubi video im looking to get one
Yes it sems like arm chips are like made for business more like how a gaming laptop is made for gaming.
The speed with it is great.
Finally they made a laptop thats really great, and has a great screen
Do you hear fan a lot like Intel & AMD computers?
No the fan rarely comes on and when it does it's not very noisy.
I wonder why people are talking about gaming on a 14" laptop. A laptop of this size and processor is not suitable for gaming. That's like having a Volkswagen UP with a horse trailer - it just doesn't work. It doesn't even fit the use case for a laptop like this. It may be running okay on games that released 10 years ago - but you're not going to "main" this laptop for your Fortnite, CS2, Starcraft, Tomb Raider, GTA5, etc.
Could you test Fusion 360 on these? It runs like sloth on M Macs so it would be interesting to see.
The translation layer can't fix most of the x86 issues, especially GPU related. ARM and x86 are not code friends.
Why do now I expect my technology product to do Pilates or yoga, but all I wanted to do was display my Ameritrade account?
the pricing on this thing sucks for the limited software support that it has. for that price i'd rather get an intel/amd gaming laptop instead
Why not just buy a PS5, even cheaper?
@@TalynOne because its a closed ecosystem so i would be at mercy of sony. while on computer i can buy my games at gog,steam and epic
i already have a ps4 that is gathering dust. i'm not going to pay 70 bucks a game. not in this economy anyways
@@polarvortex6601 The point of these laptops is productivity and battery life. As soon as you game you make the battery life tank and completely miss the point. And as far as apps, I have over a hundred apps installed, most native, I have yet to find something I care about that I can't run.
AI functions seem not to run onto the NPU right now. Nevertheless, best Laptops with long battery life. It’s a pity, I don’t not ever need any laptop.
Game performance is largely about GPU driver optimization. AMD and NVIDIA can pull this easily and defeat Qualcomm.
There's no headphone jack where you pointed out xD. This laptop does not have one. Nice review otherwise
There's a place to plug headphones in?
Hi Lon, I wonder if you can do a quick test for me with Resolve.
I have a surface laptop with the same chip, and I have some stutters editing 4k footage with DaVinci Resolve. On top of that, though, when I make a fusion composition, the mediaOut viewer is empty, even when I attached a background node to it, and add some text.
I've been communicating with Blackmagic about this, but it's hard to know if it's just me, or if anyone else is having an issue as well?
I know it's in beta, but I'm considering returning this laptop for an x86 laptop with a dedicated GPU. Resolve just feels... Slow for me.
I hope my chip isn't busted or something, but the computer is fantastic with CPU tasks, otherwise.
It is an issue. DaVinci is very poor on beta and may take months to become usable. I saw a review yesterday that said after about 30 mins, it would crash and burn. I certainly would not recommend it for creators today. Come back in three months and see. By then, Intel and AMD will have superior devices that run perfectly and have improved battery life.
Other reviews on RUclips mention the same issues you experienced. If video editing is important for you, you should stick with AMD or Intel and a dedicated GPU for now. New AMD Strix Point models, e.g., will be fantastic.
@@Workaholic42 Turns out my return policy is 30-days from purchase.
If I'm to return it, I'm thinking of getting the Yoga Pro 9i, fully spec'd out. Stinks I'd be missing the intro to AMD and Intel's new chips (Which those models are ARM models, right?), but I guess I could wait 3-5 more years to jump on board. Blargh. x___x
@@brianmannell9754 don't worry, you could always wait for the next big thing, but if you need it now there are also good options in the current generation
Anyone else with this lappy, mine makes creaky noise when the grill on the back opposite to the fans is pressed 😢. I got it cheap open-box from BB and would like to keep it.
Lenovo tech support told me that this laptop can run an egpu because of the 40gbs. usbc
As I stated, it can if there were drivers to do so. But there are none available.
No headphone jack, no hdmi, no USB a
If only it had a haptic trackpad
Not for work x64 browser so slow, why me need that else i have phone with arm browser😢
That not need any, cheap phone more faster than that😂
Funny how Apple can emulate Windows games perfectly even on the fanless first gen M1 Macbook Air with just 8gb ram with Game Porting Toolkit 2, but Microsoft can't even emulate their own games on 32gb ram devices knowing their own services and technology. Windows 11 ARM = FLOP. Go for Macbooks if you want ARM performence or battery and Windows gaming.
Agree - Apple didn't go all in on ARM until compatibility was almost guaranteed. The games even ran better than it did on original Intel hardware!
@@LonSeidman even Windows 11 ARM runs better on M chips 😅
@@mariussm7797 yes for years the best ARM windows PC was a Mac!!
That's nostalgia glasses, when M1 was introduced gaming was garbage. AVX2 compatibility was literally just added in the latest beta. Apps have just added ARM versions as recently as of last year, for a long time a good chunk of apps had issues.
is Chrome not available for ARM Windows? What about Edge, since it's a Window's component? Why use Brave? In Pride month, no less.
How Pride month have anything to do with browser choice?
@@keithframe3489 Brendan Eich, the ceo is, among other things, homophobic. Google it.
All the main browsers are available as ARM64 native.
So it is literally not more than a Chromebook with 90hz screen.
I've owned a chromebook and I own the Snapdragon Yoga, they're nothing alike. The Chromebook is so underpowered it might as well be a paperweight.
Not even close
True, they both target similar demographics. The difference is that X Elites are far more expensive and, therefore, faster, with more premium features like 120Hz, OLED, better speakers, and higher specs.
@@TalynOne I also own a galaxy book2 (arm) tablet + pc from 2019 and it’s useless for anything other than RUclips and see the display now and then. For rest of the tasks it’s sluggish. Now, that they, fixed processor, things might run snappy, but, should we wait for another scheme from Microsoft and partners to fix the crashing software which could take another 5 years. I recommend people to not burn their pockets based on the hype. It’s better everyone stick to intel or amd for now. Only apple is believable on their claims now.
@@vn9528 I own an IBM XT 8088, and it useless, can't even run Doom. That's why Intel sucks. Or maybe your crappy old galaxy book doesn't really compare to a new Elite Processor processor.
nice first try...but it should have been much cheaper in order to make sense for people to jump on this beta testing platform...