To the fan boys: If I could have a super power efficient laptop right now I would and it wouldn't replace my desktop PC for gaming. Yeah maybe only one device yadda yadda but gaming hardware has also really stagnated for major games so building a new out of box gaming PC with older 12th gen intel or 5th Gen ryzen is still completely doable... If you're buying a new system every year you have more money than sense and if you think people don't care about battery life for work... I don't have time to argue with a brick
I will never understand why laptop manufactures refuse to put usbc charging on BOTH SIDES!!!!! Charging is one of the most frequent ports you interact with and if your setup consistently has the port on the wrong side, it can be super frustrating. It is a point of friction and frustration that could be sooo easily solved, I just don't get it.
DRIVES ME CRAZY. And the last laptop I had with USBC on both sides, only ONE side could charge, and the other side could output video, so I couldn't use a laptop hub or dock to have external monitors AND charge 🤦🤦🤦
@@SomeGadgetGuy what? damnit. i hate to say it but the macbook could do this. another gripe i have is that generally speaking, windows laptop speakers are suboptimal to even Android tablets . i don't get it. other than maybe the Dell XPS or was it the HP envy or dragonfly or whatever it was. I am still looking forward to seeing more ARM based laptops coming out in the future though
Dell XPS does, having ports on both sides also means one can connect a monitor on each side. It's quite an obvious design thing. Unfortunately the XPS's became worse and worse after intel 8th gen with driver issues etc. It's a shame. My now very old M3800 (the business version of the XPS) still is rock solid.
@@martinspedding4210 any recommendations other than somegadgetguy? haha. I recalled i unfollow mkbhd and mrwhoosetheboss but they don't need my subscrption. , i can choose do not recommend channel and somehow, still, youtube will recommend them to me.
Kept nodding my head on the gaming segment. Hades is not just real gaming -- Hades is the definition of hardcore gaming. And so is Tetris. Whether somebody likes them or not is a completely different subject.
I'm seriously excited for the future of Windows on ARM. Try as I might, I just could never find a Windows laptop in the last 6 years that could give me the battery endurance I wanted without sacrificing performance. I eventually got a Macbook Air M2 which I've been loving. I think the transition to ARM for Windows might be a LITTLE more painful than it was for Mac, but I think in the long run it'll bring us much better mobile computers than what we've been getting with X86.
With previous Windows ultrabooks, you got performance on AC power that equalled the MacBooks, but without any of the battery life. The only other option was a big gaming laptop with a massive battery.
Did fast forwarding through the video since this isnt for me. The stuff I heard you say, was spot on as I expected. Love your stuff. As usual. You are a gift to rational thinkers.
We definitely need more real, honest, and intellectual reviewers like Juan in RUclips sphere. Most people still keep believing those popular sellouts with millions of subs thinking they're always better, which they aren't.
Nor done any research. I would not get this laptop nor recommend it if gaming is the most important thing to me or someone else. Fortunately, there are many people who can see value in it beyond gaming. Things like... - Data analysts work with Power BI. - Programming using C#, Python, ot Javascript. - Photography with the help of a $20 dongle for an SD card reader.
glad to see hardware video encoding working on the X Elite. Hopefully more apps will take advantage of the hardware and better performance in the future.
Thanks for this ! Would really love to see more advanced davinci editing test. Not that I want this machine for editing but probably be something I would need sometimes.
I think EVERYONE should have the free version of Resolve to get little family and home video edits done. It's SO much better than the trash that comes with PCs and Tablets. Miss me with clipchamp...
What a great, down to earth video. Maybe I will give an ARM laptop a shot since I'm a very light user and my old Matebook D15 from 2018 is slowly falling apart (hinges on Huawei laptops are shit).
Great video, agree with all of the points you made. Love how quiet, thin, and cool these laptops run. Looking forward to lunar lake and then the 2nd gen of these, I'm sure they'll get even better then. Hope we get 2 in 1 laptops like the Gram 16 2 in 1 Pro with snapdragon, I think it's going to be perfect with this CPU. AI is mostly not that useful so far, hate how everyone is so focused on this gimmick. I really liked the Haptic touch pad, especially with windows' touch pad customization options.
Love the rant. Still can hear the little nasal issues are dealing with currently. Get well Juan, loved the video and your points are correct. I am looking forward to the future of ARM cpus. Love my Yoga Slim 7x. It is night and day, Intel has a long way to go.
I sadly couldnt wait any longer for the more budget version of the snapdragon laptops, so I bought my first MacBook ever (m2 air) and I am dumbfounded by the battery life they afford, it has lasted easily a whole day of normal use on a single charge and its currently on its third day of light use, while my surface pro 7 was lucky to get more than 3 hours of battery life on web browsing, and excel excelling. I'm glad windows now has a similar solution, and hope this tech will soon get to more budget friendly laptops, and not stay just on the high end
@@SomeGadgetGuy one thing I noticed is when I try to play games or other things the GPU never seems to get identified it used apart from attaching a second screen. I'm waiting for the newest drivers. It's so thin and great for digital nomads. I subscribed to your channel because of your common sense reviews. Thank you
It's been a running theme with Adreno for years. It was only on 24H2 that geekbench could see a GPU and test it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider still freaks out and tells me I don't have ANY display hardware, but then runs the game comfortably above 30fps. It's different, so it's gonna be a bit weird for a while, but it has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY better over the last two years.
Can you make a video talking about using davinci resolve? It would help the stigma that the snapdragon “shouldn’t be used for video editing” that has been going around
Thank you for this review! It really is a first-hand view of this device which is very attractive! I have a Surface Pro X and, outside of the screen, has truly an amazing battery life - especially if you store it on a shelf and forget about it for a month. But it always has been a bit underperforming and not that much programs were compatible, but that is changing too. Surface devices are incredibly cool, especially if you also count the Surface Duo, but the battery life is a big problem and I prefer to use an iPad on the go than my Surface Go 2. I think the next-gen Surface Go 5 will also be on ARM, which will make them an iPad-killer machine. It is just a bit sad that MS didn't go further on the Surface Duo / Surface Neo route or even folding devices like Lenovo and others do. Thank you for the very clear explanation about how much RAM you should buy, this has made me think - I just barely missed an opportunity to buy a brand new SPro9 with 32GB for 600$ so this rings a bell - but SP9 instantly got devaluated as a portable device with the advent of the new SP11 and SLaptop 7.
@@RK-um9tu not sure what you are talking about. I own 2x Surface Go 2, one Surface Laptop Studio, one SPro 7, one SPro X, one Duo + one iPad Mini and one iPad. I use them for static and mobile work. The Windows computer are much more versatile and I can do everything with them. IPad is good for light work (notes, sketching, writing) without multitasking, with an external keyboard - or for watching photos or pdf. Duo is perfect for note taking and Kindle. As for a phone, I use Androids, can't stand iPhones. MacBooks (you mean that with "MBs", I suppose) are beautiful, have a great battery life, and M processors are powerful, but I am used to Windows and to touch screens.
the best review i've seen so far of the snapdragon x elite series. i am glad you emphasized that this is not a gaming laptop. it woke me up from the trance i was in from watching all these other reviewers whining that x elite sucks in gaming. they are bordering on, if not outright, being irresponsible when they keep on whining how the x elite sucks in gaming. as you have clearly pointed out, the x elite series is not for gaming although, yes, it can play a good amount of games. keep it my man! keep on coming up with materials like this, that although hard to find amomg the detritus that these other so-called techies provide, is very much welcomed and needed.
Ordered the base model a couple days ago to replace my Go 3 for school work (which I stuck with for two years despite it being a disappointment from day one). I'm so excited about the battery life finally getting good! Although I find the platinum color a bit boring, I could not justify spending an extra 200 euros for a different color (plus extra storage I won't use and isn't worth the money anyway).
The point that Juan never fails to bring up and that I will always support is that reviewers need to stop reviewing devices based on what they want the device to be in their specific desires as opposed to who the device is marketed for and who the ideal consumer is based on that. If you can't do that then you shouldn't be reviewing the device.
Channels like Juan's are not computer-marketing channels, but tech-review channels, his name is even "SomeGadgetGuy"... And he in fact is probably the "ideal consumer" MS targets with this device. MS has a very broad consumer-base with its Surface lineup, but mostly pros and not gamers, and also it tries to enter the creative market as it is an interesting concurrent to Apple with Surface touch-screens and extremely efficient pens (which don't work on the Surface Laptop, by the way).
It's a genuine MacBook Air competitor and for me, that's good enough. You get performance on battery and battery life that equals or beats the MacBook Air M3 while getting more RAM at a lower price. Ignore the Snapdragon skeptics out there, this thing is a MacBook that runs Windows and that makes it a no-brainer choice for anyone looking for an ultrabook.
I think we can blame microsoft for at least some of it. Wendel for level1tech spoke with developers and according to them it is terrible to develop for and the dev kits went out super later after the product launched...
Devs just NOW jumping on ARM are way behind. They could have been using the 8CX dev kits to get up to speed and get their apps on ARM. This isn't a new thing. Windows on ARM has been maturing nicely for the last three years. Qualcomm totally bungled the dev kit situation, yet the major players all seemed to be able to meet the laptop launch, like affinity or Resolve. If Adobe wanted to really get a jump on this, we know Qualcomm would have (and probably still did) bent over backwards to get them good resources. I feel the dev kit situation matters VERY little to how these systems launched.
Thanks for the review, watching it on my Surface Laptop 3 with i7 and 16 gigs of ram laying in bed with covid lol. Hope you're feeling better, always enjoy your pov on everything. Love my gen 3 but thinking about upgrading to the 7.
Fair points. On the other side putting a ryzen ai chip inside this laptop would enable gaming, removing the compatibility issues whilst almost maintaining a very good and more than enough battery life to get through the day. I'd love to pay 100 to 200 bucks more for that.
Still thinking on whether to get the Laptop 7 or Pro 11. The Laptop has built-in keyboard and more generous ports, but the Pro's new Flex Keyboard is amazing. Sure, it's not a new idea since we've seen it before with Robo & Kala and Lenovo tablets, but it's great to see Microsoft embracing the idea. Speaking of Robo & Kala, I wonder if they'll make a second gen successor of their Windows ARM tablet with the new X Plus or X Elite chip.
Thanks for sharing this. I had been thinking about either a Macbook air or pro for some mobile video editing and general productivity stuff and I was a bit put off by some of the reviews on these new snapdragon laptops as many seemed to say they were no good for video editing. However I have seen yourself in this video and a couple of other RUclipsrs now with Da Vinci resolve (no longer a beta for version 19) apparently not having any issues with not uncomplicated timelines. I am still waiting to see what Lunar Lake brings as while the new AMD brought some power it did not bring enough battery life with it it seems.
I got the lenovo s7x with 32gb memory and it is the best laptop I have ever used. Fast, incredible battery performance. Great for productivity and development. Zero interest in gaming. For local Ai I am using Lm studio which has an arm version. My dev tools all work and so does WSL.
Thank you for a Great review. I am looking to pick one up. And you are the first person that is using the 15 inch. That the one that I want. Thank you for your insite.
I totally agree with the "AMD and Intel will show in their next iteration" rant. With that said, Strix Point came out since the release of this video and while it's a great improvement over previous generations, especially in the graphics department, efficiency and battery life are not even close to these laptops. Intel? Well I have little faith in Intel. For the past decade, every year I hear that next year's version will be the real breakthrough...if they could have pulled it off, they would have done it already. They've been losing market share to AMD and Apple for years. (drops mic)
I think lunar lake will be a step in the right direction, but Intel only got there by making lunar lake as much like a phone soc as they could, and sending it to TSMC. So... Neat... But, not exactly the best argument for X86...
You know DaVinci resolve uses the npu the AI to accelerate certain features in resolve should read up on it. It's early in the game having the npu. It going to benefit the user and third-party software. I believe, to think all of this conversation was about using the npu just in the OS. Yes, it was over marketed. But I don't think AI is dumb by any stretch of the imagination.
Honestly it is a really great spec laptop with windows on arm but I still have a sweet spot for Microsoft book devices for me it gives best of both worlds and an arm version will be a beast of a device
We're due a return. Especially with a. Dedicated GPU on the base. With this arm performance, it makes a lot of sense to try again. IF the arm chips sell decently well over the rest of the year, that is.
i agree with all your points. the AI is rubbish and i havent even touched it since day 1 when i just wanted to test it out. im interested in recall though when it eventually comes out. but overall, this machine (surface 15 inch 32gb ram) is amazing! battery is great, runs mostly cool, can warm up a bit when im playing a lot of media and going through a lot of tabs, but by no means is it getting hot. the fans rarely kick on. love this device.
Totally agree with you on battery life tests. I was a bit confused where, on one hand, People just using these snapdragon laptop normally doing everyday regular work report much better battery life compared to x64 ones. On other hand, review sites (like notebookcheck) run an automated scripts are finding battery to be almost equal to intel/Amd or worse (in case of galaxy book edge 16). I lean more towards the former because I've always gotten much worse battery life than reviewers running scripts (like half or worse of noteboocheck) not even taxing the cpu. Never understood why.
After a point, it seems chip manufacturers make chips that score better on tests than really work better in the field. If you know reviewers are going to stream video for 10 hours, then you shuffle pieces around on e cores to maximize that score. Ditto phone tests, where previous android chips got HUGE geek bench scores, but Samsung had to throttle real apps the user might use.
To be fair to Microsoft, the lack of ports thing is almost across the industry. It's a cost savings to raise profit off the lowest common denominator users. Just wish they at least offered an option to pay more for more ports so you don't need a bunch of hubs and dongles.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Did this start with Apple on the PC side too? The relentless elimination of ports? I feel like it was already an issue before Surface, but maybe I wasn't following closely enough? I agree in the sense that MS has a history of trying to appeal to business users...and business users often need ports to do work...so maybe don't forget where your bread and butter is MS... I actually saw a Board of Selectmen meeting in a neighboring town where all the Board members had Surfaces. These things are getting more common in business and government, so hopefully hearing enough complaining from business users will make some change.
Oh I think Apple was more aggressive in dropping ports, but I'm not fond of PC manufacturers going "Hey! Us too!" ya know? I'm SUPER stoked looking around out here in coffee shops and seeing more SUrface Pros too. Like, folks understand an iPad is a great form factor, but it should just run a real OS at this point.
For gaming you'd also have emulation which works very well on the Snapdragon X Elite. Not for current generation of games of course but then again this isn't a computer one would buy if one needs great gaming (....then again who buys a laptop for a great gaming experience...? Really?)
To listen to some other tech "reviewers", the singular ONLY purpose of ANY computer is to play the most aggressively graphics intense new AAA title at 3000FPS. Or it is garbage.
Mate you're far to logical, get off the internet's 😂 The biggest take away in general is the religious belief in the "pitch" as if it's the current reality and beyond everything that's out there now and being used. Be it the examples you used with laptop chips or the crazy internet and media frap over Apple WWDC, be it a calculator that's had similar or more abilities elsewhere for years, the AI nonsense etc etc. weird world where claims based in an unknown future period are held above current functional options 🤦♂️
Qualcomm still has a lot of work to do. I saw Just josh's video on using it. And they somehow uninstalled the graphics driver. And they were not even able to install it back through windows updates, official website had driver listed for x elite but downloaded for the older snapdragon chip, And for me primarily these devices are just locked down to windows and theres no proper linux support on any of these. And ofc would be better to have upgradable memory and SSD. I can sacrifice some efficiency gains if it means i can put my own RAM & SSD in it.
I mentioned that in the second look. I can't even boot a portable build of Linux and that sucks. But the only thing that will change that is if these sell well enough that corporate customers pressure Qualcomm and OEMs to open up the platform and offer better driver support. Seeing as how Lunar Lake might not have upgradeable RAM, I'm at least happy an SSD replacement is super easy on the surface.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Mahalo for this update! It really helps us Linux folks out! Regarding Linux-on-ARM, I still have no trouble with my humble, little Raspberry Pi 4. However, a little mistake I made with my Asahi Linux Fedora 40 took out my install on my M1 Mac Mini. Still...I'm doing good; it had been running for months prior. I just wiped out the Linux and its partitions and reinstalled it. Up and runniing again. Imagine Windows/Linux users having this problem...on a day like today? OMG! Much aloha to you!
I know. It's been a cray day. I'm gutted for all the IT folks out there that will manually have to boot machines into safe mode. We'll never see proper restitution for all the people impacted by this.
@@SomeGadgetGuy LPCAMM is the way to go. Its good to see chip companies experimenting like they have never done for a decade tho. Also like i mentioned, qualcomm needs to give proper support with availability of its drivers as well as developer support from microsoft. And i still dont even wanna get started on how windows just feels degrading these days. Its like ms hasnt really cared about windows for sometime now
Im testing the SL7 the past 2 weeks and the standby battery life on this thing is crazy high. Im not sure what magic MS is doing here as its like twice the battery of my old laptop when its on SLEEP. That said, Snapdragon laptops are all extremely overpriced and I personally would only consider if they drop below half the current prices. There are some amazing AMD (7840U) laptops that sell for less than $800 that dont have any software compatibility issues that i ran into with this one. Most games I tried were just too buggy. Also the fact that we probably have to wait close to 2 -years for the second iteration of this chip is not making me optimistic of its future. AMD and Intel are extremely aggressive with their new chips.
I mean, it's all relative right? When a new product comes out, it's full retail. Comparing to a 7840U is not anywhere near oranges to oranges. Even the 8000 series are on significant sales, because they dont qualify for Copilot branding. So if we have a CPU that can hang (and often outperform) an 8945HS, with a significant improvement to battery life, and you can buy that system for $1300 at costco with 32GB of RAM, we're not really in bad territory for a NEW product launch. Then we have to expect that there will be holiday sales, and prices will drop further early in 2025 as there's more competition out from Intel, AMD, and MediaTek. I only did a few cursory searches, but can YOU find a well built laptop, with an 8945HS and 32GB of RAM for less than $1300?
@@SomeGadgetGuyIm currently seeing a Thinkpad with the new 8840HS for $970 32gb/1tb in slickdeals. I got an almost the same laptop for $800 last noveber for the almost same chip 7840u. Please note that the 7840U/HS and the newer 8840U/HS, 8945HS are basically the same chip (Phoenix) they all have the same 8/16-core zen4 cpu and the 12/cu rdna3 i780M GPU. the difference between all these is basically the power limits.
"Basically the same" is still not the same. One, X Elite has three times the NPU performance as the 8000 series (and a 7000 wont have that NPU). Plus, those power limits matter. The 8945HS sucks a lot more juice to NOT catch the CPU performance I can get out of X Elite. Without that higher power draw, an 8840 will fall farther behind X Elite. Like as much as 25% behind X Elite in multi-core scores. 25% reduction in performance is not "basically the same performance". Radeon graphics win over Adreno, and we should point that out, but that also means the NPU should be discussed, and the performance per watt is a loss for this AMD gen. If we're moving the goal posts to make AMD look better, then we shouldn't do this comparison until the X Elite has been out for two years and THEN compare current prices on AMD laptops today.
@@SomeGadgetGuy not sure what happened to my message that you just replied to. I was referring to the Ryzen 7000 and 8000 "basically the same performance" Don't get me wrong, I'm more than impressed with the snapdragon Elite as a first-generation product. The battery life puts the M1 Macs to shame (even accounting for the 70Wh battery). However, when considering the whole package, it falls short considering the price and "compromised" software experience. Qualcomm and MS should encourage adaptation of a new class of product. on a non related note, did you notice that Adreno is an anagram for Radeon.
AMD are releasing their 55-TOPS NPU with Strix point CPU next week. Im not convinced people should pay attention to these figures normal yet. Many continue to expect NPUs to be a gimmick for the foreseeable future. MS/QC did not even release the SDKs yet. Windows On ARM is not in a healthy place these days. I loved this video about the subject watch?v=qKRmYW1D0S0
They are little costly as of now.....where we can get refurbish/new m2-m3 Mac at good price......but I am also not a Mac guy......i want this processor to come at midrange lappy soon like 600-800$
We have to hope this first wave of laptops sells well enough to get more chips ordered from Qualcomm. I would expect more competition from Mediatek beginning of 2025 and that should help bring down prices too.
I feel like these ARM soc setups could be great for low to mid range devices, but a high end laptop without a dedicated GPU? That's a tough sell for me. Regardless of whether it's made by a fruit company or a building components company.
And yet, a ton of them exist, and they have a product segment called "ultrabook". I love those mobile workstations, but I gave up on them covering trade shows, and fighting for outlets to edit on the floor.
If Lunar Lake delivers; pass on ARM forever If Lunar Lake fails at delivering its promises; one x86 mini PC (Windows or Ubuntu) + a ARM Windows laptop. Not dealing with random incompatibility issues is too important to me, but I'm keeping an eye open to the X Elite laptops in case Lunar Lake's performance per watt isnt good enough to give me a good laptop experience.
@@christianr.5868their engineers talked about that. Meteor Lake is more efficient than Raptor Lake, it just didn't have enough E cores. Skymont is already showing impressive performance per watt, so we'll see.
@@SomeGadgetGuy 🤣🤣 Right! "Lunar Lake" sounds like a good name for an Intel ARM chip. Why? There are no lakes on Luna, and it doesn't seem the Moon is gonna get 'em soon either! 🤣🤣
Arm is only going to get better, but intel have been hot garbage since as long as I can remember. X86 has shown that power efficiency is just something they dont handle very well. My desktop is probably going to stay x86 for quite some time but i dont see myself going back to an x86 based laptop unless amd or intel can deliver a genuinely good performer that manages day to day tasks with sub 20watt power draw.
I'm more interested in getting a Snapdragon ARM laptop to install Linux on. Don't know why the hell you would want to put such a processor to waste by using it to run Windows, of all things.
Former Linux user here. Never missed going back to it after switching to Windows. Also, it's not like Linux on ARM is any better (which is ironic since you guys have Raspberry Pi to play with).
@@FAT8893I do use Linux, albeit occasionally, but only via WSL. I did tried to use Linux as the primary desktop OS, and I really can't see the appeal of it. The only reason to go for it is because it's free, which is fine but you have to deal all the software problem on your own.
Hear, hear! Bring on Linux support! Maybe I'll have to wait until they start putting these Snapdragon X Elites into those minPC boxes. By then, MediaTek Dimensity might come out with their promised ARM chips, and we'll have MORE ARM machines to waste on Windows.
To the fan boys: If I could have a super power efficient laptop right now I would and it wouldn't replace my desktop PC for gaming. Yeah maybe only one device yadda yadda but gaming hardware has also really stagnated for major games so building a new out of box gaming PC with older 12th gen intel or 5th Gen ryzen is still completely doable... If you're buying a new system every year you have more money than sense and if you think people don't care about battery life for work... I don't have time to argue with a brick
Well said.
I will never understand why laptop manufactures refuse to put usbc charging on BOTH SIDES!!!!! Charging is one of the most frequent ports you interact with and if your setup consistently has the port on the wrong side, it can be super frustrating. It is a point of friction and frustration that could be sooo easily solved, I just don't get it.
DRIVES ME CRAZY. And the last laptop I had with USBC on both sides, only ONE side could charge, and the other side could output video, so I couldn't use a laptop hub or dock to have external monitors AND charge 🤦🤦🤦
Agreed.
@@SomeGadgetGuy what? damnit. i hate to say it but the macbook could do this. another gripe i have is that generally speaking, windows laptop speakers are suboptimal to even Android tablets . i don't get it. other than maybe the Dell XPS or was it the HP envy or dragonfly or whatever it was. I am still looking forward to seeing more ARM based laptops coming out in the future though
Dell XPS does, having ports on both sides also means one can connect a monitor on each side.
It's quite an obvious design thing.
Unfortunately the XPS's became worse and worse after intel 8th gen with driver issues etc. It's a shame. My now very old M3800 (the business version of the XPS) still is rock solid.
I've had my Surface Laptop 7 13.8 X-Plus for a month now, too, and I absolutely love this thing. Best Windows ultrabook I've ever used.
I have realized reviewers review Apple products differently compared to products from other companies.
Apple always gets special consideration.
@@SomeGadgetGuy It's sad many get mislead in the name of reviews.
That is why I ignore reviews of Apple products from the majority of reviewers as they feel like are just apple marketing
@@martinspedding4210 Precisely what i also feel about those reviews. They are more like an extension of Apple marketing department.
@@martinspedding4210 any recommendations other than somegadgetguy? haha. I recalled i unfollow mkbhd and mrwhoosetheboss but they don't need my subscrption. , i can choose do not recommend channel and somehow, still, youtube will recommend them to me.
Kept nodding my head on the gaming segment. Hades is not just real gaming -- Hades is the definition of hardcore gaming. And so is Tetris. Whether somebody likes them or not is a completely different subject.
Tetris is the GOAT.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Amen.
I'm seriously excited for the future of Windows on ARM. Try as I might, I just could never find a Windows laptop in the last 6 years that could give me the battery endurance I wanted without sacrificing performance. I eventually got a Macbook Air M2 which I've been loving. I think the transition to ARM for Windows might be a LITTLE more painful than it was for Mac, but I think in the long run it'll bring us much better mobile computers than what we've been getting with X86.
I have a Windows PC rig at home for gaming and the likes, and the macbook for travelling . so i get you.
With previous Windows ultrabooks, you got performance on AC power that equalled the MacBooks, but without any of the battery life. The only other option was a big gaming laptop with a massive battery.
Finally a review where the reviewer actually used it for a while.
Of course using it for a while means it's getting zero traffic. Gotta love those RUclips algorithms.
@@SomeGadgetGuy sadly. I still feel that you're underrated. you get into the gritty details of it. explain it from your perspective.
Finally someone is making sense. I bought Lenovo yoga slim 7x 32GB and so far very impressed.
Did fast forwarding through the video since this isnt for me. The stuff I heard you say, was spot on as I expected. Love your stuff. As usual.
You are a gift to rational thinkers.
Dang, thank you for calling out the folks that think they know things, but haven't actually used the devices!
We definitely need more real, honest, and intellectual reviewers like Juan in RUclips sphere. Most people still keep believing those popular sellouts with millions of subs thinking they're always better, which they aren't.
Nor done any research. I would not get this laptop nor recommend it if gaming is the most important thing to me or someone else.
Fortunately, there are many people who can see value in it beyond gaming. Things like...
- Data analysts work with Power BI.
- Programming using C#, Python, ot Javascript.
- Photography with the help of a $20 dongle for an SD card reader.
glad to see hardware video encoding working on the X Elite. Hopefully more apps will take advantage of the hardware and better performance in the future.
I expect we'll see solid improvements. PC reviewers seem to have lost sight of how good media encoding is on phones (and phones operating around 10W).
Thanks for this ! Would really love to see more advanced davinci editing test. Not that I want this machine for editing but probably be something I would need sometimes.
I think EVERYONE should have the free version of Resolve to get little family and home video edits done. It's SO much better than the trash that comes with PCs and Tablets. Miss me with clipchamp...
What a great, down to earth video. Maybe I will give an ARM laptop a shot since I'm a very light user and my old Matebook D15 from 2018 is slowly falling apart (hinges on Huawei laptops are shit).
It's actually amazing
Great video, agree with all of the points you made.
Love how quiet, thin, and cool these laptops run.
Looking forward to lunar lake and then the 2nd gen of these, I'm sure they'll get even better then.
Hope we get 2 in 1 laptops like the Gram 16 2 in 1 Pro with snapdragon, I think it's going to be perfect with this CPU.
AI is mostly not that useful so far, hate how everyone is so focused on this gimmick.
I really liked the Haptic touch pad, especially with windows' touch pad customization options.
We really need a new Surface Book.
Love the rant. Still can hear the little nasal issues are dealing with currently. Get well Juan, loved the video and your points are correct. I am looking forward to the future of ARM cpus. Love my Yoga Slim 7x. It is night and day, Intel has a long way to go.
I sadly couldnt wait any longer for the more budget version of the snapdragon laptops, so I bought my first MacBook ever (m2 air) and I am dumbfounded by the battery life they afford, it has lasted easily a whole day of normal use on a single charge and its currently on its third day of light use, while my surface pro 7 was lucky to get more than 3 hours of battery life on web browsing, and excel excelling. I'm glad windows now has a similar solution, and hope this tech will soon get to more budget friendly laptops, and not stay just on the high end
It's hilarious to me how hard PC Bros are working to COMPLETELY miss the point of what ARM brings to the table.
I've pretty much seen all the surface laptop 7 reviews. This one is the best so far. All the others ~feel~ biased or sponsored. Great video mate!
Great job. Bought the 16 inch Samsung edge and I'm loving it. It is so snappy. I've never had an intel be so quick
And you have the fastest X Elite chip. I really want to bench that sucker...
@@SomeGadgetGuy one thing I noticed is when I try to play games or other things the GPU never seems to get identified it used apart from attaching a second screen. I'm waiting for the newest drivers. It's so thin and great for digital nomads. I subscribed to your channel because of your common sense reviews. Thank you
It's been a running theme with Adreno for years. It was only on 24H2 that geekbench could see a GPU and test it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider still freaks out and tells me I don't have ANY display hardware, but then runs the game comfortably above 30fps.
It's different, so it's gonna be a bit weird for a while, but it has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY better over the last two years.
Can you make a video talking about using davinci resolve? It would help the stigma that the snapdragon “shouldn’t be used for video editing” that has been going around
Thank you for this review! It really is a first-hand view of this device which is very attractive! I have a Surface Pro X and, outside of the screen, has truly an amazing battery life - especially if you store it on a shelf and forget about it for a month. But it always has been a bit underperforming and not that much programs were compatible, but that is changing too. Surface devices are incredibly cool, especially if you also count the Surface Duo, but the battery life is a big problem and I prefer to use an iPad on the go than my Surface Go 2. I think the next-gen Surface Go 5 will also be on ARM, which will make them an iPad-killer machine. It is just a bit sad that MS didn't go further on the Surface Duo / Surface Neo route or even folding devices like Lenovo and others do. Thank you for the very clear explanation about how much RAM you should buy, this has made me think - I just barely missed an opportunity to buy a brand new SPro9 with 32GB for 600$ so this rings a bell - but SP9 instantly got devaluated as a portable device with the advent of the new SP11 and SLaptop 7.
@@RK-um9tu not sure what you are talking about. I own 2x Surface Go 2, one Surface Laptop Studio, one SPro 7, one SPro X, one Duo + one iPad Mini and one iPad. I use them for static and mobile work. The Windows computer are much more versatile and I can do everything with them. IPad is good for light work (notes, sketching, writing) without multitasking, with an external keyboard - or for watching photos or pdf. Duo is perfect for note taking and Kindle. As for a phone, I use Androids, can't stand iPhones. MacBooks (you mean that with "MBs", I suppose) are beautiful, have a great battery life, and M processors are powerful, but I am used to Windows and to touch screens.
the best review i've seen so far of the snapdragon x elite series. i am glad you emphasized that this is not a gaming laptop. it woke me up from the trance i was in from watching all these other reviewers whining that x elite sucks in gaming. they are bordering on, if not outright, being irresponsible when they keep on whining how the x elite sucks in gaming. as you have clearly pointed out, the x elite series is not for gaming although, yes, it can play a good amount of games. keep it my man! keep on coming up with materials like this, that although hard to find amomg the detritus that these other so-called techies provide, is very much welcomed and needed.
Ordered the base model a couple days ago to replace my Go 3 for school work (which I stuck with for two years despite it being a disappointment from day one). I'm so excited about the battery life finally getting good! Although I find the platinum color a bit boring, I could not justify spending an extra 200 euros for a different color (plus extra storage I won't use and isn't worth the money anyway).
The point that Juan never fails to bring up and that I will always support is that reviewers need to stop reviewing devices based on what they want the device to be in their specific desires as opposed to who the device is marketed for and who the ideal consumer is based on that. If you can't do that then you shouldn't be reviewing the device.
Channels like Juan's are not computer-marketing channels, but tech-review channels, his name is even "SomeGadgetGuy"... And he in fact is probably the "ideal consumer" MS targets with this device. MS has a very broad consumer-base with its Surface lineup, but mostly pros and not gamers, and also it tries to enter the creative market as it is an interesting concurrent to Apple with Surface touch-screens and extremely efficient pens (which don't work on the Surface Laptop, by the way).
It's a genuine MacBook Air competitor and for me, that's good enough. You get performance on battery and battery life that equals or beats the MacBook Air M3 while getting more RAM at a lower price. Ignore the Snapdragon skeptics out there, this thing is a MacBook that runs Windows and that makes it a no-brainer choice for anyone looking for an ultrabook.
I think we can blame microsoft for at least some of it. Wendel for level1tech spoke with developers and according to them it is terrible to develop for and the dev kits went out super later after the product launched...
Devs just NOW jumping on ARM are way behind. They could have been using the 8CX dev kits to get up to speed and get their apps on ARM. This isn't a new thing. Windows on ARM has been maturing nicely for the last three years.
Qualcomm totally bungled the dev kit situation, yet the major players all seemed to be able to meet the laptop launch, like affinity or Resolve. If Adobe wanted to really get a jump on this, we know Qualcomm would have (and probably still did) bent over backwards to get them good resources.
I feel the dev kit situation matters VERY little to how these systems launched.
Thanks for the review, watching it on my Surface Laptop 3 with i7 and 16 gigs of ram laying in bed with covid lol. Hope you're feeling better, always enjoy your pov on everything. Love my gen 3 but thinking about upgrading to the 7.
Hope you're feeling better. 😊
Fair points. On the other side putting a ryzen ai chip inside this laptop would enable gaming, removing the compatibility issues whilst almost maintaining a very good and more than enough battery life to get through the day. I'd love to pay 100 to 200 bucks more for that.
Still thinking on whether to get the Laptop 7 or Pro 11. The Laptop has built-in keyboard and more generous ports, but the Pro's new Flex Keyboard is amazing. Sure, it's not a new idea since we've seen it before with Robo & Kala and Lenovo tablets, but it's great to see Microsoft embracing the idea.
Speaking of Robo & Kala, I wonder if they'll make a second gen successor of their Windows ARM tablet with the new X Plus or X Elite chip.
I really hope we see a follow up. The R&K is brilliant hardware.
Thanks for sharing this. I had been thinking about either a Macbook air or pro for some mobile video editing and general productivity stuff and I was a bit put off by some of the reviews on these new snapdragon laptops as many seemed to say they were no good for video editing. However I have seen yourself in this video and a couple of other RUclipsrs now with Da Vinci resolve (no longer a beta for version 19) apparently not having any issues with not uncomplicated timelines.
I am still waiting to see what Lunar Lake brings as while the new AMD brought some power it did not bring enough battery life with it it seems.
I got the lenovo s7x with 32gb memory and it is the best laptop I have ever used. Fast, incredible battery performance. Great for productivity and development. Zero interest in gaming. For local Ai I am using Lm studio which has an arm version. My dev tools all work and so does WSL.
It's hilarious to me how many people are TRYING to find the big drama here. These are just sold machines. I gotta try that Lenovo next...
Thank you for a Great review. I am looking to pick one up. And you are the first person that is using the 15 inch. That the one that I want. Thank you for your insite.
Happy to help 👍
This is one of the comple fare and good review......
I totally agree with the "AMD and Intel will show in their next iteration" rant. With that said, Strix Point came out since the release of this video and while it's a great improvement over previous generations, especially in the graphics department, efficiency and battery life are not even close to these laptops. Intel? Well I have little faith in Intel. For the past decade, every year I hear that next year's version will be the real breakthrough...if they could have pulled it off, they would have done it already. They've been losing market share to AMD and Apple for years. (drops mic)
I think lunar lake will be a step in the right direction, but Intel only got there by making lunar lake as much like a phone soc as they could, and sending it to TSMC.
So... Neat... But, not exactly the best argument for X86...
sounds like the portable experience macbook users have taken for granted for the past 4 years.
Except you can actually get a 2 in 1 windows machine
@@christianr.5868 and that makes all the difference.
@@shaun1900 as an artist, it does for me
@@christianr.5868 that’s funny
@@shaun1900 actually it’s irritating. Apple could literally make the best creative device on the market, but they just won’t do it
You know DaVinci resolve uses the npu the AI to accelerate certain features in resolve should read up on it. It's early in the game having the npu. It going to benefit the user and third-party software. I believe, to think all of this conversation was about using the npu just in the OS. Yes, it was over marketed. But I don't think AI is dumb by any stretch of the imagination.
Honestly it is a really great spec laptop with windows on arm but I still have a sweet spot for Microsoft book devices for me it gives best of both worlds and an arm version will be a beast of a device
We're due a return. Especially with a. Dedicated GPU on the base. With this arm performance, it makes a lot of sense to try again. IF the arm chips sell decently well over the rest of the year, that is.
@@SomeGadgetGuy definitely needed a come back I still use my book 2 😂
i agree with all your points. the AI is rubbish and i havent even touched it since day 1 when i just wanted to test it out. im interested in recall though when it eventually comes out.
but overall, this machine (surface 15 inch 32gb ram) is amazing! battery is great, runs mostly cool, can warm up a bit when im playing a lot of media and going through a lot of tabs, but by no means is it getting hot. the fans rarely kick on. love this device.
Totally agree with you on battery life tests. I was a bit confused where, on one hand, People just using these snapdragon laptop normally doing everyday regular work report much better battery life compared to x64 ones. On other hand, review sites (like notebookcheck) run an automated scripts are finding battery to be almost equal to intel/Amd or worse (in case of galaxy book edge 16). I lean more towards the former because I've always gotten much worse battery life than reviewers running scripts (like half or worse of noteboocheck) not even taxing the cpu. Never understood why.
After a point, it seems chip manufacturers make chips that score better on tests than really work better in the field. If you know reviewers are going to stream video for 10 hours, then you shuffle pieces around on e cores to maximize that score.
Ditto phone tests, where previous android chips got HUGE geek bench scores, but Samsung had to throttle real apps the user might use.
Surprised nobody has tried Minecraft yet, it's a good benchmark and one of the only games I'd play on the go.
To be fair to Microsoft, the lack of ports thing is almost across the industry. It's a cost savings to raise profit off the lowest common denominator users. Just wish they at least offered an option to pay more for more ports so you don't need a bunch of hubs and dongles.
Yeah. I just have to tag ms harder here for it as they LEAD the trend on what a Windows machine MIGHT look like.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Did this start with Apple on the PC side too? The relentless elimination of ports? I feel like it was already an issue before Surface, but maybe I wasn't following closely enough?
I agree in the sense that MS has a history of trying to appeal to business users...and business users often need ports to do work...so maybe don't forget where your bread and butter is MS...
I actually saw a Board of Selectmen meeting in a neighboring town where all the Board members had Surfaces. These things are getting more common in business and government, so hopefully hearing enough complaining from business users will make some change.
Oh I think Apple was more aggressive in dropping ports, but I'm not fond of PC manufacturers going "Hey! Us too!" ya know?
I'm SUPER stoked looking around out here in coffee shops and seeing more SUrface Pros too. Like, folks understand an iPad is a great form factor, but it should just run a real OS at this point.
Snapdragon X Elite 🔋🔋🔋💪
For gaming you'd also have emulation which works very well on the Snapdragon X Elite. Not for current generation of games of course but then again this isn't a computer one would buy if one needs great gaming (....then again who buys a laptop for a great gaming experience...? Really?)
To listen to some other tech "reviewers", the singular ONLY purpose of ANY computer is to play the most aggressively graphics intense new AAA title at 3000FPS.
Or it is garbage.
Mate you're far to logical, get off the internet's 😂
The biggest take away in general is the religious belief in the "pitch" as if it's the current reality and beyond everything that's out there now and being used. Be it the examples you used with laptop chips or the crazy internet and media frap over Apple WWDC, be it a calculator that's had similar or more abilities elsewhere for years, the AI nonsense etc etc. weird world where claims based in an unknown future period are held above current functional options 🤦♂️
Because reviewing for the most part is just marketing now. If something WILL be popular, it gets a good review.
Those "techie bros" are just people that overreact to everything. Also called "drama queens".
That mirror of a screen, though
I really wish MS would offer a matte version.
Qualcomm still has a lot of work to do. I saw Just josh's video on using it. And they somehow uninstalled the graphics driver. And they were not even able to install it back through windows updates, official website had driver listed for x elite but downloaded for the older snapdragon chip, And for me primarily these devices are just locked down to windows and theres no proper linux support on any of these. And ofc would be better to have upgradable memory and SSD. I can sacrifice some efficiency gains if it means i can put my own RAM & SSD in it.
Hear, hear! Bring on Linux support!
I mentioned that in the second look. I can't even boot a portable build of Linux and that sucks. But the only thing that will change that is if these sell well enough that corporate customers pressure Qualcomm and OEMs to open up the platform and offer better driver support.
Seeing as how Lunar Lake might not have upgradeable RAM, I'm at least happy an SSD replacement is super easy on the surface.
@@SomeGadgetGuy Mahalo for this update! It really helps us Linux folks out!
Regarding Linux-on-ARM, I still have no trouble with my humble, little Raspberry Pi 4.
However, a little mistake I made with my Asahi Linux Fedora 40 took out my install on my M1 Mac Mini.
Still...I'm doing good; it had been running for months prior. I just wiped out the Linux and its partitions and reinstalled it. Up and runniing again.
Imagine Windows/Linux users having this problem...on a day like today? OMG!
Much aloha to you!
I know. It's been a cray day. I'm gutted for all the IT folks out there that will manually have to boot machines into safe mode. We'll never see proper restitution for all the people impacted by this.
@@SomeGadgetGuy LPCAMM is the way to go. Its good to see chip companies experimenting like they have never done for a decade tho.
Also like i mentioned, qualcomm needs to give proper support with availability of its drivers as well as developer support from microsoft. And i still dont even wanna get started on how windows just feels degrading these days. Its like ms hasnt really cared about windows for sometime now
Im testing the SL7 the past 2 weeks and the standby battery life on this thing is crazy high. Im not sure what magic MS is doing here as its like twice the battery of my old laptop when its on SLEEP. That said, Snapdragon laptops are all extremely overpriced and I personally would only consider if they drop below half the current prices. There are some amazing AMD (7840U) laptops that sell for less than $800 that dont have any software compatibility issues that i ran into with this one. Most games I tried were just too buggy. Also the fact that we probably have to wait close to 2 -years for the second iteration of this chip is not making me optimistic of its future. AMD and Intel are extremely aggressive with their new chips.
I mean, it's all relative right? When a new product comes out, it's full retail. Comparing to a 7840U is not anywhere near oranges to oranges. Even the 8000 series are on significant sales, because they dont qualify for Copilot branding.
So if we have a CPU that can hang (and often outperform) an 8945HS, with a significant improvement to battery life, and you can buy that system for $1300 at costco with 32GB of RAM, we're not really in bad territory for a NEW product launch. Then we have to expect that there will be holiday sales, and prices will drop further early in 2025 as there's more competition out from Intel, AMD, and MediaTek.
I only did a few cursory searches, but can YOU find a well built laptop, with an 8945HS and 32GB of RAM for less than $1300?
@@SomeGadgetGuyIm currently seeing a Thinkpad with the new 8840HS for $970 32gb/1tb in slickdeals. I got an almost the same laptop for $800 last noveber for the almost same chip 7840u.
Please note that the 7840U/HS and the newer 8840U/HS, 8945HS are basically the same chip (Phoenix) they all have the same 8/16-core zen4 cpu and the 12/cu rdna3 i780M GPU. the difference between all these is basically the power limits.
"Basically the same" is still not the same. One, X Elite has three times the NPU performance as the 8000 series (and a 7000 wont have that NPU).
Plus, those power limits matter. The 8945HS sucks a lot more juice to NOT catch the CPU performance I can get out of X Elite. Without that higher power draw, an 8840 will fall farther behind X Elite. Like as much as 25% behind X Elite in multi-core scores. 25% reduction in performance is not "basically the same performance".
Radeon graphics win over Adreno, and we should point that out, but that also means the NPU should be discussed, and the performance per watt is a loss for this AMD gen.
If we're moving the goal posts to make AMD look better, then we shouldn't do this comparison until the X Elite has been out for two years and THEN compare current prices on AMD laptops today.
@@SomeGadgetGuy not sure what happened to my message that you just replied to. I was referring to the Ryzen 7000 and 8000 "basically the same performance" Don't get me wrong, I'm more than impressed with the snapdragon Elite as a first-generation product. The battery life puts the M1 Macs to shame (even accounting for the 70Wh battery). However, when considering the whole package, it falls short considering the price and "compromised" software experience. Qualcomm and MS should encourage adaptation of a new class of product. on a non related note, did you notice that Adreno is an anagram for Radeon.
AMD are releasing their 55-TOPS NPU with Strix point CPU next week. Im not convinced people should pay attention to these figures normal yet. Many continue to expect NPUs to be a gimmick for the foreseeable future. MS/QC did not even release the SDKs yet. Windows On ARM is not in a healthy place these days. I loved this video about the subject watch?v=qKRmYW1D0S0
They are little costly as of now.....where we can get refurbish/new m2-m3 Mac at good price......but I am also not a Mac guy......i want this processor to come at midrange lappy soon like 600-800$
We have to hope this first wave of laptops sells well enough to get more chips ordered from Qualcomm. I would expect more competition from Mediatek beginning of 2025 and that should help bring down prices too.
Comment about and and intel aged very bad. Ryzen ai 300 running circles around snapdragon with 20w power delivery to it. Lmao
Bbb bbb bbb b but gaming!!!!!!!
You turned into the little robot guy from Buck Rogers!
Keep the digressions coming
I feel like these ARM soc setups could be great for low to mid range devices, but a high end laptop without a dedicated GPU? That's a tough sell for me. Regardless of whether it's made by a fruit company or a building components company.
And yet, a ton of them exist, and they have a product segment called "ultrabook". I love those mobile workstations, but I gave up on them covering trade shows, and fighting for outlets to edit on the floor.
If Lunar Lake delivers; pass on ARM forever
If Lunar Lake fails at delivering its promises; one x86 mini PC (Windows or Ubuntu) + a ARM Windows laptop.
Not dealing with random incompatibility issues is too important to me, but I'm keeping an eye open to the X Elite laptops in case Lunar Lake's performance per watt isnt good enough to give me a good laptop experience.
Yeah they made similar claims about meteor lake, which also failed to live up to expectations
If we just keep buying them, eventually Intel will deliver right?
@@christianr.5868their engineers talked about that. Meteor Lake is more efficient than Raptor Lake, it just didn't have enough E cores. Skymont is already showing impressive performance per watt, so we'll see.
@@SomeGadgetGuy 🤣🤣 Right! "Lunar Lake" sounds like a good name for an Intel ARM chip. Why? There are no lakes on Luna, and it doesn't seem the Moon is gonna get 'em soon either! 🤣🤣
Arm is only going to get better, but intel have been hot garbage since as long as I can remember. X86 has shown that power efficiency is just something they dont handle very well. My desktop is probably going to stay x86 for quite some time but i dont see myself going back to an x86 based laptop unless amd or intel can deliver a genuinely good performer that manages day to day tasks with sub 20watt power draw.
I'm more interested in getting a Snapdragon ARM laptop to install Linux on. Don't know why the hell you would want to put such a processor to waste by using it to run Windows, of all things.
@@UltraZelda64 preference
Former Linux user here. Never missed going back to it after switching to Windows. Also, it's not like Linux on ARM is any better (which is ironic since you guys have Raspberry Pi to play with).
@@christianr.5868And also compatibility.
@@FAT8893I do use Linux, albeit occasionally, but only via WSL. I did tried to use Linux as the primary desktop OS, and I really can't see the appeal of it. The only reason to go for it is because it's free, which is fine but you have to deal all the software problem on your own.
Hear, hear! Bring on Linux support!
Maybe I'll have to wait until they start putting these Snapdragon X Elites into those minPC boxes.
By then, MediaTek Dimensity might come out with their promised ARM chips, and we'll have MORE ARM machines to waste on Windows.
HEY kislux I have been watching you for years and im so proud of where you have made it! I love you so much! Also thanks for making my day