Snapdragon X2E Review - It CRUSHES Everything, but...

Okay, so it finally happened. After all

these months of previews, sponsored

videos, and everything else, we finally

have full production samples of

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite, their

next generation CPU for the Windows on

ARM ecosystem. And look, the gloves are

coming off here because we are going to

put these things through a ton of tests,

A to Z. We're going to put them under

the microscope to see if all these

claims that have been made actually pan

out into good devices and good CPUs.

It's going to be interesting because a

few months ago, we published a complete

overview of these where we ran some

benchmarks on pre-production systems.

So, how close were those early numbers

to actual retail systems? Well, to find

out, we have three Asus ZenBook laptops

here, each with a different X2e

processor. There's two A16s with the X2

Elite Extreme series. basically

Qualcomm's flagship CPUs, while the A14

has a standard X2 Elite CPU. Oh, and by

the way, this video is in no way, shape,

or form sponsored by either ASUS or

Qualcomm. Even these laptops, we're

we're going to have to send them back

when all of the testing is done. But I

think at this point, a little bit, I

guess, of a refresher is probably in

order here because Qualcomm's new lineup

is pretty confusing. It includes like a

ton of new CPUs that are all very

similar, but in some key ways, they're

also different from one another, too.

Basically, the X2E 96 and 94 sit right

at the top with the only difference

between them being the 96's 300 MHz

higher boost frequency in single and

dual core workloads. Then there's three

standard X2 elites with the 90 and 88

essentially being clones of the 96 and

94 respectively, but they get D-tuned

multi-core and GPU speeds. Memory is

another thing that separates these two

series. While the Extreme CPUs rock a

massive triple controller 192-bit

interface with huge bandwidth numbers,

the X2 Elites get a standard dual

controller setup. Meanwhile, further

down the lineup, you'll find 12 core

parts that'll make it into less

expensive laptops, but only later this

year. All those are copy and pastes of

one another other than some very very

minor speed variations in their boost

frequencies. So what we have here is

what I feel is a really good

cross-section of three CPUs and three

very very similar systems. Now what we

have to do though is also set the stage

in a way by talking about all of the

competition that we're going to be

showing in this video and how they align

for things like power and screens.

Basically, what we're trying to do here

is normalize power across all the

platforms for real apples to apples

comparison. So, every laptop is set to

about 30 watts of CPU power, which is a

typical power envelope for thin light

laptops. We're also adding the results

we initially got with our pre-production

device with its beta drivers and early

firmware to see if there's been any

progression between a few months ago and

now with these mass production models.

Okay, so that sets the stage, right? But

what is the first thing that anybody

wants to know about when buying a laptop

like this? So like a thin and light

device, and that is the portability

factor. What kind of battery life are

you going to get with these new

processors? And let's start off with a

new test. We've developed a custom

script that runs laptops through a

typical day of usage. So, attending

online meetings over a webcam, setting

up spreadsheets, editing office

documents, sending emails, browsing the

web, chatting on Discord, listening to

Spotify, and watching a few YouTube

videos. It's a pretty mixed overall bag.

And here at least, the Snapdragons are

way, way far ahead, at least against the

other Windows-based devices. The two

A16s get about 2 hours more battery life

than Panther Lake models. The X1E is

even further behind, proving there's

been some serious gen efficiency

improvements here, too. Meanwhile, the

smaller A14 with its X2E888 chip is

miles, and I mean miles, ahead of

everything else except the MacBook Pro.

Moving on to our standard web browsing

test, and the situation sort of flips on

its head. While the X2E88 in the 14-inch

Zenbook is still an absolute monster

here, the other X2e systems now fall

behind Panther Lake while staying ahead

of Lunar Lake. And that's still a nice

bump over the first gen architecture,

but a little bit behind Intel's latest

and greatest. On the other hand, the

MacBook Pro's battery life is literally

impossible to beat when streaming online

video. And yet, its numbers need to be

taken with a little bit of context here

because it's the only laptop we tested

with a miniLEDD screen, which is

technically a bit more power hungry than

the OLEDs on every other device here.

Anyways, the Snapdragon stay ahead of

other Windows laptop CPUs, and the X2E88

takes a commanding lead over the 2 A16s.

It also shows vast improvements over the

pre-production laptop we tested months

ago, and that proves why we needed to

avoid its battery life results in our

preview video. They were good, but the

final numbers on the A14 are just

spectacular. The two Extreme series

processors are also pretty good here,

but they basically match the previous

generation X1E rather than beating it

outright. Personally, I think this is

simply their bigger screens eating up

more juice than the 14-in slim 7X. As

for gaming, this has more to do with how

much power is being pushed towards the

integrated graphics rather than overall

efficiency. And typically larger battery

capacities tend to win out here. But

what's evident is Qualcomm's pushing a

lot of juice to the IGP when these

things are unplugged. Yes, that will

lead to better performance, but it just

crushes battery life. Also, the

pre-production device just destroyed

everything else because its early

firmware actually throttled down power,

so was able to stay on a lot longer. So,

at least on the surface of things, those

numbers make the X2 Elite series seem

like the battery life champion, right?

They are head and shoulders above

everything else, at least in the Windows

laptop space. But what we're showing

here is sort of like the tip of the

iceberg, right? Because while we tried

to normalize for battery capacity, it

turns out that some of these laptops had

slightly bigger batteries or some of

them had actually slightly smaller

batteries. That means we need another

metric to show how good or bad these

laptops are when away from the mains. So

let's have a real applesto apples

efficiency comparison here by

calculating how many minutes of battery

life each laptop got per W hour of

capacity. So it turns out the MacBook is

still the champ here. It's just amazing,

but not by all that much when compared

to the x288. Meanwhile, all the

Snapdragon CPUs were ahead of x86

processors regardless of their screen

size. And there's one other thing here

that should be pretty evident. That's

AMD's laptop CPU lineup needs like a

complete update. With the 400 series

only being a slight refresh of their 300

series, Ryzen's are just treading water

here while everything else, especially

Qualcomm, just surges ahead. And another

thing we need to take into account is

there's only three 16-in devices here.

The two A16s and the Vivobook S16

attached to the HX 370. Meanwhile, the

X9 388H is in a ZenBook Duo that's

pretty inefficient. And that means the

XPS does show the best that Panther Lake

can be when paired up with a 14-in OLED.

Then again, that actually makes the new

Snapdragon results even more impressive.

I mean, look at this. The A16s are

getting about the same efficiency as the