Found a Lenovo Slim 7X with an X Elite (3.4GHz which is fine IMHO, it's *about* M2-class and a bit better on FP, worse efficiency, but all 12 cores and full GPU).
- 3K OLED display, touchscreen (irrelevant part to me though), and 90Hz (I leave that off though).
- 16GB LPDDR5x 8400
- 512GB SSD
- 72Whr battery
- slim design, great trackpad.
for $750 at Best Buy, instead of $1199.
Now, before someone jokes about how there's no demand for Arm or whatever and that's why this was so cheap -
They run sales constantly, even MacBook Airs are $200 off, and Intel Lunar Lake laptops are $300 to $400 off as well right now - they have 1920x1200P OLED Intel Lunar Lake Vivobooks for $650 (regular $950) right now. Or well reviewed Lunar Lake Slim 7i Aura (3K display, not OLED though) laptops for $899 (regular $1299). These are no doubt the best x86 - and arguably Windows - laptops you can buy right now from a battery life/performance/GPU/compatibility perspective, and they're seeing similar-sized as the Qualcomm ones right now. You are also seeing up to $500 off for AMD's latest, like with this Omnibook. Microsoft/Apple only $200 off ish. Hell, Walmart even has the same Vivobook with an Intel Lunar Lake 228V but a 32/1TB as opposed to 16/512 at Best Buy for $799 (regular 1199) and it's a Best Seller.
These sales are everywhere right now, it's increasingly standard for PC's.
Just wanted to clear that up: as I'm positive someone's going to say as much reflexively, and while I have no doubt that at the high end Arm laptops are having more trouble with demand for equivalent priced Lunar Lake laptops - this is not fire sale stuff, and the issue of course is even finding a precise equivalent. Qualcomm seems to have a lower floor - you can find Omnibook X with a Snapdragon X Plus and the same 2.2K, 300 nit display as the high end AMD one right now on sale (for $1000 vs 1500) for $550, albeit 16GB/512GB, but for a student even doing basic office work and programming or whatever, that's pretty good, and it'll have better battery life. And then Intel Lunar Lake vs the X Elite on paper from a pure CPU standpoint is a win for the X Elite, while the HX/AMD CPU's are going to be less efficient and notably worse on battery life, and broadly have to sell for more. In general though Intel and AMD would have an advantage in ST, albeit without any efficiency advantage and not enough to I think be worth writing home about given how variant power and frequency ramping policies are anyways.
As predicted they do seem to have cornered a versatile design and chip which is an outgrowth of better design to begin with - lower BOM, more horsepower than Lunar Lake, still as efficient as Lunar Lake (or similar enough low "idle" for low load stuff) but more efficient than AMD, 85-90% as good of ST as AMD/Intel's latest on the 3.4GHz common bin, and then more adaptability with the 8-core die and now a 6-core cut down one which we haven't even seen just yet. The single downside is obvious and probably the one thing holding it back this generation despite disappointing yet still doing enough to show out AMD and Intel, and I'll get to that.
Anyway, the laptop is great, keyboard is B+ to A-, totally fine. Would I prefer an Apple laptop keyboard or possibly an XPS (new)? Probably, but this is well within usable and fine. Trackpad is great, and while I am pretty sure Apple's is still slightly more "accurate" it is nowhere near what fanboys claim IMHO, Windows precision trackpad drivers and adoption of glass touchpads solved this issue on premium laptops years and years ago. It's kind of like Android vs iOS today but even less apparent - and in this case you have more optionality such as for mice. The one downside is quite simple - lack of a haptic trackpad. More overall durable I'd say, and the difference in force makes a subtle but noticeable difference. The Surface Laptop and the XPS now have this, and it's much more enjoyable.
Battery life is pretty good. With web browsing and the screen at half to 80% brightness (so should be from 150 to more like 350+ nits given the sliding isn't linear) I can easily get 6-12 hours. 6 being a lower bound with a lot of downloads and installs going on too. It is easily the most responsive and efficient, cool + quiet Windows laptop I've used, and I've used Zen 4 AMD laptops as well.
Display is fantastic, it *feels* higher PPI than my M2 MBA. It is by 10%, but I think some of this is also about OLED, font rendering and/or the ability to scale elements a bit larger without destroying real estate. Not sure though, scaling seems pretty similar to how it was on my Air for UI elements, just out of the box default (200% here). In theory Windows OLED rendering sucks - in practice if that's the case it doesn't feel that way at least for high resolution displays on a laptop where things are so blown up anyway. Colors are great, no issues. Brightness is a bit better than my MacBook Air, but not too much (it's all logarithmic to the mind anyway, I think indoors 500-600 nits is your sweet spot of peak).
Speakers are probably better than a MBA for watching movies, and have more customizable options, but are not going to be better for music. Louder and more oomph but not as balanced. Again though, nothing game ending.
Fans rarely come on with web browsing and some basic programming and compilation (though then they have once). Very cool to touch. Windows standby/hibernation issue mostly solved, not Apple-tier but you can easily lose just 1-3% a night with programs open.
Compatibility has actually not been an issue for the CPU - most of my development tools I need are here now. Recently looked into a text editor for markdown I hadn't even heard of called Typora - to my shock they now have a Windows on Arm version. (https://typora.io/). I suspect this is just going to continue rolling for the most part. But it's not perfect of course.
Emulation seems fine but have only tested one thing - Calibre.
The one snag is of course the GPU: even launching Civ VI lead to an immediate crash, one I don't think is related to emulation. The other thing that concerns me is probably just general UI stuff or like GPU acceleration in web browsing, and DirectML performance. Bad drivers can make that less efficient than it should be and cause snags, and in this case the GPU just not being quite versatile enough can further impact that. So, predictably, gaming is a no-go and the GPU is not as versatile as it should be nor are the drivers yet good enough. It won't impact like 99% of work but I'd say getting the gaming drivers to B+ status, making the next GPU larger/more efficient and ensuring the GPU is, also, B-/+ minimum for raster and compute is important. I do think Qualcomm will do exactly this, even if Nvidia's next WoA chips will blow everyone out, QC just needs to be as good as Radeon/Arc and more efficient, seeing as they'll have sizable leads over everyone else in other domains that count quite a bit (CPU performance/efficiency, area, probably also cost reductions or profit padding from connectivity solutions they sell, etc).
Will update more as I go as I intend to do some benchmarking on it. I might not keep it - primarily because of the GPU and compat at the moment - but the latter is really, really close for basic office and development, but had to try it out. There is no doubt in my mind that 12-18 months from now we will "be there" with Windows on Arm even on Snapdragon next gen chips (and I say that realizing games will still be a snag, but less so). People say "this has been said for x time" but hyperbolic forecasts of the past can still be directionally correct. And in this case I wouldn't even say that forecast is hyperbolic at all, especially for WoA as a whole given Nvidia's entry.
- 3K OLED display, touchscreen (irrelevant part to me though), and 90Hz (I leave that off though).
- 16GB LPDDR5x 8400
- 512GB SSD
- 72Whr battery
- slim design, great trackpad.
for $750 at Best Buy, instead of $1199.
Now, before someone jokes about how there's no demand for Arm or whatever and that's why this was so cheap -
They run sales constantly, even MacBook Airs are $200 off, and Intel Lunar Lake laptops are $300 to $400 off as well right now - they have 1920x1200P OLED Intel Lunar Lake Vivobooks for $650 (regular $950) right now. Or well reviewed Lunar Lake Slim 7i Aura (3K display, not OLED though) laptops for $899 (regular $1299). These are no doubt the best x86 - and arguably Windows - laptops you can buy right now from a battery life/performance/GPU/compatibility perspective, and they're seeing similar-sized as the Qualcomm ones right now. You are also seeing up to $500 off for AMD's latest, like with this Omnibook. Microsoft/Apple only $200 off ish. Hell, Walmart even has the same Vivobook with an Intel Lunar Lake 228V but a 32/1TB as opposed to 16/512 at Best Buy for $799 (regular 1199) and it's a Best Seller.
These sales are everywhere right now, it's increasingly standard for PC's.
Just wanted to clear that up: as I'm positive someone's going to say as much reflexively, and while I have no doubt that at the high end Arm laptops are having more trouble with demand for equivalent priced Lunar Lake laptops - this is not fire sale stuff, and the issue of course is even finding a precise equivalent. Qualcomm seems to have a lower floor - you can find Omnibook X with a Snapdragon X Plus and the same 2.2K, 300 nit display as the high end AMD one right now on sale (for $1000 vs 1500) for $550, albeit 16GB/512GB, but for a student even doing basic office work and programming or whatever, that's pretty good, and it'll have better battery life. And then Intel Lunar Lake vs the X Elite on paper from a pure CPU standpoint is a win for the X Elite, while the HX/AMD CPU's are going to be less efficient and notably worse on battery life, and broadly have to sell for more. In general though Intel and AMD would have an advantage in ST, albeit without any efficiency advantage and not enough to I think be worth writing home about given how variant power and frequency ramping policies are anyways.
As predicted they do seem to have cornered a versatile design and chip which is an outgrowth of better design to begin with - lower BOM, more horsepower than Lunar Lake, still as efficient as Lunar Lake (or similar enough low "idle" for low load stuff) but more efficient than AMD, 85-90% as good of ST as AMD/Intel's latest on the 3.4GHz common bin, and then more adaptability with the 8-core die and now a 6-core cut down one which we haven't even seen just yet. The single downside is obvious and probably the one thing holding it back this generation despite disappointing yet still doing enough to show out AMD and Intel, and I'll get to that.
Anyway, the laptop is great, keyboard is B+ to A-, totally fine. Would I prefer an Apple laptop keyboard or possibly an XPS (new)? Probably, but this is well within usable and fine. Trackpad is great, and while I am pretty sure Apple's is still slightly more "accurate" it is nowhere near what fanboys claim IMHO, Windows precision trackpad drivers and adoption of glass touchpads solved this issue on premium laptops years and years ago. It's kind of like Android vs iOS today but even less apparent - and in this case you have more optionality such as for mice. The one downside is quite simple - lack of a haptic trackpad. More overall durable I'd say, and the difference in force makes a subtle but noticeable difference. The Surface Laptop and the XPS now have this, and it's much more enjoyable.
Battery life is pretty good. With web browsing and the screen at half to 80% brightness (so should be from 150 to more like 350+ nits given the sliding isn't linear) I can easily get 6-12 hours. 6 being a lower bound with a lot of downloads and installs going on too. It is easily the most responsive and efficient, cool + quiet Windows laptop I've used, and I've used Zen 4 AMD laptops as well.
Display is fantastic, it *feels* higher PPI than my M2 MBA. It is by 10%, but I think some of this is also about OLED, font rendering and/or the ability to scale elements a bit larger without destroying real estate. Not sure though, scaling seems pretty similar to how it was on my Air for UI elements, just out of the box default (200% here). In theory Windows OLED rendering sucks - in practice if that's the case it doesn't feel that way at least for high resolution displays on a laptop where things are so blown up anyway. Colors are great, no issues. Brightness is a bit better than my MacBook Air, but not too much (it's all logarithmic to the mind anyway, I think indoors 500-600 nits is your sweet spot of peak).
Speakers are probably better than a MBA for watching movies, and have more customizable options, but are not going to be better for music. Louder and more oomph but not as balanced. Again though, nothing game ending.
Fans rarely come on with web browsing and some basic programming and compilation (though then they have once). Very cool to touch. Windows standby/hibernation issue mostly solved, not Apple-tier but you can easily lose just 1-3% a night with programs open.
Compatibility has actually not been an issue for the CPU - most of my development tools I need are here now. Recently looked into a text editor for markdown I hadn't even heard of called Typora - to my shock they now have a Windows on Arm version. (https://typora.io/). I suspect this is just going to continue rolling for the most part. But it's not perfect of course.
Emulation seems fine but have only tested one thing - Calibre.
The one snag is of course the GPU: even launching Civ VI lead to an immediate crash, one I don't think is related to emulation. The other thing that concerns me is probably just general UI stuff or like GPU acceleration in web browsing, and DirectML performance. Bad drivers can make that less efficient than it should be and cause snags, and in this case the GPU just not being quite versatile enough can further impact that. So, predictably, gaming is a no-go and the GPU is not as versatile as it should be nor are the drivers yet good enough. It won't impact like 99% of work but I'd say getting the gaming drivers to B+ status, making the next GPU larger/more efficient and ensuring the GPU is, also, B-/+ minimum for raster and compute is important. I do think Qualcomm will do exactly this, even if Nvidia's next WoA chips will blow everyone out, QC just needs to be as good as Radeon/Arc and more efficient, seeing as they'll have sizable leads over everyone else in other domains that count quite a bit (CPU performance/efficiency, area, probably also cost reductions or profit padding from connectivity solutions they sell, etc).
Will update more as I go as I intend to do some benchmarking on it. I might not keep it - primarily because of the GPU and compat at the moment - but the latter is really, really close for basic office and development, but had to try it out. There is no doubt in my mind that 12-18 months from now we will "be there" with Windows on Arm even on Snapdragon next gen chips (and I say that realizing games will still be a snag, but less so). People say "this has been said for x time" but hyperbolic forecasts of the past can still be directionally correct. And in this case I wouldn't even say that forecast is hyperbolic at all, especially for WoA as a whole given Nvidia's entry.
