Our Favorite Snapdragon Laptops
Summary
We got every one of these new Snapdragon laptops and have been using them like crazy. So let's go over which ones have come out on top as our favorites.
Table of contents:
Introduction
When it comes to these new laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors, we have some overarching thoughts to share based on what we've experienced. These Pros & Cons will be important to consider before looking into which one you want to purchase.
Pros
The majority of these laptops offer very good value at their price point. They give you a somewhat premium laptop experience for a reasonable price. They also deliver improved performance over Intel and AMD’s older Zen 4 processors.
For tasks like web browsing, office work, and responding to emails, these give you better battery life, feel cooler to the touch and have less fan noise. Plus, they all come with a minimum of 16GB of RAM which is good to see and will definitely place pressure on Apple who are selling you 8GB of RAM MacBooks at the same price point. In fact, for light use, we feel right now that several of these are definitely worth considering over the MacBook Air. Heck, Josh personally bought one of these laptops for himself and has been enjoying using it.
Cons
These laptops are nowhere near as amazing as Qualcomm has hyped them up to be. These processors become significantly less efficient when running performance tasks. This results in some fan noise, heat you feel, and worse battery life for such tasks. Also, many applications right now do not run natively on the Windows on ARM architecture, which means either they won’t run at all or won’t run that well. That unfortunately includes a lot of popular games.
The biggest thorn in the side of these new laptops are the recently released ones powered by AMD’s new Zen 5 processors. Those processors offer similar power efficiencies and actually deliver better performance in Single-core, integrated graphics and AI tasks. More importantly, AMD laptops don’t have the downsides of Windows on ARM. Everything runs. This means that if you find a similar quality AMD Zen 5 laptop at the same price point, we’d recommend buying that instead. They will be labeled as "Ryzen AI 9" processors. Unfortunately, many of these devices are starting at a much higher price.
So, to reiterate, these offer incredible value and are ideal for people doing basic tasks on their laptops or those who don’t mind being patient with the improving software support. If that sounds like you, we’re going to walk you through each of the laptops starting with the ones we like least and moving up to the ones we like best.
For Portability
Let’s start with those of you looking for a smaller, more portable Snapdragon laptop. Our two favorites are Lenovo's Slim 7X and Microsoft's Surface Laptop 7 13.
Lenovo Slim 7X
The Slim 7X gives you a comfortable keyboard, strong CPU performance, and a large display for a portable laptop. Coming in at $1,200, it has a bright, high-resolution 14.5” touchscreen display measuring over 500nits. Some other things that stood out to us were the Dolby Atmos speakers, with two facing you the sound was quite nice albeit lacking in bass. If you're interested in hearing how each of the speakers sound, check out the video we released below where we play each of them for you. We also talk about our least favorites there, so definitely check it out.
Its cons are that it doesn't look as premium as the Surface or Samsung and it's got a cheap-feeling mechanical trackpad which brings down the overall comfort of using the laptop. Its port selection is also extremely limited, USB-C only with no headphone jack. Overall, we felt these cons were manageable considering its strong performance for the price.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 13
Of all of these laptops, this is the one that Josh actually ended up buying, but he did have a few things to note. This purchase, for him, was not as a primary device but rather a more portable secondary to offset his larger MacBook Pro 16. He's been consistently using it to write scripts, do online research, and manage the business since we got it in. For that, we don't feel you would need the higher CPU performance of the X Elite processors, which is why Josh bought the X Plus. Similar to the Slim 7X it is priced at $1,200, but it delivers a more premium experience. It has better port selection, and a much better trackpad. It also has a good keyboard and display. Its 13.8", 3:2 aspect ratio screen is helpful as you can see more content going down the page than you would expect for a laptop this size. Plus, it looks fantastic.
The biggest downside with this device is that it uses Windows on ARM like all of these laptops so you may struggle with application compatibility as we've mentioned. If this isn't a concern for you, we feel it delivers the best value on this list, which is why Josh bought one!
For a Bigger Screen
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 15
If you prefer a larger screen, you may be interested in the Surface Laptop 15. It comes with an X Elite processor only and its pricing starts at $1,500 for our recommended 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD configuration. We have all the Surface Laptops and we found that if you want a Surface with a more powerful processor, it is definitely better to get the 15" with X Elite rather than the 13". The 15" feeds it more power, performs better, and it has better battery life with its larger battery. We have a video out on this too, which we’ve linked in related videos.
The only other noticeable difference is the inclusion of a micro SD card reader in the 15" model. Given the laptop’s large size, we were disappointed that they didn’t include a full-sized one and an HDMI port.
Samsung GalaxyBook4 Edge 16
But before you run out and buy the Surface Laptop 15 you may want to consider the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16. It is a somewhat magical device in how thin and light it is given its large display. It is lighter than the Surface Laptop 15, and due to its weight distribution feels significantly so. It looks great, feels premium, and performs well.
The keyboard does feel low travel and the fan noise is high pitched, so when it does come on you will notice it in a quiet room. That being said, if you stick to light tasks on this laptop, it doesn’t come on a lot. If you do performance tasks, the 16" version feels cooler than the 14, and also the Surface 15 for that matter.
But one of its biggest downsides is that the trackpad has incredibly bad palm rejection. Its trackpad is huge, so you have to rest your palms on it when typing. You can solve this issue by disabling the trackpad and just using an external mouse, but not everyone will prefer this option.
Overall, Josh enjoyed using the Samsung Galaxy Book 16 more than any of the other large screen Snapdragon laptops.
ASUS Vivobook S 15
This leads us to our final, and my own favorite device on this list: the Vivobook S 15. It was close between this one and the Slim 7X, but I prefer a larger device so this one pulls just a little ahead. It has an excellent large 15.6” OLED screen yet is incredibly lightweight. It has the best port selection of these laptops, and I like its keyboard. Although not as comfortable to use as the Slim 7X, it's not bad and it includes 2 things I like: a numpad, and customizable RGB colors.
Performance wise, it's one of the best, but as mentioned we don’t really recommend buying these for performance tasks. So, I’d save $200 and buy the X Plus version with 512GB of storage for $1,100 rather than the X Elite version for $1,300 with more storage at 1TB. You can upgrade the storage yourself anyways.
The main cons with this laptop are its cheaper feeling build quality and its subpar webcam. We go over each of the webcams in the video we linked above as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you are someone doing basic tasks like Office and browsing the web these laptops work very well. More often than not you will be buying a somewhat premium laptop for a very reasonable price. However, if there is a comparable laptop with an AMD Zen 5 processor at the same price point, we’d recommend you go that route instead. For example, there is a comparable Vivobook 14 that you can order with Zen 5. We haven't been able to test it yet, but I think my recommendation above is likely to change. There are simply less risks with software support with AMD's new laptops and they perform better for graphics and AI tasks.
That being said, if you decide to buy a Snapdragon laptop, what you’ll notice with both Josh’s favorite the Surface Laptop 7 13 and my own the Vivobook S 15 is we each independently elected to go with the X Plus processor, if it is available. Given the tasks that we mentioned run well on these, there really isn’t much point getting the X Elite.
Now, if you do want to run performance applications only buy one of these if you are certain your software runs natively. For you the Slim 7x is a good buy if you want a smaller laptop with excellent performance. Or if you want a larger one, go for the Vivobook S 15.
If you're still not sure what to get, you can compare laptops and prices directly through our website now. This can help you better make a decision on what works for you and your budget.