Are laptop webcams better with the Snapdragon X Elite? It’s complicated.

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Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X Elite chips offer a slew of goodies, from excellent performance to incredible battery life. The company also claims the chips offer quality webcam support.

I recently reviewed the Asus Vivobook S15 S5507, outfitted with the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100, and found that its 1080p webcam quality could be better. So why does Qualcomm claim that it can provide high-quality imaging for cameras?

As with most of the Snapdragon X Elite laptops, I’ve noticed that Qualcomm has been doing most of the heavy lifting regarding the webcam. Let me explain.

It’s not the chip, it’s the webcam

The Vivobook S15’s webcam made it look like my scalp was bleeding due to its poor balance of color and contrast. However, the Dell XPS 13, which supports the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 chip, offers a quality 1080p webcam that manages contrast well, reducing the exposure of the lights in my room and highlighting the patterns of my shirt. So what’s going on?

Qualcomm claims in its marketing that it has “advanced MIPI camera support for high-quality imaging and intelligent features such as auto-framing, background blur, and facial authentication at lower power consumption.”

Qualcomm is offering features that prioritize security. The auto-framing keeps everything focused on you, the blur protects your background, and the laptop turns off when you’re away from it. Meanwhile, Snapdragon X Elite’s “high-quality imaging” can only go so far. It’s not going to help if the webcam itself is poor.

We’ve often seen this problem in audio technology: Companies will put the Dolby Access license on a laptop and expect it to do wonders for cheap speakers.

Another Snapdragon X Elite laptop is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, which also features an underwhelming 1080p webcam. It overexposed the lights in my room, painting the ceiling a pure white. And it looked incredibly fuzzy. This issue isn’t exclusive to the Vivobook S15.

Our HP EliteBook Ultra review (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100) observed that its 5MP webcam painted a grainy photo and added layers of pink on our reviewer’s face that did not exist. The image overall also looked dull, sucking the life out of the red brinks behind our reviewer.

However, in our Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x review (Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100), the laptop’s 1080p webcam produced a fairly good image. The image looked soft but not blurry, and Windows Studio Effects actually improved the overall image quality.

On the other hand, I tested the Windows Studio Effects on the Vivobook S15, and I did not like it. It made me look like I used a cute Instagram filter and set it to max. And that didn’t change the inferior color balance that made my face look beet red. All the AI features aren’t going to help if the core hardware isn’t up to the task.

Outlook

I’ve ranted about laptop webcams one too many times. They are so bad that AI can’t even fix them. Again, that’s not a comment on the quality of the AI features. Like with speakers, some incredible audio apps are out there, but they can’t fix a low-quality audio solution. It might help, but it’ll never get it over that line.

The laptops I mentioned above with quality webcams offer just that—quality webcams. AI is bound to improve webcam performance and processing performance, battery life, and more across the board when it comes to technology. However, AI is an assist; it’s not a solution. The XPS 13 also proves this in its battery life, hitting 19:01 versus the Vivobook S15’s 12:53.

Don’t rely on AI to make a perfect laptop. And do yourself a favor: Nab one of the best webcams.