What Lenovo's leaked Snapdragon X Elite laptop tells us about the impending Windows on ARM takeover
Renders of an alleged Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 with the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset have been unearthed by Twitter user "WalkingCat" @_h0x0d_ (via Windows Central), indicating a launch may come sooner than expected.
The renders show a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 14-inch laptop, on the outside it looks exactly like the Intel and AMD versions, which are already available from Lenovo. In fact, the design has hardly changed since we reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 7i Gen 8 last year. Where it gets exciting is the new Snapdragon X Elite chipset reportedly within.
Of course, it's hard to show off a chipset when rendering the design of a laptop. To see what is powering the laptop, we'd need to pry open the chassis and take a look at the CPU socket.
Other than showing us what a potential Snapdragon X Elite platform could look like, these renders also indicate that we may see Snapdragon X Elite laptops hit the shelves sooner than expected.
Could the Snapdragon X Elite hit shelves soon?
Qualcomm has held to a "mid-2024" launch window for Snapdragon X Elite laptops since it first announced the chip last fall. While that could mean we see laptops with the new ARM silicon as early as June, the window is broad enough to lean into September.
However, these renders of the Lenovo Yoga 7 Snapdragon Edition give us some hope to see X Elite laptops earlier in that window. Lenovo certainly has a plethora of Yoga 7 chassis already built for the Intel and AMD versions of the laptops. It's unlikely to change much of the hardware for the Snapdragon Edition so the laptop is essentially already built and just waiting for the chips.
What we know about the Snapdragon X Elite so far
We've had hands-on time with the Snapdragon X Elite, so we know quite a bit about the chipset. The ARM chip delivered buttery smooth gaming performance running Baldur's Gate III, Control, and Redout II. All three games were running on a Windows x86 emulator but saw no dropped frames or visual stuttering. The Qualcomm silicon also handled DaVinci resolve so well, that we've been considering ditching our MacBooks for a Snapdragon laptop.
In terms of hard benchmark numbers, the Snapdragon X Elite has been putting the Apple M3 chipset to shame so frequently we're now stacking it up against the Apple M4 silicon which isn't even available. With up to 45 TOPs of NPU performance, the Snapdragon X Elite is also the only chip announced so far that will meet Microsoft's AI PC requirements when Windows 11 24H2 launches.
While Qualcomm chips have been in laptops for years now, it was typically found in Chromebooks or other low-powered and affordable options. The Snapdragon X Elite could finally change all that and put Qualcomm in the conversation with Intel, AMD, and Apple among the upper echelon of laptop chip makers.
