New Asus AI mini PC with powerful Snapdragon processor and up to 32GB RAM starts at $1,349.99

Asus has started selling its Ascent QN10 Mini PC in the US. The compact desktop joins the HP OmniDesk Mini and Lenovo Yoga Mini, both of which recently went on sale in the US. While those models use Intel's Panther Lake CPUs, Asus has gone with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Elite platform, giving it a few advantages in certain areas.

In particular, the Ascent QN10 features the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100, an 18-core processor with 3.4–4.7 GHz clock speeds, and the Adreno X2-90 iGPU that impressed us in our review of the ProArt PZ14 and Zenbook A16. Moreover, according to our benchmarks, the Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-88-100 is around 50% faster in multi-threaded workloads than the Core Ultra X7 358H found in the HP and Lenovo mini PCs. However, the CPU might be a bit slower if running non-native ARM applications.

It also has an 80 TOPS NPU, up from 50 TOPS on Panther Lake, giving it more processing capacity for on-device AI tasks, like image generation and agentic AI workflows through tools such as OpenClaw. That said, the integrated GPU performance is different news, with the Adreno X2-90 trailing the Intel Arc B390 on the Panther Lake chip.

Asus fits all this into a roughly 0.7-liter chassis, making the Ascent QN10 only slightly larger than the 0.65-liter Lenovo Yoga Mini. Despite its size, there's a decent selection of ports, including three 40Gbps USB4 ports, three 10Gbps USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, and 2.5 GbE LAN. For wireless connectivity, it supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0.

Pricing and availability

The Ascent QN10 is now available to buy from Asus and other retailers in the US. It starts at $1,349.99 at Best Buy with 16GB of LPDDR5X-8533 RAM and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD. For $1,699, Asus offers a configuration with 32GB of faster LPDDR5X-9600 memory through the Asus online store, Amazon, Newegg, and B&H Photo Video.

For comparison, the Lenovo Yoga Mini with a Core Ultra X7 358H and 32GB of RAM costs $1,869.99, though that includes a larger 1TB SSD. The HP OmniDesk Mini with the same Intel processor comes in at $1,509.99 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.