Intel's and AMD's weak point exploited: Why Qualcomm shines in the budget laptop sector

AMD Ryzen 200 is based on technology from 2023, Intel Core 200 on Intel Raptor Lake, also from 2023: Inexpensive laptops are treated bad by processor manufacturers and equipped with chips that sound new in name but are actually already outdated. Although these processors are not slow, their efficiency is nowhere near as high as the latest CPU designs, which are also based on improved process nodes. The days when you could get a Core i3 or Ryzen 3 based on the latest technology seem to be long gone.

In this situation, Qualcomm is like a breath of fresh air for the market. The still relative newcomer in the PC market (at least when it comes to competitive SoCs) has caused quite a stir in the laptop market with its lineup consisting of Oryon processors with eight to twelve cores, as the Snapdragon X CPUs are the first competitive ARM processors for Windows laptops.

In order to gain market share, Qualcomm seems to have identified one target in particular: affordable laptops. While the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Pro clearly target the market above $1,000, the Snapdragon X focuses on the area below this psychologically important mark. An example: The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 15Q8X10, which we recently reviewed extensively, starts at around $600. The special thing about the Snapdragon X is that it is just a smaller version of the X Elite and X Pro and is therefore based on the latest technology, unlike the Intel and AMD competition in the budget segment.

In return, buyers get a powerful processor with eight cores that are efficient, which is why the IdeaPad Slim 3 (available from Amazon) achieves over 19 hours of battery life. The Lenovo laptop remains almost completely cool, even in the stress test, and the performance is significantly better than its Intel counterpart with the Intel Core 5 210H. AMD is not immune to the competition either, because to keep up with the performance of the Snapdragon X, it has to be at least an AMD Ryzen 7 250 or Ryzen 7 8840U.

All in all, it can be said: Competition rejuvenates the market! We are curious to see whether Qualcomm will also bring the latest technology directly into the sub-$1,000 segment with the next generation of its Oryon processors.