Windows on ARM report: Why AMD & Intel laptops are often (still) the better choice over Snapdragon laptops

[Redaktion]

Laptops with Snapdragon X ARM processors have been on the market since more than half a year and basically every manufacturer offers a few models. Microsoft also supports the new ARM laptops, but are they real alternatives to x86 devices? After plenty of reviews, the impressions are still mixed.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-on-ARM-report-Why-AMD-Intel-laptops-are-often-still-the-better-choice-over-Snapdragon-laptops.954000.0.html

[GeorgeS]

OEM's seem rather clueless as to what might be important to users and potential users.

- weight vs run time on battery: more times than not highly efficient platforms get weak batteries, promoting 'light weight' over run times

- lack of connectivity in a mobile device: lacking WAN and modern LAN options are no surprise here.

- overshadowing the 'Windows Experience': no surprise here ether. Many OEM's operate in a seemingly mere 'parrot' of whatever Microsoft's narrative & agenda is. (IE: the OS and MS 'Office Apps' are native so that is ALL anyone could ever want)

Granted even with x86 there were often times where devices & drivers purchased with older versions of Windows often needed replacing because the latest version of Windows did not support them.

Yes Win-on-Arm is a non-x86 platform however to date (as noted) in the article it offers no clear advantage or selling point(s) for consumers to pick over x86.

BTW: in most conventions 'couple' equates to 'two' vs the 'handful or more' Snapdragon X versions Qualcomm has released. :)

[The Werewolf]

I'll add to GeorgeS's comments...

It's also a question of what consumer this is aimed at. Most people who use laptops (or any computer) work 8 hours a day 5 days a week and usually at a desk. So if this is a work laptop, what does a 16 hour or even more bizarrely, 24 hour battery life buy you?

Most of the time, if I'm using a laptop for work, it's plugged in (yes, even at a coffee shop). It's just more convenient and lets the laptop work at full performance.

Same, but to a lesser degree, super-light weight or thinness? It's just going to sit on a desk or table 90% of the time and when it's not, it's being moved from one place to another in a shoulder bag or backpack.

So in a real sense long battery life past a certain point and super thinness or light weight isn't really getting you anything more.

In fact, the real killer feature that NO one talks about is long standby time while not having to hibernate or shut down the laptop. That gives you the ability to open the laptop and start using it right away without losing much battery life. My Samsung Tab S9 FE+ for example sips battery when it's sleeping - it can sleep for days and still be at 90%+ charge when I need it.

Are there people who need 24hr battery life in a laptop the thickness of a sheet of paper that weighs about the same as a sheet of paper? I'm sure they exist, but I'm also sure that's pretty rare.

So why is the industry (and tech bloggers) SO obsessed with this? 1. Apple 2. Upsell

Neither makes a good argument for it.

[Hunter2020]

No thanks.  I'm fed up with Windows post version 8.1.  I have 7 new Windows 7/8.1 capable/era mini-PCs stored up in my closet to last the "tech outage" until Huawei or Xiaomi unveils custom PC OS running on self made non-Intel non-Qualcomms chipsets.  If China's Deepseek has proven superior to ChatGPT in terms of resource usage, so too will the PC OSes from Xiaomi and Huawei!

[indy]

The software support will only get better in the next couple of years.

There is no guarantee of this.

If the market doesn't buy into this architecture, they will not develop software or support it.

ARM on Windows is dead in the water for serious consideration.

[Mike S]

I have all of the CPU main models except the latest AMD. So latest Intel, Snapdragon X Plus, even the former Snapdragon based machines (Lenovo X13s).

I have Dell Inspiron 14 Plus - Snapdragon. Basically if you use standard software it works like a dream, has incredible battery life and works very quietly. Not had any major issues with it, just does what it should and is very fast. Will not run all the software I normally use (VPNs are really bad) but there are solutions to everything.

I have a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (latest Intel chips) - it has been painful. Bad drivers, won't run Linux (a BIOS issue it seems) and lots of issues with Windows updates, GPU drivers (had to abandon Lenovo drivers and use Intel ones, but Windows keeps trying to overwrite those). It is a quiet machine, battery life for an Intel is very good, but honestly - I'm not thrilled with it.

I also have a ThinkPad X13 Gen 4 (so 13th Gen Intel). Everything runs on this, but it blows a bit loud under Windows but is utterly silent under Linux. Basically this is my 'go to machine' under linux (Fedora) and is nice and light with good build quality. It also was the cheapest machine to buy (stock clearance deal was a steal).

Conclusions - any new processor has compatibility issues it would seem. The speed of driver release is the critical factor. After 3 months my Lenovo Slim 7 still cannot run Linux, and still has weird driver glitches. Otherwise it is a nice machine. Qualcomm are actually releasing driver updates faster, and my 'cutting edge' Dell quickly became very easy to use. If you want 100% peace of mind - buy an older gen Intel or AMD...

[QualcommLinux]

Conclusions - any new processor has compatibility issues it would seem. The speed of driver release is the critical factor. After 3 months my Lenovo Slim 7 still cannot run Linux, and still has weird driver glitches. Otherwise it is a nice machine. Qualcomm are actually releasing driver updates faster, and my 'cutting edge' Dell quickly became very easy to use. If you want 100% peace of mind - buy an older gen Intel or AMD...

If you're going to compare the Linux experience in all 3 laptops you mentioned, at least be truthful.

While the Yoga Slim 7 (Lunar Lake) experience in Linux can be awful, at least in boots!

The Dell Inspiron 14 Plus doesn't even boot Linux lol
No Qualcomm Snapdragon laptop does, and it has been six months since release, with promises of Linux support since "day 1".

Linux support on Qualcomm laptop is a COMPLETE SH**SHOW. Which is even more amazing, since most top distros support aarch64, so if Qualcomm actually had Linux drivers, these laptops would run like a dream, and have way more battery life and performance than with Windows.

[retrixe]

Dailying the Zenbook S 14 on Fedora Workstation 41 here, it gets me 12+ hours of battery life consistently web browsing and working with various languages in IntelliJ and VSCode

Everything works remarkably well apart from the mic not working properly, I would chalk up any issues in that regard to Lenovo...

Windows does constantly try to overwrite my GPU drivers too but the OEM drivers Asus provides do work fine for me, and vis-a-vis graphics, I don't believe Qualcomm is anywhere as mature lol

Vis-a-vis Linux experience on Qualcomm, I believe Ubuntu can be booted now on some models though you may experience some issues, I wouldn't expect massive improvements over Windows though, with Lunar Lake, my perf on Linux is only slightly better and battery life is pretty much the same

[opckieran]

The problem was, Qualcomm laptops were priced too high at the onset. Qualcomm thought they could sweep everything under the rug with emulation (they couldn't), and, even more absurdly, assumed customers would believe that their (originally) $1500 laptops were on par with competing Intel and AMD offering. Well they clearly weren't. They needed to come in around half that price, with half the chip they initially launched. Then they could have at least built a userbase on their (at the time) superior Windows battery life, releasing a high end chip later if interest was strong enough. Instead, they insisted on going straight for the high end, and have failed to hit even 0.1% as a result. Now, they've got to deal with both a negative consumer perception AND Intel and AMD's increased efforts in the space. Strix Point and Lunar Lake are nothing to balk at. Qualcomm is now losing the battery life war to Intel and the performance war to AMD with those two releases.

[Value arb]

No thanks.  I'm fed up with Windows post version 8.1.  I have 7 new Windows 7/8.1 capable/era mini-PCs stored up in my closet to last the "tech outage" until Huawei or Xiaomi unveils custom PC OS running on self made non-Intel non-Qualcomms chipsets.  If China's Deepseek has proven superior to ChatGPT in terms of resource usage, so too will the PC OSes from Xiaomi and Huawei!

Microsoft caught DeepSeek downloading massive amounts of data from OpenAIs dev API, they aren't superior, they stole it.

[opckieran]

No thanks.  I'm fed up with Windows post version 8.1.  I have 7 new Windows 7/8.1 capable/era mini-PCs stored up in my closet to last the "tech outage" until Huawei or Xiaomi unveils custom PC OS running on self made non-Intel non-Qualcomms chipsets.  If China's Deepseek has proven superior to ChatGPT in terms of resource usage, so too will the PC OSes from Xiaomi and Huawei!

Microsoft caught DeepSeek downloading massive amounts of data from OpenAIs dev API, they aren't superior, they stole it.

A Chinese corporation stealing technology from a Western Country? This is completely unprecedented!

[Raphael24]

I recently purchased a Yoga 7X and couldn't be happier. It has a beautiful display, it is snappy, keyboard is of typical Lenovo high standard and the fans are barely audible. Granted, I am no power user, but as my daily driver, it has exceeded my expectations.

[neverUStech]

No thanks.  I'm fed up with Windows post version 8.1.  I have 7 new Windows 7/8.1 capable/era mini-PCs stored up in my closet to last the "tech outage" until Huawei or Xiaomi unveils custom PC OS running on self made non-Intel non-Qualcomms chipsets.  If China's Deepseek has proven superior to ChatGPT in terms of resource usage, so too will the PC OSes from Xiaomi and Huawei!

Microsoft caught DeepSeek downloading massive amounts of data from OpenAIs dev API, they aren't superior, they stole it.

this isn't true at all. I wouldn't believe the US-military loving and data privacy snake Microsoft as far as I could throw them. you do realize every US tech company is an arm of the USDoD and US State Department right?

[neverUStech]

No thanks.  I'm fed up with Windows post version 8.1.  I have 7 new Windows 7/8.1 capable/era mini-PCs stored up in my closet to last the "tech outage" until Huawei or Xiaomi unveils custom PC OS running on self made non-Intel non-Qualcomms chipsets.  If China's Deepseek has proven superior to ChatGPT in terms of resource usage, so too will the PC OSes from Xiaomi and Huawei!

Microsoft caught DeepSeek downloading massive amounts of data from OpenAIs dev API, they aren't superior, they stole it.

A Chinese corporation stealing technology from a Western Country? This is completely unprecedented!

tell me when did the US compensate China for inventing paper, writing, gunpowder, and the compass, or printing? and please remember literally all of those things were precursors to modern technology and innovations in computing or helped create their respective successors.

[GeorgeS]

Are there people who need 24hr battery life in a laptop the thickness of a sheet of paper that weighs about the same as a sheet of paper? I'm sure they exist, but I'm also sure that's pretty rare.

Depending on the Corporation & Worker, there are folks that spend their entire work-day going from one business meeting after another. Laptop/notebook under one arm and beverage container in tow.

Sometimes juggling conference rooms on the same floor, building (multiple floors) or campus. :)

While in these meetings they might be 'taking notes' however often times they will be running & accessing industry specific & specialized applications to access information & models which in turn might be displayed on the conference rooms screens.

As mentioned a 'good sleep' function can be highly effective.

It is rather debatable and Corporation dependent if workers are outfitted with only a laptop (with some sort of docking solution at the 'cube' (if they actually have one)) or have both a desktop 'workstation' and a laptop to compliment it.

Personally my last few jobs I was outfitted with both. A desktop workstation in my assigned 'cube' as well as a laptop to take to meetings and work from home (or elsewhere) with.