After 12 years of trying to make Windows on Arm happen, Microsoft has made Windows on Arm happen. That\u2019s a long time to keep throwing money at a version of Windows that, historically, has lacked compatible software, reliable emulation, and capable enough performance for even light workloads. But it seems like Microsoft\u2019s 12-year odyssey is starting to pay off now that Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus<\/a> chips are turning Windows on Arm into a viable platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019ve spent the past week and a half testing seven Copilot Plus PCs, representing all four Snapdragon X chips, against a slate of similar laptops running Apple Silicon, Intel Core Ultra, and AMD Ryzen processors. This isn\u2019t the final word on Snapdragon performance \u2014 app compatibility is changing on a near-daily basis, and we\u2019ll have full reviews for many of these laptops in the next few weeks \u2014 but we now have a good idea of how the first wave of Snapdragon X laptops stack up against the competition and how they still fall short.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is the fiercest Microsoft has been able to compete with MacBooks in price, performance, and battery life, and while Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon chips don\u2019t outright beat Apple\u2019s M3 chip (with an eight-core CPU and 10-core GPU) in every single one of our benchmarks, they could make Intel and AMD scramble to catch up to another competitor \u2014 this time, on their home turf.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the last few years, laptop makers have focused on increasing power efficiency (and therefore battery life) without sacrificing performance. For Apple, that meant ditching Intel<\/a> and using its own Arm-based chips<\/a>; Intel wasn\u2019t improving the power efficiency of its own fast enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Arm is a processor architecture with a more efficient instruction set<\/a> than the x86 set found in Intel and AMD CPUs. It uses smaller, more optimized instructions, so the CPU can process tasks faster using less power, which is one reason smartphone chips are Arm-based. Microsoft\u2019s 12-year journey<\/a> to make Windows work on Arm and reap those power savings has been slow going because the chips haven\u2019t been fast enough<\/a> to run Windows and <\/em>emulate apps that aren\u2019t compatible with the Arm instruction set \u2014 until now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Qualcomm currently has four Snapdragon X chips: three under the \u201cX Elite\u201d brand and one under \u201cX Plus.\u201d They all share an Adreno GPU, an NPU capable of 45 TOPS, and support for LPDDR5X memory up to 8448MHz, but their core counts and max clock speeds change as you go down the lineup, from a 12-core chip with a 3.8GHz top speed and 4.2GHz dual-core boost to a 10-core at 3.4GHz with no dual-core boost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With the Snapdragon X Elite lineup, Qualcomm ditched the hybrid architecture<\/a> of its previous laptop chips. Instead of using a mix of performance cores for heavy workloads and efficiency cores for less intensive work, Qualcomm now uses a homogeneous architecture \u2014 every chip can run both types of tasks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Competing against its new CPUs are Apple\u2019s hybrid core Arm chips, AMD\u2019s homogeneous core x86 chips, and Intel\u2019s hybrid core x86 chips. (Though Intel is adjusting its hybrid core architecture by ditching just the LP cores in its next-gen Lunar Lake chips<\/a>, which arrive this fall.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We ran Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 because they work across Windows and macOS as well as on Intel and AMD\u2019s x86 chips and Apple and Qualcomm\u2019s Arm chips. Together, they provide a broad overview of a processor\u2019s capabilities when handling various workloads. While we tested laptops of different sizes from different brands, these benchmarks are still a great baseline of how these chips fare compared to their competitors and how they stack up.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Among the laptops we tested, Apple\u2019s M3 chips still lead the pack in single-core performance, but Qualcomm\u2019s higher-end X Elite chips are a touch faster in single-core workloads than the M2 Max chip in the early 2023 MacBook Pro \u2014 between 2 and 3 percent in our tests. They are also up to 24 percent faster than the performance cores in Intel\u2019s Core Ultra 7 155H processor and up to 17 percent faster than the AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS cores. The bottom-tier X Elite and X Plus are the slowest, but they still push out impressive scores and pull ahead \u2014\u00a0albeit barely \u2014 of most of the Intel-based laptops in the table below.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Snapdragon chips really shine in multicore benchmarks, overtaking all the other CPUs aside from Apple\u2019s M2 Max and M3 Max. The M3 chip in the MacBook Air only has eight cores compared to the 12 or 10 cores of the Snapdragon chips, so it makes sense why it fell behind. The 16-core M3 Max far outpaces the rest of the field, and the 12-core M2 Max is slightly faster in Cinebench 2024 multicore than the fastest X Elite chips.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Our results are mostly in line with what Qualcomm claimed during my hands-on in April<\/a>, though, as you can see in the graph above, there are some outliers \u2014 notably the multicore scores for the 13-inch Surface Laptop 7 and Galaxy Book4 Edge. But I suspect those outliers are either due to core count and clock speed or how much power the CPU draws.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s no meaningful performance difference between AC and battery power on any of the Snapdragon laptops we\u2019ve tested, provided they\u2019re using the same power profile each time. The numbers above are from the \u201cbest performance\u201d power profile or equivalent, on wall power; manufacturers have the ability to tweak the power profiles on their devices.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We repeated our CPU benchmarks on the Dell XPS 13, Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, and Microsoft Surface Pro 11 with balanced or recommended power settings enabled to compare to the results above. With the recommended power setting enabled, the Surface Pro 11\u2019s performance decreased between 7.5 and 16 percent across all CPU tests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the XPS 13 and Galaxy Book4 Edge\u2019s performance actually increased slightly on most tests in balanced mode: between 0.9 and 2.7 percent on the XPS 13 and between 1.3 and 8.3 percent on the Book4 Edge. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Balanced versus performance (plugged in).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Qualcomm has been careful to position this wave of Snapdragon X laptops as productivity machines, rather than gaming or workstation PCs, and the integrated GPUs are fine for that. They can run laptop displays at up to 4K at 120Hz and up to three 4K external displays at 60Hz.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But integrated GPUs aren\u2019t great for gaming, 3D rendering, or any other heavy graphical workloads, and that includes all of Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon X chips. (Apple\u2019s integrated GPUs are an exception, especially as they scale up; the massive 40-core GPU on the MacBook Pro M3 Max blows past AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm.) <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Qualcomm\u2019s Adreno GPUs lag behind higher-end Intel and AMD integrated GPUs in our initial benchmarks. In Geekbench 6 GPU, Intel Arc is 29 percent faster than the more powerful Adreno chip in the highest-end Snapdragon chip and about 39 percent faster than the other Snapdragon chips. The AMD Radeon 780M is 17 to 29 percent faster, respectively, but the MacBook Air 15 is about 39 percent slower.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Only two of the Snapdragon laptops fared a little better in the PugetBench Adobe Photoshop benchmark. Photoshop has a native Arm64 version; the Surface Pro and 15-inch Surface Laptop surpassed the Dell XPS 14 and Acer Swift Go 14 AMD by 10 percent. The MacBook Air 15 wins here, though, by 42 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is just an early snapshot of iGPU performance, though. It\u2019s hard to get a real feel for it when most of the benchmarking programs we use, including games, don\u2019t have native Arm64 versions yet \u2014 and when emulated versions often don\u2019t hit the GPU properly or at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These Snapdragon laptops are not gaming laptops, but they can run games \u2014 sometimes. Very few games have native Arm64 versions, so Microsoft leans heavily on emulation here. Microsoft automatically enables Auto SR (its own version of Nvidia\u2019s DLSS or AMD\u2019s FSR, which increase frame rates by dropping the in-game resolution and then upscaling with AI) on a short list of games<\/a>, which includes The Witcher 3<\/em> and Control<\/em>. But those games have already been optimized to run well on processors with integrated graphics, so they don\u2019t actually need Auto SR \u2014 and in most cases run better without it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The same goes for some games that haven\u2019t been optimized, like Palia<\/em> and What Remains of Edith Finch<\/em>. In those games, there was no discernible difference in frame rate, responsiveness, or visual fidelity between having ASR on or off. In other games that are supposed to be optimized for Windows on Arm, like Control <\/em>and Borderlands 3<\/em>, turning on ASR degraded the visual quality with distracting flickering lines on or around fine details like mesh screens and hair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Control<\/em> was the only game I was able to try on a reference laptop with a Snapdragon X Elite chip during a hands-on demo back in April, but it runs just as well on the XPS 13, Galaxy Book4 Edge, and Yoga Slim 7x I tested. To get a stable 30fps, the graphics preset must be set to low and the resolution can\u2019t be higher than 1200p, but it runs smooth and is responsive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If a game doesn\u2019t work, you will learn quickly: it will crash as soon as you launch it, or after you load one of your saves, or if you have the resolution or graphics settings too high. In\u00a0the best-case scenario, it will run under 20fps even on low settings. There are a lot of variables, and they differ from game to game in the dozen I tested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There is a third-party website that tracks what games are compatible<\/a> on Snapdragon Windows Arm PCs, but it won\u2019t always tell you what resolution or graphics setting to select or if it will work on a system with less than 32GB of memory. You game at your own risk with Windows on Arm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of Microsoft\u2019s big claims was that Snapdragon-configured Windows laptops would have \u201cfaster app emulation than Rosetta 2<\/a>,\u201d Apple\u2019s emulation software that lets x86 Mac apps run on Apple Silicon. Microsoft hasn\u2019t had the greatest reputation when it comes to x86 emulation on Arm, and while its new Prism emulator is much faster, it\u2019s still not fast enough for heavyweight apps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We tested all the Snapdragon laptops using the emulated x86 version of Blender, a popular free 3D modeling and rendering program that\u2019s a core part of our benchmarking suite. We also tested a few with an alpha build with native Arm64 support. Neither the emulated x86 version nor the alpha native version detected the Adreno GPU, so the CPUs had to do all the work, but the native version still performed about 40 percent faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But faster doesn\u2019t mean fast \u2014 while the CPU rendering times with the Arm64 version were within a minute of integrated GPU rendering times on the Intel Arc, and near identical to the AMD Radeon 780M, it still took over four times longer than the base MacBook Air M3.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While these Snapdragon laptops are not what you\u2019d want to buy for 3D rendering \u2014 you\u2019ll want a discrete GPU for that, regardless of platform \u2014 the massive difference between emulated and native CPU rendering shows how important it is for developers to have Arm64 versions of their software, especially if it\u2019s designed to handle heavy workloads.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We couldn\u2019t run our Premiere Pro benchmark since Adobe hasn\u2019t released a native Arm version, and Adobe blocks the x86 version from emulation on Arm. (For a couple of days, it didn\u2019t block all <\/em>the Snapdragon X CPUs, but the emulated results were not great.) My colleague Tom Warren has a wonderful deep dive<\/a> into the current state of Windows on Arm if you\u2019re looking for more information on x86 emulation, and we\u2019ll continue to test the Prism emulator as we find opportunities to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Microsoft claims that its Copilot Plus PCs with Qualcomm\u2019s Snapdragon X Elite processor will offer \u201c20 percent more battery life than the latest MacBook Air 15-inch.\u201d<\/a> When I tested the latest 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs<\/a>, they lasted about 18 hours on a charge when I used them as I normally would during a regular week, with the display brightness set as close to 200 nits as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n None of the Snapdragon laptops\u2019 batteries lasted 18 hours like the M3 Air, but most weren\u2019t far behind, averaging 14 to 16 hours. That\u2019s still a lot longer than most of the Intel- and AMD-based laptops I tested, with the exception of the Intel-based Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra, which got near identical battery life to the Snapdragon-based Galaxy Book4 Edge, at over 14 hours each.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Tom\u2019s testing, the Microsoft Surface Laptop<\/a> with the Snapdragon X Plus CPU lasted about seven hours with the brightness set to 100 percent while being pushed with all sorts of tasks like downloading games from Steam and taking video calls. In lighter workloads on 50 percent brightness, the battery drained just 25 percent after four hours. My own experience with the Snapdragon Dell XPS 13 was similar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At 75 percent brightness (or as close to 200 nits as possible), the XPS 13 kept a charge for around 15 hours \u2014 two to three hours longer than the Dell XPS 14 I recently reviewed<\/a> with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, despite the smaller battery on the XPS 13. It also lasted longer than the Acer Swift Go 14 AMD I tested with a Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU. That one got me between 12 to 14 hours, depending on how often I used it, how I used it, and how high I had the display brightness cranked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We have more testing to do on all of these laptops \u2014 the Surface Pro in particular hasn\u2019t gotten the battery life we expected, and we\u2019re working with Microsoft to try to figure out why \u2014 but so far, the Copilot Plus PCs seem to beat comparable AMD and Intel machines on battery by several hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yes, these are Copilot Plus PCs. Yes, they run a bunch of AI stuff<\/a>. But my colleagues and I have yet to figure out a reliable method to test relative NPU performance in a meaningful way. The Copilot Plus AI features, with the possible exceptions of Studio Effects and Live Captions translations, currently feel more like gimmicks than useful apps most people can incorporate into their day-to-day life, and Microsoft doesn\u2019t plan to release<\/a> Recall, its most-hyped AI app, until it addresses security concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the NPUs are there \u2014 and not just on Arm PCs \u2014 so we expect apps to take more advantage of that processing power soon. We\u2019ll revisit NPU benchmarks as it makes sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This wave of Snapdragon Copilot Plus PCs starts at $999 and can cost in excess of $2,500. They feature nearly everything most other laptops in that price range do: beautiful OLED displays; high storage capacity; long battery life; fast processors; metal chassis; and in some cases, the latest Wi-Fi 7 adapter. It\u2019s all the same stuff you get with Intel- and AMD-based laptops, and even MacBooks, often for less money.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As MacBook Air competitors, they have a few nifty features that have been baked into Windows for a while that Apple is only just adding to macOS<\/a>, like phone mirroring and automatic window tiling \u2014 and you can use up to three <\/em>external monitors, with or without the lid closed<\/a>. They can also be priced more reasonably. At $1,099, the base 13-inch MacBook Air M3 has an eight-core processor, 8GB of memory, and 256GB of storage. But at $999, the base 13-inch Surface Laptop 7 has a 10-core processor, 16GB of memory, and 256GB of storage \u2014 and you can easily upgrade that storage yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Snapdragon laptops are generally cheaper than their Intel or AMD counterparts, too. The Qualcomm Dell XPS 13 is $200 cheaper and the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is $150 cheaper, while the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is $100 more. Better performance and longer battery life for less money are going to be the major selling points for most people \u2014 and these Snapdragon Copilot Plus PCs hit all three.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Unlike previous Windows on Arm laptops \u2014 even up to 2022\u2019s Surface Pro 9 (SQ3)<\/a>, these Copilot Plus PCs finally have processors fast enough to run the operating system and emulate most x86 programs. And now that every major Windows laptop manufacturer has at least one Snapdragon X-based machine, there should finally be enough of an install base to entice developers at large to create native Arm64 versions of their apps, which will make these an easier sell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But with Intel Lunar Lake<\/a> and AMD Ryzen AI<\/a> coming soon, it\u2019s unclear how long Qualcomm will hold onto its lead. Lunar Lake will be closer in design to Apple Silicon, with RAM incorporated into the chip itself, and Intel claims that getting rid of hyperthreading will decrease power consumption, so laptops with these chips will supposedly get better battery life than its current-gen processors. Ryzen AI will have a 12-core and 10-core variant, just like Qualcomm Snapdragon, on its Zen 5 architecture, clock speeds up to 5.1GHz, and a more powerful iGPU, so that could increase the graphics performance lead it currently has over some of the Snapdragon X Elite chips.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019ll have plenty more to test in the coming weeks as app compatibility improves and full reviews of many of these Snapdragon X laptops soon. Qualcomm has shown us that Windows on Arm is finally feasible. Now, it\u2019s up to Intel and AMD to convince people not to make the jump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nA new focus on power efficiency<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
The best CPU performance Windows on Arm has ever seen<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Single-core performance<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n
Multicore performance<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n
Power profiling<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Snapdragon falls behind in GPU performance<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Gaming on Arm<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Emulation is fine for the little stuff<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Battery life<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s why I\u2019m not mentioning the NPU<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
More for less\u2026 more or less<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
Where does Qualcomm go from here?<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n