Snapdragon X Elite Laptops Tested Against MacBooks on Battery Life: Not Quite There Yet
The new Snapdragon X Elite ARM processor from Qualcomm promised a battery life revolution for Windows laptops, hoping to finally rival Apple's impressive endurance. Tom's Hardware put these claims to the test, focusing on the battery performance of several Snapdragon X Elite-powered devices.
The Results are In: Promising but Not Revolutionary
Using a web browsing test over Wi-Fi at 150 nits screen brightness, here's how the Snapdragon X Elite laptops fared:
| Model | Battery Life | Screen | Battery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surface Pro | 12h 14m | 13", 2880x1920, OLED | 53 Wh |
| Surface Laptop 13.8 | 15h 37m | 13.8", 2304x1536, IPS | 54 Wh |
| Surface Laptop 15 | 14h 29m | 15", 2496x1664, IPS | 66 Wh |
| HP Omnibook X | 15h 48m | 14", 2240x1400, IPS | 59 Wh |
The Surface Pro, while exceeding its predecessor (Surface Pro 9 with Microsoft SQ3) by a small margin, only reached 12 hours and 14 minutes. Other Snapdragon X Elite laptops performed better, with the HP Omnibook X leading the pack at 15 hours and 48 minutes.
The Apple Comparison: A Battery Size Advantage
While impressive, these results still fall short of Apple's M3-powered MacBooks. The 14-inch MacBook Pro achieved 17 hours and 16 minutes, while the 16-inch model, equipped with the more powerful M3 Max, reached 17 hours and 11 minutes.
It's important to note that the MacBooks have significantly larger batteries (70 Wh and 100 Wh respectively) compared to their Windows counterparts. This difference in battery capacity likely contributes to the disparity in battery life. However, even when accounting for battery size, the Snapdragon X Elite laptops haven't quite closed the gap with Apple's M3 chips in terms of power efficiency.