Qualcomm plans to bring Snapdragon chips to $600 laptops

The first Windows laptops to ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite chips sold for $1,000 and up when they first hit the streets earlier this year. But in September Qualcomm introduced a new a lower-cost (and lower performance) chip designed for laptops with prices starting as low as $700.

Now the company has indicated it plans to go lower with a new Snapdragon processor that’s “coming soon” for entry-level laptops priced as low as $600.

Qualcomm Investor Day 2024 presentation slide

At this point Qualcomm hasn’t said anything about the upcoming processor’s specifications. But given that Snapdragon X Elite processors feature 12 CPU cores and higher-performance graphics than the 8 and 10-core Snapdragon Plus processors, it seems like a safe bet that an upcoming entry-level processor could cut back on CPU and/or GPU resources.

But the new chip will have the same 45 TOPS NPU as all other members of the Snapdragon X family, which means PCs that ship with the new processor may still qualify as Microsoft Copilot+ PCs with support for on-device AI processing.

So while you could certainly make the case that $600 laptops aren’t exactly “entry” level at a time when you can find plenty of notebook computers selling for $500 or less, Qualcomm’s new chip could be used to bring down the starting price of so-called “AI PCs” substantially… if that’s a thing that matters to you.

At this point, it’s unclear if there are any killer apps that make on-device AI a must-have feature in personal computers. But Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors are also energy-efficient chips that long battery life while offering strong single-core CPU performance. Laptops that ship with the processors aren’t great gaming PCs at this point, but that becomes less of an issue in a $600 laptop than it is for one that sells for twice as much.

Qualcomm hasn’t said when the new chips will be available or when you’ll be able to buy a laptop that has one inside.

via xda-developers and Neowin

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