Windows laptops with Qualcomm's ARM-based processors have been shipping for years, but for most of that time they were powered by souped-up versions of Qualcomm's smartphone processors. This year the chip maker shook things up with its new Snapdragon X line of processors that offer CPUs that are powerful enough to compete with the latest Intel and AMD processors and high-performance NPUs for on-device AI.

But when the first crop of laptops with Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite chips were announced earlier this year, they all had one thing in common: they cost more than $1,000. Now Qualcomm has introduced a new entry-level Snapdragon X Plus processor designed for laptops in the $700 to $900 price range. As expected, it's called the Snapdragon X1P-42-100 and it sacrifices some CPU performance and a lot of graphics performance to keep the price tag lower. But it has the same AI features as its pricier siblings.

In a nutshell, the new chip has 8 CPU cores instead of 10 or 12, only supports CPU speeds up to 3.2 GHz, and has 30MB of cache rather than 42MB. It also has an integrated GPU with up to 1.7 TFLOPS of graphics performance which is less than half what you'd get from any other chip in the lineup.

But it's unclear if that's really going to be a big problem for most potential customers, because the truth is that gaming isn't the strong suit for any Snapdragon X series processors. Folks who are interested in buying a laptop with one of these processors are more likely attracted by energy efficiency and long battery life, AI capabilities, support for 5G cellular networks, or some combination thereof.

Of course, there's more competition in those areas today than there was when Qualcomm and Microsoft announced that the first Copilot+ PCs would have Snapdragon X chips. Earlier this year AMD introduced its Ryzen AI 300 mobile processors with up to 50 TOPS of AI performance, and this week Intel launched its Lunar Lake mobile chips with up to 48 TOPS. And Microsoft announced that they'd both be supported by the Copilot+ program and would start to receive "new AI experiences starting in November through free Windows updates," including Live Captions for videos, enhanced studio effects for video calls (including portrait blur, automatic framing, and eye contact correction), and generative image features.

Still, Qualcomm's new, more affordable Snapdragon X Plus chip appears to be making some headway with PC makers looking to offer more affordable laptops with Snapdragon X series chips, like the new Dell Inspiron 14 (5441) and Acer Swift Go 14 (SFG14-01) that are both coming soon with starting prices of $900 and $1000, respectively.

Platform Snapdragon X Elite Snapdragon X Plus Part number X1E-84-100 X1E-80-100 X1E-78-100 X1P-64-100 X1P-42-100 Cores 12 10 8 Max single-core frequency 4.2 GHz 4 GHz 3.4 GHz 3.2 GHz Max multithreaded frequency 3.8 GHz 3.4 GHz 3.2 GHz Dual Core boost 4.2 GHz 4 GHz N/A Total cache 42MB 30MB Graphics (TFLOPs) 4.6 TFLOPs 3.8 TFLOPs 1.7 TFLOPS NPU (TOPS) 45 TOPS Memory Up to 64GBLPDDR5x 8448 MT/s135 GB/s bandwidth8 channels Storage PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD supportUFS 4.0SD v3.0 Camera Qualcomm Spectra ISPDual 18-bit ISPsAlways-sensing ISPSingle camera: Up to 64MPDual camera: up to 2 x 36MPVideo capture: 4K HDR Wireless Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 (WiFi 7/BT5.4)Qualcomm Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF (10 Gbps peak download / 3.5 Gbps peak upload) USB Up to 3 x USB4, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 x eUSB2

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