• 2 months ago
Transcript
00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom the Tech Chap.
00:02How does he do that?
00:06Hey guys, I'm Tom the Tech Chap.
00:08And I think it's fair to say that Windows laptops recently have been a bit boring.
00:13Iterative upgrades, rubbish battery life.
00:15Well, things are about to change.
00:17Things have changed in fact.
00:18With these.
00:19Laptops powered by Snapdragon X series processors.
00:23Right now there are over a dozen.
00:25Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite powered laptops with many more on the way.
00:28This is just like the first wave of this new hardware.
00:30And while I have already reviewed a couple of these on the channel.
00:33I think we need some different perspectives.
00:35So I've called in some backup for this video.
00:38Hey Tom.
00:39Thanks Tom.
00:40Hey Tom.
00:41Thanks Tom.
00:42And nice to you by the way.
00:43Who's that guy?
00:44At least we have my good friend SuperSaf.
00:46Good friend?
00:47Bit of a push there Tom.
00:49Now full disclosure.
00:50This video is sponsored by Snapdragon.
00:52Or should I say Qualcomm.
00:53They're the ones behind the Snapdragon brand.
00:55But I can tell you now in all honesty.
00:56That the only reason we are all making this video together.
00:59Is because.
01:00Well A we're being paid.
01:01But also we are genuinely really excited.
01:03About these new Snapdragon X series laptops.
01:06It is a proper game changer.
01:08For the PC industry.
01:09And particularly on Windows.
01:10Where we haven't had a lot of competition.
01:12For a few years.
01:13It's the combination of performance.
01:15Battery life.
01:16AI.
01:17Including the fact that they are the first to get Windows Copilot Plus.
01:20And also just how cool and quiet they can run.
01:23It is unmatched.
01:25And we've got laptops from Asus.
01:26Acer.
01:27We've got Microsoft.
01:28We've got Dell.
01:29Samsung.
01:30Lenovo.
01:31HP.
01:32Although here I have the Asus Vivobook S15.
01:34We've got the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
01:36And the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition.
01:40All powered by Snapdragon X Elite chips.
01:43I'm also really excited.
01:44Because I've got two new Surface Copilot Plus PCs.
01:47We've got the Surface Laptop.
01:48And the Surface Pro.
01:49And these are all powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor.
01:52I also love how super light these are.
01:54So when I'm out and about.
01:55It's almost like I'm not even carrying anything in my bag.
01:57For being so light and compact.
01:59I've also been really surprised how great the performance is.
02:01The Asus Vivobook S15.
02:04This is the first Snapdragon X Elite laptop I got hands on with right after launch.
02:08And I actually got to spend a little time with this on my summer trip to Japan.
02:11And this is where I started to really witness how much of a game changer the Snapdragon X Elite processor is to Windows laptops.
02:17Me and my wife spent hours of planning our epic three week trip with the kids across Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka.
02:22And this laptop was silky smooth with that large OLED display.
02:25And this was so light and thin.
02:27It was perfect for traveling.
02:29So I've been using the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X.
02:31And it's been really impressive.
02:33Despite the big battery and the cooling system.
02:35The Yoga Slim 7X is still a very slim package.
02:38True to its name.
02:39And the actual performance from the Snapdragon X Elite processor is good too.
02:43I've been using the Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
02:46And there's a lot that I like about it.
02:48The biggest thing for me has to be the battery life.
02:50And it's also super thin and light because it doesn't need a huge battery.
02:54Thanks to the low power consumption of the Snapdragon X Elite compute platform.
02:58It means that I can have a laptop like the HP Omnibook which I've been using for a while.
03:02That is small, compact, and just looks really nice.
03:06But also have all day battery life.
03:08Now for me, and I think probably most of us.
03:10The main reason to consider buying a Snapdragon laptop right now is the battery life.
03:15To give you an example, I've got four laptops here.
03:17And all but the one on the right are using Snapdragon X Elite chips.
03:21All be it different models and also with different battery sizes.
03:23But the one on the right is using AMD's brand new hardware.
03:28Now so far, my favorite feature on both of these is the battery life.
03:32Like it's actually kind of unbelievable.
03:34I can use them all day for all of the tasks that I need.
03:36And I never feel worried that I'm going to have to find an outlet to plug it into.
03:39I've done so many conference calls on it as well.
03:42Yeah, yeah, I mean all day battery life.
03:44It means I can sit on my couch, play some games, head over to a coffee shop.
03:48Meet some friends there, do some work.
03:50I have enough battery life to do what I need to do without actually taking my charger.
03:55What shocked me the most was the battery life actually.
03:58The Slim 7X has a particularly large battery at 70 watt hours.
04:02And the new Snapdragon X Elite processor is super efficient.
04:05So it's been able to last all day for me.
04:07It also helps that this laptop can actually sleep properly.
04:10So when I'm not using it, it's not losing much battery.
04:13And this long battery life really helps me take advantage of this super bright screen.
04:17It's one of the better displays I've seen on a laptop being 3K OLED.
04:21And it can also reach 1000 nits peak brightness.
04:24HDR videos look amazing on the screen.
04:26And even with the brightness maxed out, after one hour of playing this HDR video, it drained 9% battery.
04:31That's pretty good for how bright the screen is.
04:34The biggest thing for me has to be the battery life.
04:36The days of having to carry around your charger are gone.
04:40I can comfortably use this all day long wherever I am.
04:44And not have to worry about being next to a charging port.
04:47And I also noticed that the standby time was incredible.
04:50I would close the laptop at night and almost wake up to the exact same battery life.
04:54So Windows users know exactly how big of a deal this is.
04:57That is small, compact, and just looks really nice.
05:01But also have all day battery life.
05:03To give you a bit of context, until, well, now, I guess.
05:07We've just had Intel and AMD with their chips powering laptops like this.
05:11But along came Qualcomm with their Snapdragon X series.
05:15And we've got the X Plus and the X Elite, which is the slightly higher tier of chip.
05:20And that is a system on a chip, an SoC, which includes the processor, the CPU, the GPU for the graphics.
05:25And also the MPU, the neural processing unit.
05:28Along with the media engine and connectivity and all those bits and bobs.
05:31So essentially there are five models of X series chips.
05:34We've got one X Plus and four X Elite.
05:36With the X Elite boasting a 12 core CPU as well as a faster GPU.
05:40Wait, hang on.
05:41Future Tom jumping in here.
05:43Because I've just been told that I can share that there are maybe new models of the X series chip coming soon.
05:50We've got the one X Plus with 10 cores.
05:52We've got the four X Elite with 12 cores.
05:54I think all I can say is that there is more coming.
05:58More options.
06:00But importantly, they all share the same 45 TOPS MPU.
06:06That's 45 trillion operations per second.
06:08Which right now is how we kind of quantify the performance of AI on an MPU.
06:13And you can see here in the task manager, we've got a little bit of MPU action.
06:16Because I've got some studio effects running on the webcam.
06:19But crucially, Windows requires a minimum of 40 TOPS to use their Copilot Plus features.
06:25We've got 45 on here.
06:26And also exclusively until later in the year.
06:28These Snapdragon laptops are the only ones to support Copilot Plus out of the box.
06:32My favorite feature has to be co-creator.
06:35Which turns you into an artist by using your descriptive words and brush strokes.
06:38And generating masterpieces with AI.
06:41My description here is a futuristic city with high-rise buildings and flying cars.
06:46Take a look at that.
06:47The other thing I like is eye contact with Windows Studio Effects.
06:51This is essentially what I do in my videos with my sunglasses.
06:54But for everyone else, you no longer have to be looking directly into the camera when you're in meetings.
06:59You could just be looking at your notes on screen and still maintain eye contact.
07:03And the new webcam studio effects are so nice.
07:05Plus the eye contact feature.
07:07It's pretty freaking cool.
07:08It actually makes it look like I'm looking at the camera.
07:11When most of the time I'm either looking at myself wondering why my hair is a mess and I'm a disaster.
07:16Or just looking at everybody else that's on the call.
07:18It's definitely a game changer.
07:20The AI power is something that I'm tapping into daily.
07:22And it works incredibly fast.
07:24All while being super quiet.
07:26When I got home is where I really got to dig in.
07:28I downloaded DaVinci Resolve Beta to test out the 4K video editing.
07:31And it's really smooth.
07:32Accelerated by the built-in NPU.
07:34And runs so fast even unplugged.
07:36For me though, it's the live captions which are the best co-pilot feature.
07:40As it gives you a live translation of what's on screen.
07:42Whether you're on a call or watching videos.
07:44But one interesting thing is that in DaVinci Resolve.
07:47When I use the magic mask.
07:49You can see the NPU working away in the activity monitor.
07:51To accelerate this AI task.
07:53It frees up the CPU and GPU to do other things.
07:55And it's also more efficient.
07:57Exactly. As Ella mentioned.
07:58Having a powerful NPU locally on a device like this.
08:01Is all about offloading tasks from the CPU or the GPU.
08:04And either doing it much faster.
08:06Or more likely much more efficiently.
08:08A lot of this stuff can be done on the processor and graphics.
08:10But it's much more power hungry.
08:12And often a lot slower. Less optimized.
08:14And so while we can play around with co-creator.
08:16And talk about tops all day long.
08:18Really it's about improving efficiency.
08:20And improving your battery life.
08:21Now that power and performance also helps when it comes to gaming.
08:25So it means I can play the games I want.
08:27And also have the battery life to actually game as long as I want to.
08:31Now coupled that with Wi-Fi 7 connectivity.
08:34It means I'm getting the faster connections I need.
08:36For either gaming or doing work.
08:38I've also been really surprised how great the performance is.
08:40From just doing simple tasks.
08:42Like writing email.
08:43Working on scripts in Word.
08:45To even gaming and editing in DaVinci.
08:47It really can handle it all.
08:49You are almost getting full power not being plugged in.
08:51So these might seem like small things.
08:53But when all added up it really changes the user experience.
08:56I'm even doing a little bit of gaming with the updated drivers.
08:59And more games are becoming natively compatible.
09:02So I'm all for that.
09:03And to give you a couple of specifics.
09:05But hopefully without boring you to death.
09:07Here are some of my benchmarks with the Galaxy Book 4 Edge.
09:10Using the highest spec X1 E84-100.
09:14And you can see just how well it performs against Intel's current Meteor Lake processors.
09:20So far so good then.
09:21But before you rush out and buy yourself a shiny new Snapdragon X series powered laptop.
09:26There is one thing to bear in mind.
09:27That because this is based on ARM architecture.
09:30Rather than traditional x86.
09:32It means some apps won't run as well.
09:35And some simply won't run at all.
09:36At least not yet.
09:37The good news is that the vast majority of apps do run.
09:40And when they are properly optimized for this hardware.
09:42They run exceptionally well.
09:44The majority of people I think buying one of these won't run into any issues at all.
09:47But I'm happy to say that the support has actually been very good.
09:50We've had some quite big updates.
09:51And new drivers that have optimized games and apps.
09:54And just made them a smoother better experience.
09:56So just something to bear in mind.
09:58So yeah overall this is a very well-rounded package.
10:01So if you're looking for a fast new laptop with long battery life.
10:04Plenty of ports.
10:05And a big beautiful OLED display.
10:07Then this is definitely something that you need to look into.
10:10Back to you Tom.
10:11If you've got any questions at all about these laptops.
10:13Drop a comment below.
10:14Also let me know which one you think is best.
10:17If you are going to pick one of these up.
10:18Which one would you go for?
10:19And I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chat.