Skip to main content

These new chips could be good news for Copilot+ PCs

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus
Arif Bacchus / Digital Trends

The first Copilot+ laptops are already out, powered by Qualcomm’s impressive new Snapdragon X chip. The first batch of reviews were delayed, and early impressions have observed the hits and misses of the current chips. But a new leak tells us that Qualcomm might have another ace up its sleeve, and there may be hope for these Arm-based Copilot+ PCs yet. What’s new? There might be more models of the chip than what we’ve been privy to so far.

Recommended Videos

So far, we’ve seen reviews of the Asus Vivobook S 15, but that’s just one of several chips that fall under the Snapdragon X Elite umbrella. According to files for the Adreno GPU driver, there may be not just six, but 10 different models of the Snapdragon X — and three of those are Plus chips, which we’ve previously only seen one of.

As per VideoCardz, the unreleased chips include the X Elite X1E-76-100 — that one would, presumably, be a 12-core variant like the rest of the Elite chips. There are also three new additions to the X Plus lineup, including the X1P-62-100, X1P-42-100, and the X1P-40-100. The specs remain unknown right now, although the Plus chips are likely to sport 10 cores instead of 12.

A racing game running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite reference laptop.
Arif Bacchus / Digital Trends

Based on the naming alone, we can imagine that the X1P-62-100 will be the second-best 10-core chip, while the X Elite X1E-76-100 might end up being the most entry-level of the 12-core options. Clock speeds make for an interesting thing to speculate about here, but the reality is that we don’t know when — or if — these rumored chips may pop up in actual laptops.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite stand against chips like the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series or the Intel Lunar Lake when it comes to meeting the requirements for Microsoft’s Copilot+ program. However, the challenge for laptop makers and Microsoft alike lies in the fact that Qualcomm’s chips are Arm-based, which means they rely on an entirely different instruction set. Emulation showed a lot of promise, but so far, the reviews show that some applications like games struggle to run well on these PCs, which is something Microsoft is making some progress in already.

On the positive side, they seem to offer solid battery life and efficiency. We’ll have to wait and see to find out if these so-called new Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips are real.

Monica J. White
Monica is a computing writer at Digital Trends, focusing on PC hardware. Since joining the team in 2021, Monica has written…
I love the Dell XPS 13, but I’ll pick the MacBook Air any day
Dell XPS 13 and M4 MacBook Air.

I am a huge fan of slim and light laptops. That preference is borne more out of my professional lifestyle than a necessity for absolute silicon firebreathers. I believe a laptop should be, well, light on your lap, or hands, unless you need all that firepower in a mobile form factor.

That’s the reason gaming laptops exist, or those thick workstations such as the HP ZBook with an Nvidia RTX A500 series graphics card. For the rest, a thin laptop can do the job just fine, with its quirky set of compromises. Finding the right slim laptop, however, is the tricky part.

Read more
Google Gemini’s best AI tricks finally land on Microsoft Copilot
Copilot app for Mac

Microsoft’s Copilot had a rather splashy AI upgrade fest at the company’s recent event. Microsoft made a total of nine product announcements, which include the agentic trick called Actions, Memory, Vision, Pages, Shopping, and Copilot Search. 

A healthy few have already appeared on rival AI products such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside much smaller players like Perplexity and browser-maker Opera. However, two products that have found some vocal fan-following with Gemini and ChatGPT have finally landed on the Copilot platform. 

Read more
I never use my Microsoft Copilot subscription. I still think it’s worth it
Microsoft 356 apps.

If you have a regular subscription, you’re likely well-versed in the dance of paying for something and wondering if it’s worth the value. For many people, that might be a streaming service that hasn’t been used in six or more months or a membership for a gym that hasn’t been visited since before that last holiday. For me, I grapple with what to do with my Microsoft 365 subscription, specifically after the recent price hike due to the addition of Copilot+ features.

Microsoft 365 is one of those interesting computer suites that you don’t realize that you need until you need it. It's likely why I’ve allowed Microsoft to snatch money from my bank account for several years, when I only use one or two programs and one or two features.

Read more