Snapdragon X elite is faster than MacBook Air M2
xda-developers.com
xda-developers.com
Computers with fans and 23W-80W TDP vs computer with no fans (passively cooled) with ~10W TDP. The headline is frustrating because neither it or the article discuss the difference between dissipation and power draw, or performance per watt on either measure.
I only was interested in comparison of M series with new snapdragon chips. I don't think this is clickbaity, I just stayed facts from Geekbench benchmark.
If this is against rules please change title
You're editorializing. Is it faster than the M2, or not?
What I care about is battery life. Get me a Windows laptop as small as a MacBook Air with as good of a display that lasts as long or longer on battery. Then I'll be interested.
The new Snapdragon processors seem like a step in the right direction though.
Out of curiosity, what do you do with your laptop that you're away from a charger for so long? Other than people who travel a lot and work in the field like construction sites, oil & gas, I can't think of anyone who actually needs a laptop to last on battery as much as their phone.
Me and most people I know, and I know quite a few people, both tech workers and non-tech workers, casual users and professionals, are plugged in at our desks most of the time, and the few times we're not at the desk we're never more than a few hours away from it, but never a whole day.
So battery life longer than a workday(8h), is nearly useless to me and everyone else I personally know, but reading HN it seems there's a separate group of users, who's Venn diagram is never intersecting with mine, who are exclusively using their laptop on battery on the go, like how a teenage girl is on her phone, and live in trees or something where power outlets are scarce.
So, who is that demographic who's Venn diagram doesn't intersect with mine? Who are you and what do you do?
So I can't imagine my life would improve in any meaningful way if I were spared the effort to plug in a cable once/twice a day, especially since I always use an external monitor at home and work anyway so power delivery and charging is never something I can forget about.
And the rare occasions I do use the laptop on a train, coffeeshop, balcony, or somewhere else that's not my home or office desk, I never do it so long that the 8h battery life becomes an issue since my posture can't stand being hunched down at a laptop for more than a couple of hours, instead of working from the proper ergonomics of a desk + monitor.
Every workplace I know gives you external monitor and dock, and for home use, everyone I know they has their laptops plugged in at their desks almost all the time.
So again, I can't see what my demographic is missing if we had even more battery life.
Most battery life is assuming low system load. Under high load, you can easily drain a battery in less than 8 hours.
When you are traveling, the battery life of your laptop becomes a limitation you have to deal with.
You may forget to charge your laptop.
For some trips, you can skip carrying a power brick and use a phone fast charger over night instead. Battery charge gets slower the closer it gets to full. If 60% will last 8 hours, you can easily get away with this.
If it needs to be plugged in all the time, why do you need a laptop? Why not just a desktop?
More importantly, I need to bring a computer when traveling but even then I'm not using it during the trip, I'm going from plug to plug.
I never said it needs to be plugged in all day, I said that's where it spends most of the time. Because desktops take up way too much space and because sometimes you leave the house with your computer for work or leisure. And when I do, I don't need more than a few hours of battery because I don't like doing work outside the ergonomics of a proper desk.
>short trips, airports
And do you do a full day's work in an airport?
And when you travel via airports, you probably don't air travel in just your shorts with nothing on you, other than your phone, keys and wallet, like you're going to the local pub, but I assume you also have a backpack/bag with you for your laptop and belongings, which can also fit a <100g charger you need for your phone anyway.
Yes, some of this could be done on the family iPad or their iPhone (which neither of them have yet), but those don't have the games or schoolwork setup they need either.
Why sacrifice this kind of capability when the costs are about the same and quality is better?
I'm a kid of the 90's so I grew up with desktop PCs exclusively, so using a computer meant sitting at the computer desk, rather than using it anywhere else. So I guess this habit stuck to me as I rarely undock my laptop to use it anywhere else like kids who grew up with laptops.
But to me I see only benefits to this habit, hear me out:
- I get the best posture at the desk with ergonomic chair and external height adjustable monitor, versus in bed, couch or random table around the house where I need to hunch down at the small laptop screen. There's no way my neck can tolerate that posture for more than a couple of hours.
- more easily to mentally detach from work and digital entertainment, when the laptop is only at the desk and doesn't follow me around. As in, if I go to the park, or to the coffee shop, I go there to detach from "laptop usage" and unwind, like look out the window, read a book, chat up some people while enjoying the cappucino.
Who knows, if I were to grow up with a laptop, I'd probably have different usage habits now.
Unfortunately from the article it's hard to tell anything from power consumption other then the Snapdragon X Elite 8 has a roughly 28W "TDP" and that the Elite A has 80W "TDP" and is only slightly faster. Still, this doesn't translate to real world power usage.
I'd love to see a real world benchmark that measures actual power consumption of these chips.
I couldn't tell you where I got it or what its version is called but it was easy to find IIRC. Official too.
Really all that's needed is a fast enough, efficient enough CPU that makes it make sense for the price/performance ratio. I bought a refurb'd Surface Pro X for $400 CAD, for that price it's amazing. For the full MSRP? I don't think so...
I actually don't care which one wins. M series chips are revolutionary, snapdragon just catching up at same power draw is good enough
I'm surprised the year-old M2 does as well as it does with passive cooling.
I'd love to see active benchmarks of the Elite A vs. M2 Max/Ultra.
All in all, happy to see some competitive moves in this space.
It wouldn't be hard; there are already enough Chromebooks running ARM, so unless there's some other problem with it (like terrible driver support, since ChromeOS actually seems to care about running mainline linux) it would make some sense to make one.
i have seen radeon cards with better hardware specs, end up behind cheaper and less power nvidia cards on _every_ _single_ _tested_ _gane_.
people using apple hardware are not only interested in pure hardware raw performance. you have an ecosystem, an operating system. sometimes, a single app makes someone buy a mac (musicians, artists...).
if that chip is "faster" but requires me to use windows 11 or later, you can shove it up your ass.