Vidita Chandra | 25 Sep 2025 09:48 AM
Qualcomm has unveiled the second generation of its Snapdragon X-series chips for Windows laptops, introducing two flagship processors – the Snapdragon X2 Elite and the top-tier Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. Billed as the company’s most powerful laptop silicon to date, the new lineup promises major leaps in computing power, graphics performance, and AI-driven capabilities.
The star of the show, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, is built on an advanced 3nm process and powered by Qualcomm’s next-gen Oryon CPU architecture. The chip features 18 cores, most of which clock up to 4.4GHz, while two performance cores can boost speeds to 5GHz. Qualcomm claims this architecture enables the Extreme variant to deliver up to 75% better CPU performance than competing chips at the same power consumption.
Qualcomm is also pushing boundaries in AI performance with the new Hexagon NPU, which now delivers up to 80 TOPS, a figure the company claims is the highest among laptop NPUs currently available. The upgraded AI engine offers a 37% performance boost while using 16% less power, enabling faster and more efficient on-device intelligence.
Power efficiency remains a core focus as well. Qualcomm says laptops powered by the new X2 chips can last multiple days on a single charge, surpassing the 14 to 18 hours achieved by last year’s Snapdragon X Elite models. Even systems drawing over 50W of power are expected to see extended battery life. Both the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme also feature built-in support for Wi-Fi 7 and 5G.
Devices powered by the new processors are expected to hit the market in the first half of 2026.