During its Investor Day, Qualcomm teased the arrival of a new Snapdragon X chipset aimed at affordable Windows-powered devices. The company is proud of its latest approach, and it’s not a surprise. After years of trying to deliver a proper competitor to Apple’s M2 series, the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus series arrived with great performance for ARM-based Windows devices. Now, the company wants a more affordable CPU which certainly can help this market to gain more traction. While the name isn’t confirmed, the chipset could be called Snapdragon X Plus.
Qualcomm will introduce an affordable Snapdragon X CPU with its powerful NPU chip
Currently, the company offers the X Elite with 12-core CPU Configurations and the X Plus with 8 or 10-core CPUs. Thus, the vanilla Snapdragon X will likely adopt a 6-core CPU, although Qualcomm has yet to confirm this detail.
The company teased that its powerful NPU chip, used in the rest of the Snapdragon X SoCs, will be found within the cheaper Snapdragon X. So, as we said before, this CPU has the potential to boost sales in this market. The CPU is expected to power sub $600 laptops with Windows and AI-driven Copilot+. With a more attractive price, consumers at the lower end of the market will start to consider this as an option. It is worth noting that other competitors are not offering this at the moment. The power NPU is often limited to higher-end chips. So, this will likely give the company an edge over its rivals.
The market availability is still unknown and Qualcomm has not scheduled an announcement date yet. However, the CES 2025 could be the perfect stage for new updates in the X series. The new CPUs with Qualcomm’s proprietary Nuvia cores are changing the company’s business. The recently released Snapdragon 8 Elite, for example, borrows the Nuvia cores from its Snapdragon X siblings. It will be interesting to see how the market evolves with more capable ARM-based CPUs for computers.
