in our launch review of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, we praised both the performance and the battery life of these new laptop chips, and we were even impressed by their ability to seamlessly run software that's designed for traditional x86 laptops. Then, the very next day, we live-streamed our attempts to run dozens of PC games, and nearly half of them failed. I mean, they clearly aren't meant to be gaming machines, but hey, neither is this thing, and yet it can play games, and that's important to a lot of people. So, what is the real conclusion here? Is it worth the risk that your favorite program might not run at all if it means better battery life than a MacBook in everything else you do? Well, we're going to find out today, and the day after that, and the day after that, and so on for an entire month. That's right, three members of our team are going to fully switch to Qualcomm laptops to see just how usable Windows on ARM is in 2024. So, we announced the challenge video over then, right.

no, oh, good Lord, we've still got to decide which of these numerous laptops we're going to be using for a month, and it's not going to be easy since there isn't a single bad one in front of us or behind us. So many options to tell you about. Our sponsor, G.Skill, embraces the finer things in life like yachting, art collecting, and of course, RAM with G.Skill's Trident Z5 Royal DDR5 featuring a mirror finish in either gold or silver and a crystalline light bar. Learn more at our link in the video description. Let's kick things right off with the Surface Laptop 7. Microsoft has been desperate for our response to Apple silicon, and their co-pilot plus flagship is the first big update to this product line in 5 years. Al really wants this one, so much so that he made sure that we had two of them to ensure that he gets one. The Sensil trackpad means great gesture controls and haptics, and as far as facelifts go, this one was a doozy. It's

lighter, smaller, and maybe even better built. I have heard the keyboard's a bit underwhelming though, so we're going to have to test that out, and there's no time like the present. It's definitely a softer typing experience, not the longest travel distance, and a little bit on the squishy side, but I don't think this would affect accuracy, and there's a lot else to like about this machine. It's got a 120Hz display that does support HDR with peak brightness of up to 600 nits for a pretty solid HDR viewing experience. It's in that magic 3x2 aspect ratio that is incredible for productivity, and on that note, it has one of, if not the best, webcams we've ever seen on a laptop, and of course includes Windows Hello facial recognition for instant login. She's tempting, but I have to ask Alex, what exactly happened here? Uh, that was a little bit awkward. You know how we said that the Sensil trackpad is really, really good? Uh-huh. Uh, one of them didn't

work. Oh, so when it arrived, made a little mix and match. Yeah, so now it's fixed. I like what you've done here. I really love it, actually. And you can see the whole experience of swapping out the bottom panel and the trackpad at lm. g/f flat plane. You know, it's very on brand that you have a janky one. Would you look at that? That's a lot of washers that just came out of there. I really like this top. Now I'm like emotionally connected to it. We literally just started getting back on their good side. This is not going to help. I'm so sorry, Microsoft. Next up, we've got the Samsung Galaxy Book for Edge, and she's a little heavier, but there is a lot to like here, including that shockingly thin profile that somehow doesn't compromise on iO with full-size HDMI ports and full-size USB and a Micro SD Storage slot. We also get a fingerprint sensor, and oh, that display. Now it's no secret that Samsung makes some of the best panels for everyone.

else on the market be they phones laptops or TVs so it shouldn't be a surprise they have an absolute Banger of a display on this machine. On top of the solid specs, Samsung has gone the extra mile to avoid one of the pitfalls of previous OLED touchscreens where the touch digitizer wouldn't line up perfectly with the OLED subpixels. On this one, it's Crystal Clear so you don't get any of that potential graininess that we've seen in the past, meaning this is an extremely strong Contender. I mean it's panoramic. Now there is one problem with this. We have an international layout keyboard, which is a bit of an issue. I didn't even notice that, but do you know what arrived literally 30 minutes ago? Oh, a not that one, a not that one. Oh, perfect. But if you want to take it, there is someone that you will have to fight. Oh, Samy's interest is seeing how it integrates with the rest of the Samsung ecosystem. He's already got the phone, the watch, the fridge, so and the

ear bud brand loyalty for the win. I guess. Of course, Colin flag me, that's not why Sammy is your name, is it? No, short for Samsung. For the XPS 13, Dell sent us two different options, and on both of them, you give up some IO, and you definitely give up some screen size, but you also give up unsightly bezels. And on this one, in between that nearly frameless design, is the very first tandem OLED panel on a PC. Guys, if this comes even close to the one in the new iPad Pro, this is likely to be the best screen on a laptop, period. The only problem is that according to Dell, the full HD Plus IPS version of the XPS 13 gets literally double the battery life, so they provided that option for us as well. Would I trade my newfound excellent battery life for another worldly ped display? Well, fortunately, it isn't as bad as they said. This thing right here got a solid 12 hours. Just this one's incredible. Look, I had to write it in 'cause it got nearly 17 hours of battery life.

when I printed these off, it was still just going in the chamber from the night before, and there's a lot more to like here, at least on paper: the backpad, keyboard, speakers, build quality, and especially on the full HD Plus model, the best battery life in a sea of MacBook-beating batteries. It's incredible, except no headphone jack or physical Escape key D, but another there is. That's right, Dell's XPS line isn't the only contender they sent over, and their traditionally lower-end Inspiron machine. It's actually looking very tempting. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the mushy keyboard, nor am I that into giving up an HDR display, but by simply avoiding many of Dell's foot-shooting design-forward decisions, the Inspiron family could end up being the only reasonable contender for a lot of buyers. Now, with only 11 hours and 6 minutes of battery life, it got the shortest of all of our Snapdragon laptops, but it still bests the MacBook Air M2 by 43 minutes, so it's still

pretty darn exceptional. Of course, being a more budget-friendly model, this is also the only machine out of our options that's configured with the X+ chip and not the ex Elite. So, we'd have to live with just 10 cores in our thin and light for a month. 2024 truly is a tough time, isn't it? I mean, it is, but not because of this. Next up, I'd love to show you this design from framework, who of course I'm invested in. I'd love to show it to you, but they don't have one, so let's move on. The HP Omnibook X is kind of a funny one because on paper, nothing about it really stands out, and yet this is one of those rare devices that manages to be more than the sum of its parts. It's thin, it's light, the keyboard is great, the rounded corners on the chassis feel nice in your hands, and the iio is even surprisingly decent for a machine this slim with one of those cute little full-size type A's. The screen also

doesn't get very bright, only 300 nits peak, meaning that outdoor use in anything but an emergency is out of the question. But it sips power, giving this thing the second best battery life in our tests. Of course, if you want almost as much battery life and a bigger, brighter OLED screen, the Asus VI book S15 has got to be on your radar. Although that's not necessarily a recommendation, this has got to be the most all-over-the-place laptop we've got. See, on paper, it features the slowest version of the X Elite, but in turbo mode, it manages to ramp power to that thing to 50 WTS, making it the fastest real-world performer in multicore workloads, even though it's the second slowest out of everything we tested in single core. The screen is 120 HZ OLED and hits 600 nits, but it's 6 by 9 and non-touchscreen, which I'm frankly not that into. The keyboard and build quality are best described as fine, I guess, but it comes with the best

IO out of the bunch and comes with a terabyte of storage for a reasonable price, bucking a trend that the rest of the industry seems to be happy to go along with where reasonable amounts of storage cost an arm and a freaking leg. I should have said leg and arm; that would have been much funnier. Get it? We're going to have links down below to where you can find pricing and full specs for all of these machines, but for now, I think it's time to get off the spec sheet and start comparing side by side. And I got to tell you, that tandem OLED almost looks unnaturally over-juiced, especially next to that HP. Yeah, if I'm honest, I did try this in HDR in this video and non-HDR, it looks way more natural not in HDR. So I think it's just the color grading. I was typing on this to bring this video up, and I do not like this keyboard. I like rounded keys. I do not like these flat hard edges on the keys. I don't know. I've used these a little bit, and I find that

you get used to it and really like it in like maybe 10 minutes. That's fair enough. I mean, I don't want to disqualify a machine based on a temporary inconvenience, but if there's something that feels good to me out of the box and I don't have to deal with this overblown gamma tracking nightmare of a display, then maybe that's a good thing. Alex did suggest, though, that I turn HDR off and see if it feels better. Oh my, my God, that is a nice HDR display, and that one looks functionally identical. I would say the most true to life looking of all of them is actually the vi book. Yeah, that's not surprising. OLED and it is color calibrated. It looks pretty freaking good. I think the Samsung might have a wider gamut. You know, the Surface has a really good display compared to the rest of them. It does not hold up. It doesn't stand out anyway. Same with the Inspiron, although matte finish. I do really appreciate. Okay, all right, crab Rave.

can pack so much music in this bad boy. You really can. That's only half volume. It gets worse as it gets louder. It really does. Didn't get much louder. Did distort. Oh. In fairness, if we hadn't heard that first, it wouldn't be so awful. That sounds good. Not bad. Samsung, yeah. This must be that Harmon acquisition. I don't even see a Harmon logo on it or anything. Gets better when you give it some space too. That's really solid. Yeah, I dig it. How' Microsoft do it's pretty good. It doesn't get that loud. You just desperately want to like this thing. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's well-rounded and it's not nearly as loose and boomy as the Vivo book s, but it does have that Clarity that we saw on both the Samsung and the Dell. And not every Dell, not the worst, is great. Yeah, I thought that speaker test would go way better than it did. Went great for Samsung, yeah, it went great for Samsung. They were a surprise, if not winner.

Definitely Contender, and everyone else kind of realistically, we're both pretty close to picking something, I think, but there's more to life than subjectivity. And we did some performance analysis on the machines as well. Are there any that stand out above or below? One thing that surprised me is that the Samsung, on paper, has the fastest chip in it. It's the only one that gets the top skew, mhm, and it is the slowest of the bunch. Well, the Inspiron lower, but it has a 10-core CPU, so of course it's slower. This is a really valuable lesson on laptop specs and why we can't take them at face value anymore. I mean, I have a thin and light laptop that has an RTX 470 in it. See that face, right? That face tells you everything you need to know. Also, very strange. I think some BIOS optimizations need to happen 'cause three of our devices were faster on battery than well plugged in, and like repeatedly too high performance mode in both situations, faster on battery run after run enough.

stalling. Pick one. I want this one. I knew you were going to do that. Why 3x2 display touch? It doesn't do any horribly wrong. And you do get a Type A. I really hate that you have to use the stupid thing. I much prefer just Type C. But can it charge on those Type-C ports though? It can, yes. Oh, then you don't have to use it at all. You just ignore it. And it's just an annoying thing that's there. See, I still consider MagSafe to be a feature. Sorry, excuse me, Safe Magnet. I don't know what Microsoft calls it, but it wouldn't lean me toward a device. Going Sammy. I kind of really like it. Now, there are definitely things I don't like. Included number pad. Not only am I not an accountant, but what it does is it offsets your trackpad to the left, meaning that you're always either sitting with your arms like this or looking like this a little bit. But what else would I choose? There is one honorable mention that unfortunately we

weren't able to get here today. It's kind of similar to the XPS 13, and it doesn't have a headphone jack either. I'm probably going to regret this, but I'm going to go with the Omni book. You think the 300 nits is enough? I almost never use a laptop outside. Fair enough, I'm going for it, and I'm going for telling you about our sponsor. Oh, one sec, one sec. Dbrand has sent us a thing. Oh, are they our sponsor? No, they aren't. Oh, but they sent us some skins. I mean, they are a sponsor. Oh no, what have you done? What the hell? There's a skin for me and a skin for you. Mine has the Scorpion. Why do you get the sickest, coolest looking skin ever, and I get their like new rusted out cool design? I'm sure that it's called case hardened. Shill better, Linus. Oh my God, what is this stuff? Do you have options? I guess. Oh no, no, I get a top and a bottom. I'm settled, and I'm settled on.

telling you about our sponsor Grammarly. At Lus Media Group, the business team has to do a ton of communication, coordination, and writing, and they're not even on the writing team. That's where Grammarly comes in. They're an AI writing partner that works where you work, and upgrading to Grammarly Premium has saved our business team even more time. Thanks to useful features like strategic suggestions, Grammarly will anticipate your reader questions and help you fill the gaps, whether it's providing enough context or offering solutions to a problem. Plus, with the Premium app actions feature, you can now link Google Drive links, create tasks on Monday.com, or insert gifts into your emails in one place without switching tabs. Sign up and upgrade to Grammarly Premium at gram.com/lt8. If you guys enjoyed this video, why not go check out our Snapdragon X review or that long stream was like 3 or 4 hours, yeah, where we tried 40 different games, something like that. Yeah, it's pretty eye-opening.

They’re Making me Pick a New Laptop - Qualcomm Snapdragon X Daily Driver Challenge Pt. 1

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.
