ASUS VivoBook S 15 Copilot+ PC Review: Is the Snapdragon X Elite hype real?

[Windows Central]

The Snapdragon X Elite elevates this laptop from a good all-rounder to a great one, with excellent performance, good battery life, a gorgeous display, and more. All for a reasonable price, too!

ASUS VivoBook S 15 Copilot+ PC Review: Is the Snapdragon X Elite hype real? : Read more

 

[dharmababa]

Probably not the hardware that most are waiting for but answers most of the major questions people have had. People who were claiming/hoping that Qualcomm was going to flop are obviously wrong:

• The Snapdragon X will provide performance between M3 and M3 Pro which is excellent for a "first" outing (Oryon v1). It does not need to compete with M4 to be a huge step forward for the Windows ecosystem.
• Yes it requires fans but they're quiet and it's a trade off for better sustained multi-core.
• Emulation will be a slight hit but generally close to Rosetta.
• Battery life improvements (incl sleep/wake) are significant - some promising reports from r/Surface as well.

Microsoft really should have focused on marketing the perf/battery aspects of this (M1 moment) but they obviously couldn't resist the temptation to lump AI/Recall in especially with the NPU and industry hype bubble around AI. I personally couldn't care less about the Recall delay and can't wait until my SL7 arrives for the improved fundamentals. Basic stuff like studio effects are nice.

 

[The Werewolf]

I'm genuinely bewildered by this desperate need for a platform with 85% of the market to prove itself "better" than one company's product that has 15% of the market.

If you look at the benchmarks here - this laptop is at best mid-range in comparison to other laptops and at 45W TDP isn't even particularly different in terms of thermals. Pricewise, at least right now, these are all higher end laptops. I just picked up an ASUS Zenbook 14 i7 laptop with a 14" OLED screen (same basic screen as this one, but with touch and pen support) for CA$1150 (US$840).

There's nothing wrong with this ARM laptop, but for most people, there's really nothing special about it either. I can't imagine people running out to get a laptop because it can genAI your photos... and not play many games.

I know WindowsCentral (and Zac in particular) has a serious b****r for ARM, but objectively, it's just a laptop, one of many in many configs. Nothing so far (especially Copilot+) stands out as a reason run out and get one or choose it over an Intel or AMD laptop.

About the only big takeaway for me? If this is equivalent to the performance level of an M3 MacBook... WOW is that device overhyped given its price.

 

[Grimlock]

I'm very surprised that Microsoft put the entire weight of the company behind these chips and they not live up to the hype. I'm not saying they're flops either, they've definitely made a leap forward, but to say they were ahead of the competition on performance and efficiency simply isn't true. I think if they had tempered expectations a bit the narrative around these chips would be quite positive.

The battery life seems marginally better than AMD/Intel right now, but that will likely change in the coming months with lunar lake and zen 5. I really like the standby performance on the snapdragon, but if will always come at the cost of using prism I don't see a significant number of people leaving amd/intel for these devices.

Ultimately I don't think the push for developers to offer ARM software will improve dramatically over the next year, and windows on arm will be non existent in a couple years sadly.

 

[Arthur Dent]

With respect to battery life remember that the VivoBook has an OLED monitor, which typically puts it at a disadvantage when comparing it to machines (like a MacBook) that do not have an OLED screen. See for example

Battery Power Online | OLED Display’s Impact on Battery Life for Consumer Tech Devices

www.batterypoweronline.com

HP Spectre x360 13 OLED battery life is significantly shorter than the IPS option by several hours

Based on our WLAN tests, the cheaper IPS configuration can outlast the more expensive OLED configuration by almost 4 hours when browsing the web at identical brightness levels, identical web pages, and identical power profiles each.

www.notebookcheck.net

It depends on what is used for the battery tests - if it is using a lot of white or bright windowed content that will negatively affect an OLED's efficiency more than the other screen types, perhaps significantly.

We really need to see the battery tests for non-OLED systems. The VivoBook's battery life might actually be very good given that it has the OLED screen.