Why a Snapdragon X Plus Chromebook would be amazing

Qualcomm’s powerful new Snapdragon X Elite has generated a lot of buzz in the laptop space of late. With promises of next-level performance and efficiency, it’s quickly become a compelling alternative to traditional x86 processors and – on paper at least – a real competitor to what Apple’s done with their M-series of Macbook processors. And now Qualcomm has revealed a slightly scaled-back but more affordable version in the Snapdragon X Plus.

The Snapdragon X Plus is a scaled down version of the X Elite, but it still shares the same Oryon CPU found in the Snapdragon X Elite. However, there are a few key differences, such as:

• Reduced Core Count: X Plus has 10 cores compared to the Elite’s 12.
• Clock Speed: The X Plus tops out at 3.4GHz as opposed to the Elite’s 3.8GHz.
• Less raw power: In multi-threaded CPU benchmarks, it falls short of the X Elite, but still manages to outperform Apple’s impressive M3 chip by roughly 10%.

Importantly, the Snapdragon X Plus is remarkably efficient, using approximately 54% less power at peak performance than the Intel Core Ultra 7155H. And the Snapdragon X Plus won’t compromise on AI performance, either, matching the X Elite on NPU side of things – an important metric for the foreseeable future as AI PCs remain an important selling point.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Snapdragon X Plus is the affordability factor. Qualcomm directly hints that this chip will be priced more competitively, opening up these powerful and efficient ARM machines to a wider range of users. And, perhaps down the road a bit, to Chromebooks, too.

Chromebooks are a great Snapdragon X Plus target

While PC folks may look at the Snapdragon Plus as a lesser-than processor (it doesn’t really seem to be), we Chromebook users see only raw power. Think of the current crop of Chromebook Plus devices. A 12th-gen Core i3 is plenty of horsepower for a great experience, so the Snapdragon X Plus would still be a very high-end processor when it comes to ChromeOS. The speed Qualcomm is citing from this new SoC would be blazing-fast in a Chromebook without question.

ChromeOS is also already very comfortable running not only on ARM hardware, but on a couple Snapdragon SoCs. The foundation for making sure things line up between hardware and software is already there, so the move to Snapdragon X Plus would be far less work than it would have been 5 years ago.

And that’s to say nothing of Chromebooks already running Android apps. With a powerful Snapdragon X Plus under the hood, imagine how good Android apps would be on a Chromebook with this SoC inside! Not only would you have amazing battery life and incredible overall performance; the Android piece of the equation would be better than its ever been.

I said all of this the first time Qualcomm launched their attempt at a desktop SoC in the 8cx, and I’ll say it again. These chips would be amazing in a Chromebook! While I wasn’t sold on the idea of the Snapdragon X Elite ever realistically making it to a Chromebook, the introduction of the X Plus makes me hopeful that one day, we might see it happen. A super thin, super light, super long-lasting Chromebook with all the power you could ask for makes me drool a bit, and I’m sure there are plenty of others out there who would love to see it, too.