[Editors’ Note, April 17, 2026: This article and its charts were edited to add comparison results from our tests of two of Intel’s “Panther Lake” laptop CPUs.]
With its 18-core loadout, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive is Qualcomm’s loudest laptop-CPU salvo so far. It is a new CPU tier from Qualcomm (the primary era of its Snapdragon X processors topped out with the Snapdragon X “Elite,” no “Excessive”), and my assessments place it favorably among the many higher echelons of laptop computer silicon. Benchmarking this new flagship chip proves that Qualcomm’s finest can problem a number of the higher chips from AMD, Apple, and Intel.
I examined the X2 Elite Excessive in Asus’ new 16-inch Zenbook A16. That laptop computer, constructed across the chip and unveiled in January at CES 2026, wowed our workforce sufficient again then to designate it the perfect ultraportable of the convention. Now that this $1,699.99 clamshell laptop computer has arrived in PC Labs, I’ve put its guarantees of energy to the check.
This is not the primary time PCMag has encountered the X2 Elite Excessive. Final fall, my colleague acquired a peek at how the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive performs in a managed surroundings at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, however that was a restricted view. In my house lab, I ran PCMag’s curated gauntlet of benchmarks to see how the Zenbook and its top-end X2 chip carry out within the real-world circumstances you care about most.
For the reason that debut of its Snapdragon X line of laptop computer chips just some years in the past, Qualcomm has made some critical strides, displaying up in all the pieces from surprisingly potent finances programs to hyper-efficient flagship laptops and even some punchy mini PCs. What did I discover with this newest spherical of assessments? The X2 Elite Excessive actually lets the Snapdragon X household run with the massive canine.
Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive: Qualcomm’s Largest Leap But
The X2 Elite Excessive is Qualcomm’s new flagship system on a chip (SoC), designed to compete head-on with high-end x86 silicon from Intel and AMD, in addition to Apple’s M-series. Using Qualcomm’s Third-gen “Oryon” CPU structure, it represents a serious shift from the unique Snapdragon X1 chips. The broad strokes are spectacular: a soar to 18 cores, an expanded cache, and an NPU that almost doubles AI efficiency from 45 TOPS to 80 TOPS. The chip can be able to boosting as much as a 5GHz clock velocity when needed.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
This is not only a Model 2.0 of the X1; it’s a full reengineering. By transferring from a uniform core design to a extra subtle high-performance hybrid mannequin, the X2 Elite Excessive is constructed to go toe-to-toe with high-wattage chips historically reserved for chunky workstations. For energy customers, creators, and professionals, that is excellent information certainly.
Word: Should you want a full refresher on the underlying tech, we’ve a whole deep dive into the structure modifications with the Snapdragon X2 household in our earlier take a look at the chip.
The Asus Zenbook A16: A 2.6-Pound Powerhouse
Whereas my focus at the moment is on the silicon, the {hardware} housing it’s what makes this efficiency tier attainable in a conveyable format. The Zenbook A16 is an ultralight 16-inch laptop computer constructed from magnesium-aluminum alloy, strengthened with Asus’ proprietary Ceraluminum end, permitting it to suit a 16-inch, 120Hz 3K OLED display screen right into a body that weighs simply 2.65 kilos. That’s almost a pound lighter than a 15-inch MacBook Air.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
My check unit options the top-tier X2E-96-100 chip with 48GB of LPDDR5X reminiscence and a full array of ports, together with USB4 and a full-size SD card reader. For a deeper take a look at the A16’s aesthetics, keyboard really feel, and design improvements, take a look at our Asus Zenbook A16 hands-on overview from CES.
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Core Comparisons: AMD, Apple, and Intel within the Crosshairs
Take a look at outcomes do not imply a lot on their very own, so I am evaluating the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive in opposition to CPUs from AMD, Apple, and Intel, in addition to the earlier top-tier Qualcomm chips.
This is an summary of the programs and CPUs I checked out for this comparability. The processors are grouped by maker (Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple), in roughly descending energy order…
For Apple and Apple M-Sequence, I am evaluating with the 2025 MacBook Professional 14-Inch, based mostly on the vanilla M5. (We might have appreciated to check the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive to the M5 Professional, too, in a bigger MacBook Professional, however we have not had the chance to check that CPU.) For Intel’s newest, I’ve two freshly minted Core Extremely 3 X-series “Panther Lake” chips, within the Asus ZenBook Duo (2026) and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Professional (examined, however not but reviewed).
Additionally for Intel, I am tapping the HP EliteBook X G1i (Core Extremely 7 268V “Lunar Lake”) and the Lenovo Yoga Professional 9i Gen 10 Aura Version (Core Extremely 9 285H “Arrow Lake-H”). Word that the Lenovo Yoga machine has a discrete GeForce RTX 5050 GPU and thus will present some atypically amped-up graphics efficiency; the remainder of the machines right here depend on built-in graphics.
For AMD programs, I chosen the HP EliteBook X G1a (Ryzen AI 9 HX Professional 375) and the HP ZBook Extremely G1a 14—a cellular workstation utilizing the potent Ryzen AI Max+ Professional 395 SoC. And at last, I added the Asus Vivobook S 15 (S5507Q) and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge 16 (Snapdragon X Elite) to the lineup, permitting for a comparability with the earlier Snapdragon era.
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CPU Efficiency: 18 Cores, Actual Muscle
For Snapdragon processors, we run three CPU-centric or processor-intensive assessments. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Professional simulates common apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying; and we see how lengthy it takes the freeware video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to transform a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p decision.
In single-core Cinebench assessments, the Zenbook A16 affords stable efficiency, topping its Intel and AMD rivals. Nevertheless, Apple’s lead in single-core efficiency stays intact; the X2 Elite Excessive falls simply behind each the Apple M5 by a small margin.
It is within the multi-core Cinebench outcomes the place the X2’s 18 cores actually shine. The outcomes outclass almost all the pieces on our comparability listing, pulling effectively forward of the MacBook Professional and beating the Intel and AMD programs nearly throughout the board. The one exception is the HP ZBook Extremely G1a 14, which makes use of a specialised AMD SoC that is still the “heavy iron” of the group, being utilized in gaming and workstation laptops.
We see an identical story in Geekbench 6, which focuses on day by day productiveness and a broader array of computing duties. Once more, the Snapdragon X2 outclasses Intel and AMD in single-core scores, whereas trailing Apple by a good quantity. In multi-core, it delivers the perfect rating of the bunch, even topping AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ Professional 395.
The generational leap right here is dramatic. Have a look at the Galaxy Book4 Edge: In contrast with final 12 months’s Snapdragon X Elite, the X2 Elite Excessive affords an over-800-point soar in single-core efficiency and a staggering 6,000-point-plus enhance in multi-core efficiency. This is not simply an iteration; it’s an enormous shift in Qualcomm’s aggressive positioning.
To gauge total velocity in a job you may really carry out in the actual world, we use Handbrake to transcode a 4K video file to 1080p. The Asus Zenbook A16 delivered an excellent outcome, coming in at beneath 5 minutes. This places it in the identical class of functionality as the bottom M5 MacBook Professional, suggesting that Qualcomm can largely remove the Home windows-on-Arm penalty for media creation with apps that run natively on Home windows on Arm. (Handbrake is considered one of them.) Word, nevertheless, that the Intel Panther Lake and Arrow Lake-H chips, and the AMD chips, got here in effectively forward.
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Graphics: Adreno Steps Up
Qualcomm did not simply overclock its current graphics for this era; the corporate utterly re-architected the Adreno GPU. This new built-in graphics resolution helps DirectX 12.2 Final and Vulkan 1.4, delivering a claimed 2.3x performance-per-watt enchancment over the earlier era. In early assessments, this translated to just about doubling the body charges and artificial scores of the X1. It is not as drastic an enchancment, in a big-picture sense, because the CPU efficiency enhance is; the Elite Excessive was outpaced by Intel Panther Lake, the Ryzens, and the Apple M5 in lots of instances right here, in our numerous artificial assessments. However the X2 Elite Excessive decisively dwarfs the Adreno within the unique Snapdragon X Elite.
To see how this new structure interprets to real-world efficiency, I challenged every reviewed system’s graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark check suite. The primary two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Excessive (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The subsequent two, Metal Nomad’s common (4K) and Mild (1440p) subtests, give attention to APIs extra generally used for sport improvement to evaluate gaming geometry and particle results. A fifth check, Photo voltaic Bay, measures ray-tracing efficiency.
Within the 3DMark Wild Life check, which measures high-frequency burst efficiency, the Zenbook A16 delivered a robust displaying, securing the fourth-highest rating in my comparability group and eclipsing the unique X Elite’s Adreno scores. Once I stepped as much as Wild Life Excessive, which pushes the rendering decision to 4K, the X2 Elite Excessive maintained momentum. It stays one of many prime performers on this class, outpaced solely by the Apple MacBook Professional (M5) and the workstation-class HP ZBook Extremely G1a 14, and roughly on par with the Arc B390 within the Intel Panther Lake programs. On condition that the ZBook is a thick, high-wattage machine, the truth that an ultraportable just like the A16 is in the identical dialog is a testomony to the brand new Adreno’s effectivity.
Transferring to the extra trendy Metal Nomad and Metal Nomad Lite assessments, the generational enchancment turns into much more obvious. The X2 Elite Excessive confirmed an enormous enhance over the first-generation Snapdragon X Elite chips. This means that the Adreno overhaul is not nearly larger clock speeds; it’s a few elementary enhance in shader throughput and reminiscence bandwidth that makes the A16 a way more succesful instrument for gentle video modifying and average gaming. Word, nevertheless, that the Arc B390 within the Intel Panther Lake chips asserted their dominance right here, outpacing the Qualcomm Elite Excessive by roughly to 10% to twenty% in numerous comparisons within the two Metal Nomad assessments.
Essentially the most stunning outcome got here in Photo voltaic Bay, 3DMark’s cross-platform ray tracing benchmark. On this check of superior lighting and reflection methods, the Zenbook A16 really edged forward of the Apple M5 MacBook Professional. The one programs to maintain it at bay had been, as soon as once more, the HP ZBook Extremely (by quite a bit) and the 2 Arc B390-based Intel Panther Lake programs (by roughly 20% every).
AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ (Strix Halo) stays the built-in graphics champion on this discipline due to its immense GPU core depend, and the Intel Panther Lake programs based mostly on Arc B390 are not any slouches, however given its displaying right here in a mainstream 16-inch laptop computer, the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive is now a correct participant in built-in graphics.
Early Verdict: The ‘Excessive’ Label Is Correct
My first periods with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive inside a retail-ready laptop computer verify what the PCMag workforce suspected throughout its unveiling: Qualcomm has formally moved previous the “various” section and right into a “critical challenger” place. By delivering multi-core efficiency that rivals workstation-class AMD silicon and graphics that may play ball with a base Apple M5 in ray tracing, the X2 Elite Excessive is increasing what we are able to anticipate from a 2.6-pound laptop computer.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The generational leap from the unique Snapdragon X Elite to the X2 sequence is especially placing. Qualcomm hasn’t simply caught as much as the business—in some instances, it’s now serving to to set the tempo.
Thoughts you, I have not examined the Asus Zenbook A16’s battery life but, nor fairly but completely evaluated the design, show, and different options, so keep tuned for my full overview of the A16. For now, although, the takeaway is evident: As a lot of a mouthful as “Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite Excessive” is to say, it is undeniably a beast of a chip.
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Brian Westover
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From the laptops in your desk to satellites in area and AI that appears to be all over the place, I cowl many subjects at PCMag. I’ve coated PCs and expertise merchandise for over 15 years at PCMag and different publications, amongst them Tom’s Information, Laptop computer Magazine, and TWICE. As a {hardware} reviewer, I’ve dealt with dozens of MacBooks, 2-in-1 laptops, Chromebooks, and the most recent AI PCs. Because the resident Starlink knowledgeable, I’ve executed years of hands-on testing with the satellite tv for pc service. I additionally discover probably the most invaluable methods to make use of the most recent AI instruments and options in our Attempt AI column.
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