Are Snapdragon X Elite chips that much better on battery power than AMD and Intel? I tested them all to find out.

Advertising claims are often something to take with a grain of salt, but we've decided Qualcomm's latest ads deserve a proper fact-check.

Ever since AMD launched its Ryzen AI 300 "Strix Point" chips and Intel flew for the moon with the Core Ultra 200V Lunar Lake silicon last year, Qualcomm has been making bold claims about how much better their chips perform when on battery power compared to AMD and Intel's chipsets.

Those claims are now the backbone of Qualcomm's latest ad campaign, which takes aim at both x86 chipmakers, but especially hones in on Intel.

Unplugged performance is Qualcomm's last great claim to dominance in the Windows AI PC space, as Intel and AMD have closed the performance and battery life gaps with their recent chip launches.

But does Qualcomm deserve to maintain that lead? Obviously, we had to take a look.

Battery profiles make a massive difference

Qualcomm's newest ads hone in on the idea that Intel and AMD are offering 55% to 70% performance when on battery power, while Qualcomm gives you the same level of performance whether the laptop is plugged in or on battery.

The Max Performance you deserve - Snapdragon X Series - YouTube

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We didn't have perfect comparison units on hand, but we did have a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite (XIE-78-100), Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 with Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, and HP ZBook Ultra G1a with AMD Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395.

These chips aren't great comparisons. The Snapdragon X Elite XIE-78 is a somewhat under-clocked 12-core, 3.4GHz CPU. The Intel Core Ultra 7 256V is a mid-range 8-core, 4.8GHz CPU. And AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 395 is a 16-core, 5.1GHz workstation chip.

But I'm not really cross-comparing them here. Instead I'm more interested in seeing how much of a drop there is in these chips when on battery compared to on AC power.

What I found early on in testing is that the Windows power setting made a massive difference in performance on each chip when operating on battery power. So I tested each laptop when plugged in, when on battery power at the best performance setting, and on battery power using the balanced profile.

Even the Snapdragon X Elite takes a performance hit on battery power

Qualcomm's 45% and 30% claims against Intel and AMD on battery life are somewhat substantiated, at least when we're talking about single-core performance and the "Balanced" power profile.

Using the "Best Performance" profile, Intel's chips barely take a performance dip across Geekbench 6, Cinebench R23, Handbrake 4K to 1080p video encoding, and 3DMark. And that's something neither Qualcomm nor AMD can really say. The Snapdragon X Elite takes a multicore performance hit in Geekbench 6 when on battery at "Best Performance," as does AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ chipset.

In fact, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite also takes a performance hit on battery life in the "Balanced" mode in every test we ran except for Geekbench 6 single-core.

While maintaining single-core performance even at lower power is worth bragging about, it isn't a wholistic picture of a laptop's performance. Most things you do on a computer these days is a multicore workload. So maybe you don't want to just take Qualcomm at their word, since single-core performance isn't the whole story.

But, as I've previously ranted about, you don't need a Geekbench 6 multicore score of 15,000 for web browsing or email management. Sure, we all like to see better benchmarks over time. It means computing is getting easier and faster than ever. But it's not the ultimate deciding factor on whether or not you should buy a certain laptop.

What you need to know

Obviously, this is not a complete picture of any of these chips. We only had three laptops on hand to test, by different manufacturers. We only had one variation of all three chips, and our AMD laptop was very much a different category of computer than either the Intel-powered Dell or Qualcomm-powered Lenovo.

Our testing is also designed to be a stress-test for silicon. Geekbench 6 and Cinebench are rigorous CPU benchmarks. 3DMark is designed to benchmarking gaming PCs, running at high settings.

So naturally, after half a day of benchmarking, these "all day battery" laptops were drained down to critical capacity.

Basically no Windows laptop won't see some kind of performance drop when you're using it unplugged. However, most of that performance gap isn't noticeable most of the time. Chances are, you aren't doing video encoding tasks when on battery life. You're editing documents, looking at spreadsheets, browsing the web, reading your emails, watching videos, or hopping on zoom calls.

While some of those activities will drain your battery, none of them is really going to stress a modern CPU or GPU to extremes. So you won't really be operating a laptop at 55% capacity just by taking it off the charger to run to a meeting or when killing time at the airport.

Unless you decide to stress-test your Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x during your daily commute.

Personally, I think there are bigger considerations to make when buying a laptop. Data security, price, and app support tend to be bigger issues for most people than something like single-thread performance on battery life (in one specific power profile).

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