Review I just tested Asus’ first Snapdragon X Elite laptop and it (mostly) blows away the MacBook Air M3

[admin]

The Asus Vivobook S 15 may look like your average laptop, but under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon X Elite superpower that makes this more powerful and efficient than the M3 MacBook Air. Apple Silicon has finally met its match, and Microsoft is finally doing Windows on arm right.

I just tested Asus’ first Snapdragon X Elite laptop and it (mostly) blows away the MacBook Air M3 : Read more

 

[djcalligraphy]

Did you try editing 4k video on it using the ARM version of Davinci Resolve? I have been putting off buying a laptop with discrete GPU for this very reason. I have heard good things about how fast the video editing experience is, but I'm not sure how much of that is just marketing hype.

 

[klaus1]

@microsd: How is the slot implemented? As it done in a way that screams "put your camera chip here" or is it a way to inexpensively add storage capacity, the way it is used in smartphones and gaming handhelds?

This question comes down to "does the card vanish entirely in the chassis".

I am currently using a Surface Pro 7 Plus (256 GB) with a 1TB micro-SD card. As a storage extension these slots are pretty useful. IF the card can be inserted fully. While not as snappy as an SSD, the fast random access times still put them above laptop HDDs for most purposes, and as data storage extension they should also not suffer too much in terms of lifetime. They are not the place where temporary files are going to be written all the time after all.

For Macbooks, there are products that are essentially a shortened SD card, that vanishes entirely in the slot, in order to enable such use. For any other brand, such third party products are not likely to arise, given that there are not as many models with the same chassis going to be sold as in the homogeneous Apple ecosystem.

 

[abufrejoval]

What's that gripe about the µ-SD slot? With terabyte capacity on the tiny ones, I couldn't care less about a bigger slot (I wouldn't use anyway). I'd rather have another USB-C/TB port where that sits, with proper bandwidth and media that is slightly more difficult to loose as well as the ability to upgrade the NVMe.

And there is nothing wrong about a completely boring looking notebook, quite the opposite, especially if you use that additional disconnect time to work where notebook snatchers might be on the prowl.

If you want to shove your digital lifestyle into people's faces, go with the fruity cult or apply stickers: this is a work machine, so I'd consider mechanics, robustness, scratch resistence etc., things that are actually important.

 

[neuralnet42]

The performance and battery life look great compared to Intel laptops. This is a step in the right direction but nothing in the benchmarks suggest it’s outclassing Apple Silicon at all.

Single core for the Snapdragon X Elite was around 20% slower in benchmarks. That’s not great. It beats in multi-core tasks because it has more cores, including more performance cores. That will result in more performance overall, but it shows there is significant room for improvement to catch Apple Silicon.

Edit: After reading other reviews on other sites, I'm not sure how this laptop "blows away" (even mostly) the M3 MacBook Air. It looks more like an M1, maybe M2 (Pro, in some benchmarks) level of performance, but without the efficiencies of Apple Silicon. The Snapdragon X Elite doesn't reliably beat Apple Silicon even with 12p cores compared to a 4p/4e M3. As I wrote earlier, it's a good first try, but this looks to be at least 2 years behind Apple Silicon.

 

[high3r]

The Asus Vivobook S 15 may look like your average laptop, but under the hood, there’s a Snapdragon X Elite superpower that makes this more powerful and efficient than the M3 MacBook Air. Apple Silicon has finally met its match, and Microsoft is finally doing Windows on arm right.

I just tested Asus’ first Snapdragon X Elite laptop and it (mostly) blows away the MacBook Air M3 : Read more

It's way slower than M3 in single-threaded workloads and only slightly better in multicore with 12 performance cores vs Apple's 4P+4E setup.
It also sucks in energy efficiency comapred to M3 albeit better than current X86 systems but only at light load.
GPU is crap.

This should've been released 1.5-2 years ago.

https://ibb.co/88qk5KN

 

[nitrobear]

I don’t know, this stinks of either a really unprofessional, or just a paid review. This laptop isn’t more efficient nor more powerful than the M3 Macbook air. And you’re comparing a fanless laptop with better single core performance with a chip that needs two damn fans to stay itself decent even on idle.
Qualcomm has just used brute force to try and enter this market and it’s not a good entrance at all. This isn’t ARM in a way that matters.

 

[Vt2005ee]

“There are a few reasons to hesitate a little. The design is very ordinary, Copilot+ PC features are taking a while to launch because of security risks, and the wait time for native Arm versions of all your favorite apps could also be long.”

Just a general comment: The ARM app question really makes me wonder if CAD software providers (like Autodesk) might rethink their app development strategy. There will surely be some engineering applications that need additional work / porting due to the ARM processors in X Elite laptops, and so maybe this becomes a chance to go for a more “cross platform” approach and also develop the same applications for Mac. The market could be sizable enough, especially if they considered iPad Pro’s.

 

[forge009]

The performance and battery life look great compared to Intel laptops. This is a step in the right direction but nothing in the benchmarks suggest it’s outclassing Apple Silicon at all.

Single core for the Snapdragon X Elite was around 20% slower in benchmarks. That’s not great. It beats in multi-core tasks because it has more cores, including more performance cores. That will result in more performance overall, but it shows there is significant room for improvement to catch Apple Silicon.

Edit: After reading other reviews on other sites, I'm not sure how this laptop "blows away" (even mostly) the M3 MacBook Air. It looks more like an M1, maybe M2 (Pro, in some benchmarks) level of performance, but without the efficiencies of Apple Silicon. The Snapdragon X Elite doesn't reliably beat Apple Silicon even with 12p cores compared to a 4p/4e M3. As I wrote earlier, it's a good first try, but this looks to be at least 2 years behind Apple Silicon.

I mean it's a flagship CPU and to be honest. it has way more hype and potential than the mac did. one of the reasons i was iffy about windows has always been the visual experience on a laptop, terrible camera and terrible heat management.

with the arm chip all these problems have been solved. I use the snapdragon x elite and I can tell you I haven't had any heat problems. I use it mostly unplugged which wasn't a luxury with other windows laptops that dip performance like a crybaby when they are unplugged.

The screen is 4k, I don't think i have even heard the fans spin since i got this laptop. I don't use it for anything that might necessitate that. I have used laptops in the past whose fans would randomly start spinning like crazy or would start spinning loudly cos you are copying a huge excel file (Machine learning files for training for predictions)

In terms of being used as a mobile device, current mainstream windows architecture sucks! Apart from the fact that you can carry it around, everything else is a problem (I have used multiple laptops and eventually started using a macbook pro for peace of mind). I love windows, this snapdragon chip makes it useable as a mobile device, I haven't even thought of my MacBook pro after getting the Lenovo slim (not doing an advert, I could care less what they sell since their ThinkPad laptops were one of the reason i quit windows in the first place. just expressing an honest take on the matter)

Lets be honest, arm is the way forward, it wouldn't be long before other chip makers begin to develop arm variants. less heat, same efficiency is something i would get behind unlike all these companies who thing pumping more power into hardware (with global warming smacking us in the behind) is the answer.

 

[techconc]

When you say this blows away an M3 Mac, you just sound foolish. For example, for handbrake, I’ll bet you’re not using the hardware encoder. You also didn’t compare the Mac for GPU performance where you know it’s faster. Also, no single core CPU comparisons like web performance, etc.
Yes, there will be a few isolated cases where the 12 performance cores of the X Elite will be better, but certainly not for most everyday tasks.