So, I went out with my daughter to look at laptops for back-to-school and the store was dominated by Windows machines with Snapdragon X Elite chips at very reasonable prices. The energy efficiency, battery life, and quietness of these laptops is amazing. Also, I notice they all have these new NPU chips for AI, which I’m ambivalent about.
I’m a Linux-on-Thinkpad man, so I checked online and was happy to see that Lenovo is offering Snapdragon-based Thinkpads now. With these new developments, maybe it is finally time to upgrade my old T540p.
Has anyone here had experience yet running Linux on a Snapdragon-based laptop?
As of right now, there’s not much available for the X Elite processors.
I did actually buy the Yoga laptop with the X Elite from Lenovo about a month ago. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a better experience with Windows. I can leave the thing in standby mode for days and see maybe 4 or 5 percent battery drain. If I’m using ARM native apps, I can use it for 8 hours without charging easily and get through a work day with about 20 to 30 percent battery to spare. With x86 apps, it does use a bit more power, but battery life is still pretty good. I’d estimate 8-9 hours before totally dead.
Hopefully development picks up more on the Linux side because I can’t wait to see how much better the battery life would be.