Overall, there are a lot of reasons to hold off on buying that next laptop if you can avoid it. The Snapdragon X Elite processor could potentially redefine the Windows on ARM landscape, similar to how the M1 chip redefined Apple computing. But there is a major caveat in that.
While Apple went all-in on ARM processing, that isn’t going to be the case on Windows. Intel and AMD are going to continue making processors for computing devices, including laptops, for a long time to come, so if you’re running an app today that isn’t built specifically for ARM, you may have to run it in emulation for a while until it gets rebuilt. Apps like Microsoft’s Office suite and Davinci Resolve (Black Magic Design, Head of Strategy Dave Lebolt was on hand to announce this) will run natively, which is great, but the Windows PC world is a vast ecosystem with numerous large companies involved. Qualcomm is a big player, but it’s not even close to the only game in town.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t consider a Snapdragon X Elite-run computer. Far from it. The writing is on the wall that ARM is going to be the way forward, and the Snapdragon X Elite is a very big step in the right direction. So, if you can wait until mid-2024, it should definitely be on your radar.
