Last week at IFA, Qualcomm announced an 8-core variant of its Snapdragon X Plus system-on-a-chip (SoC) that will help the chipmaker realize its goals of making the platform more affordable. Reviews of the Snapdragon X Plus and Elite systems to date have been generally positive, especially when typical use for productivity and battery life are considered. But there's still one problem: unless you buy the $900 Snapdragon Dev Kit, even the entry-level Snapdragon X laptops retail for around $1,000 and up.

No one is attacking the budget and midrange laptop market, even though it's a vibrant sector meeting the needs of students, schools, businesses, and average users with light performance needs. When Apple first announced it was using its own silicon, I thought it was poised to bring a price and performance-competitive laptop into the fold. While we have seen price cuts in the MacBook line, they've hardly been the budget renaissance I'd hoped for.

That's changing, but it's Qualcomm — not Apple — that will bring capable and compelling Arm laptops to budget buyers. The new 8-core Snapdragon X Plus SoC will bring down costs for Qualcomm's hardware partners, and I think it'll be the chip that gives us the best midrange laptops we've seen in years.

One of the biggest problems with Snapdragon X is being solved

You'll be able to get a Snapdragon X Plus laptop for around $700

Although the Snapdragon X platform isn't designed for power-users who need great gaming or graphics support, it isn't a low-end platform either. You can get a decent laptop, such as the Surface Laptop 7, for $1,000 with a base Snapdragon X Plus processor inside. However, a more realistic configuration with higher memory and storage capacities and more cores could easily put prices closer to $1,500. The platform's wonky game and app support is arguably the biggest concern, but pricing is another thing to think about.

That's even more true when you consider that one of Qualcomm's goals with Snapdragon X was to target the midrange market. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon once said that the platform's laptops would start at around $600, and more recently, said in a July 2024 earnings call to expect Snapdragon X laptops to drop as low as to $700 next year.

That vision isn't quite realized yet. The Asus Vivobook S 15 and Dell Inspiron 14 are both gaining an 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chip configuration, but will cost $900. However, it's easy to see where Qualcomm can go from here, and why we're optimistic. The company didn't cut any NPU performance in the 8-core variant, although GPU performance is significantly worse. Additionally, Qualcomm says that this Snapdragon X Plus chip gets 61% better performance than the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U — which is pretty good in its own right.

Apple's best affordable laptop is four years old

If the M1 MacBook Air is the best it has to offer, that isn't good enough

The thing I love about what Qualcomm is doing is that it isn't just slashing the price of older chips. These are new, current-generation SoCs that are simply being offered in lesser configurations. That means the chips still benefit from the chip fabrication technology, architecture, of higher-tier chips, and ideally have the same software support. As long as you don't push the chips too far, the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chip could be able to give you a great modern computing experience at a low price.

Apple's approach has been quite the opposite. It did a decent job of offering price cuts to great Apple silicon Macs that have been replaced, but didn't do hardly anything to offer new budget or midrange hardware. For example, you can get an M2 MacBook Air for $1,000, which is $100 less than the current M3 MacBook Air. It sounds like a sweet deal, until you realize a few things. That system has 8GB of memory, 256GB of storage, and is two years old. The graphics prowess of the M3 chipset alone makes me think no one should buy the M2 over the M3, despite the savings.

The only truly-midrange laptop in Apple's lineup is a machine that feels immortal at this point: the M1 MacBook Air. It was one of the first Apple silicon Macs to come out in 2020, was discontinued by Apple earlier this year, but then got revived by Walmart. At $700, it's the closest thing to a budget laptop we've ever seen from Apple.

It's still not great, though. The system still starts at 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage, and that four-year-old SoC is really starting to show its age. The M1 MacBook Air might be a fine deal now, but many people keep their laptops for five to 10 years. I really don't want to think about how the base M1 MacBook Air will hold up in 2030, or thereafter. Since Qualcomm is using current-gen processors and architectures, laptops with the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chips figure to have better longevity than Apple's $700 MacBook Air.

Why this market segment matters

Most people just want an affordable and capable laptop

As tech enthusiasts, it's easy to forget how people buy great laptops. They walk into a store, look for the cheapest one that'll meet their needs, and move on. There isn't much time spent combing through spec sheets, making comparisons, or trying to scrounge up enough cash to get a really high-end model. That's why so many people, especially students and enterprise users, end up with Chromebooks.

That's why a Windows on Arm laptop that can hit the $600 to $800 price point could be immensely successful. It's nice that you can get a MacBook for under $1,000, but a four-year-old machine is hardly that competitive with newer hardware. Qualcomm wants to give you new chip technology and great prices, and I'm totally here for it.