As I write this, Qualcomm is holding its annual Snapdragon Technology Summit in Hawaii, and while the news revolves around the mobile-focused Snapdragon 8 Elite, it still took some time to boast its PC wins. Intel launched Lunar Lake months after Snapdragon X Elite arrived, and these benchmarks are publicly available from a wide range of reviews (including our own), but Qualcomm wants to make sure you've seen them.

Specifically, the company wants to dispute some of Intel's claims, such as Lunar Lake having, "The fastest cores. Period." And in fact, Qualcomm is correct. In our own testing, we found that the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 does indeed have a faster CPU than the Core Ultra 256V and 258V, the only SKUs that are currently available for sale.

The CPU performance delta

Snapdragon X Elite beats Intel Lunar Lake

The company boasted a 92% faster score in Cinebench 2024 multi-core, from 976 on the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 to 509 on the Core Ultra 7 256V. Again, this is data that I've tested myself, so in my testing, I got 499 on the Core Ultra 7 256V, 583 on the 258V, and 972 on the Snapdragon X Elite, so that's pretty spot-on.

It's a similar story for Geekbench 6, where single-core comes in at around 2,800 on the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100, and just north of 2,600 on the Core Ultra 7 256V, although Qualcomm actually cited Intel at 2,779. Note that the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 actually comes in at only around 2,400.

For multi-core, it's south of 11,000 on Core Ultra and north of 14,000 on Snapdragon X Elite. In Qualcomm's slides, it cited 15,710 on the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-84-100, which is its highest-end SKU.

What's left unsaid

Lunar Lake does win in key areas

Reality gets a little dicey from there, I'm afraid. First of all, Qualcomm didn't talk about graphics performance at all in its presentation, something that's critical as this market is evolving to compete with Apple Silicon. Indeed, you can say that ultrabooks don't need GPU power all you want, but no one is asking for dedicated graphics from a MacBook. Intel knows that, and that's what it delivered with Lunar Lake.

What Qualcomm did talk about was battery life, and performance while on battery life. It noted that there's a much more significant performance delta when you unplug your Lunar Lake laptop than there is with Snapdragon X Elite. This part is...partially true.

If you look at Qualcomm's slides, it's using 'balanced' power settings, and yes, when a company sends a laptop to review, they almost always ask you to do performance benchmarks on best performance, and battery tests on balanced. Qualcomm was no different when Snapdragon X Elite units went out.

It's very true that if you unplug a Lunar Lake laptop and set the power profile to balanced, the results are very disappointing. What went unsaid is that if you set it to best performance, on battery, battery life is stellar on Lunar Lake, something that's actually not the case with Snapdragon X Elite.

For the actual battery quote used in the presentation, the 'best power efficiency' setting was used, and Qualcomm cited 28.7 hours of battery life on the Snapdragon X Elite and 24.2 hours on the Core Ultra 7 256V. It got these numbers using the UL Procyon Battery Life Office Productivity test, which is meant to simulate real-world usage. These numbers do not translate to real life, which is why we do not use them in reviews.

The Snapdragon X Elite is still a winner

If I'm buying a laptop today, it's probably the Surface Laptop 7, because frankly, the Snapdragon X Elite really is as good as it claims. Unfortunately, those claims did have to be broken down a bit, because we have done the testing ourselves, and there's a lot that went unsaid. It's fast and snappy, and it's really good in a lot of little ways that add up to an improved experience that's hard to describe.

In the Q&A, I did ask Qualcomm about graphics performance, and it did confirm that this is going to be an area of focus moving forward. Indeed, with Intel providing a compelling product in Lunar Lake, the market is going to be really competitive.