It's new CPU season, and Qualcomm is beating Intel and AMD out of the gate to be the first at announcing next-gen laptop CPUs. They're called the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme. As always, there are reference designs showcasing the product, and this year, they're absolute bangers.

To be fair, they're always pretty cool. When the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 was announced, Qualcomm actually let me spend the duration of the show with the reference design to get a feel for it. They're usually red too, adding a little bit of flair. However, this year, I was so impressed that I felt like I needed to throw some images up on XDA.

The coolest Windows mini PCs there are

Not that there are that many on the market

When I first saw this thin, circular disk, I thought it was a wireless charging pad. It wouldn't be out of the question for a red, Snapdragon-branded accessory to be sitting next to the real PCs.

It's not though. This is a proper mini PC. It doesn't do anything that your average mini PC doesn't do. None of these designs do. They're just so cool. There isn't a product like this on the market at all.

Here's a mini PC that's docked inside of a monitor base. Not only is it something different by design, it's just to slim, small, and beautifully red. I just want it inside of my home.

There were some more conventional products too

Tablets and laptops are still the main market, after all

All of the reference designs shown use the new Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, and most were red. There was a thin and light tablet with a folio stand and attachable keyboard. And of course, there's a regular old laptop.

This laptop was the only one that's not red, and it wasn't part of the main display. The reason is because these are the units we were running benchmarks on, but I can't talk about that quite yet. I was allowed to only minimize all windows, move all signage, and snap a pic for this article.

This one has a haptic touchpad with some illuminated capacitive buttons above it. It's neat.

You will never be able to buy these

When a company announces a concept at CES or at some other trade show, you can dream that one day, that company will bring that product to market. Sometimes it happens. With Qualcomm's reference designs, you can forget it. All you can hope for is that some other company will take inspiration and make their own version, but it won't come in that beautiful Snapdragon red.

When the Snapdragon X Elite was first announced two years ago, Qualcomm actually planned to sell a mini PC, the Snapdragon Dev Kit. It actually ended up getting scrapped, with very few people receiving their preorders and everyone getting a refund. As it turns out, being an OEM is hard, and Qualcomm realized that the OEM job is best left to OEMs.

It should change its mind though, if only for the few minutes it takes to charge my credit card to sell me these products.