After one of the most exciting (yet longest) waits I've had to endure as a Windows fan, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and hardware partners all came together on May 20th to announce the first wave of true AI PCs, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series of processors. There's more than one reason why this event was incredibly exciting.

For one thing, seeing over a dozen laptops announced on the same stage is not something you really ever see. The closest we come is an event like CES, but outside of that, you never have this many exciting announcements packed into such a short period. But on top of that, the prospect of powerful Snapdragon chips on Windows devices is also super exciting. These are powerful chips, yet they can achieve similar levels of performance to an Intel processor (and even exceed it) while using far less power, making them extremely efficient and perfect for travel. Plus, always-on connectivity is a big selling point.

But one thing we always heard about Snapdragon PCs is how it would be that much easier to integrate 5G support, since cellular is something Qualcomm has always worked with on phones. And yet, out of 14 laptops announced this week, only two (with one more promised for later) have the option for 5G, or cellular connectivity at all. What happened here?

We're taking steps back

Some laptops have actually dropped 5G support

5G is a feature you'd usually find on business laptops, so right out of the gate, we knew it wasn't a feature we'd see on most laptops. Traditionally, you'd find 5G on business laptops, because businesses are the ones who tend to care about being constantly connected.

But even in that field, some laptops you'd expect to see with 5G support have dropped it. HP introduced the new EliteBook Ultra, which is a successor to the Dragonfly series of years past. Dragonfly laptops have historically ahd 5G support, even when they came with Intel processors. And yet, now that it comes with a Qualcomm chip, HP removed 5G support altogether.

Thankfully, Dell and Lenovo are still offering 5G as an option on their ThinkPad and Latitude laptops, but we would have expected to see a bit more support at launch. Microsoft is also promising a 5G version of the Surface Pro 11, but that will be coming later in the year. It's just not the big ramp-up for 5G laptops that I was hoping to see.

A weapon against the MacBook

Windows could have the clear advantage

For years now, the Windows PC space has been trying to catch up with Apple in terms of laptops, since the introduction of Apple Silicon made MacBooks the go-to laptop for so many people. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X series is the response we've been waiting for, but companies could have capitalized on this launch to turn the tides and give Windows laptops an advantage over, say, a MacBook Air.

Laptops are all about portability, but if you're making use of that portability, there are two things you probably care about a lot: battery life and connectivity. Battery life because you don't want to be tethered to an outlet, and connectivity because it's really hard to work without internet access these days. Without cellular connectivity, though, you have to depend on open Wi-Fi networks that are unsafe and could expose your data or use a mobile hotspot (which typically doesn't have unlimited data).

Arm processors can easily address both of these things, and sure enough, the Snapdragon X Elite is bringing those battery life benefits to all the laptops it's in. But since Apple has been refusing to build 5G into its MacBooks, adding that feature to more Windows laptops with Snapdragon would have been an easy way to present them as the new go-to machine for those working on the go. It would fix the two major problems for anyone who needs to work while traveling.

But companies aren't interested

5G is a complicated beast

The thing is, Qualcomm tried to encourage companies to adopt 5G in their Snapdragon X laptops. But PC manufacturers aren't interested in building PCs with 5G support, because no one is buying them. It's not as simple as putting a 5G modem and a SIM card slot on a laptop, unfortunately.

A PC with cellular connectivity is another device users need to put on their monthly list of bills, and in many cases, getting carriers to support these devices, specifically in the United States, is not easy. People don't want another expense when they can probably piggyback off of the mobile hotspot feature on their phone occasionally without the added cost. Not to mention the hardware itself does add some cost to the machine, too, so it's a higher barrier to entry, even if that's less noticeable when using a Snapdragon chip.

Staying hopeful

For now, if you want 5G connectivity in a Snapdragon-powered laptop, your best bets are the Dell Latitude 7455 and Lenovo ThinkPad t14s Gen 6q, but hopefully more devices will be added to that list over time. We know more Snapdragon laptops are coming, so I'm hopeful things will start to look better. But it's a shame that the dream of 5G becoming a standard in laptops is a bit further than I would have liked to see.