Snapdragon CoPilot+ Laptops: You’ve Been Misled... Again

these new Qualcomm Snapdragon laptops are a big step forward compared to Windows competitors they have much longer battery life significantly less fan noise and appear faster in benchmarks but they have been hyped like they are the next coming of Jesus well today we're going to go beyond the hype to show you what these devices are really like including who should buy one and who should not to demonstrate this let me introduce you to Jen Veron and Taylor Jen uses her laptop for watching YouTube responding to emails and doing office work someone like her for the most part is going to love these laptops verun on the other hand relies on his laptop for professional tasks if you're like him it's Hit or Miss depending on application support finally we have Taylor a professional 3D modeler and video editor he also enjoys playing the latest games in his downtime if this sounds like you these laptops are simply not powerful enough let's start with casual users like Jen as demonstrated by geekbench which tests a variety of common performance tasks these new excelite processes are a good amount faster than competing laptops with Intel or AMD in fact these perform better than a MacBook Air and similar to a MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Pro 11 core chip but these laptops cost a fraction of the price of that one so they seem like much better value we're going to get more into this later in the video but for now keep in mind that this is for multi-core performance Apple continues to hold the lead in single core so many applications will still feel faster on a Mac in real world use I spent the whole day installing testing applications on the surface laptop 7 that is while it was unplugged I found its battery lasted substantially longer than a similar laptop with Intel or AMD in fact it felt like the same all day battery that I'd get on a MacBook and that is fantastic but there's more fan noise on all these Qualcomm laptops was noticeably less than other Windows laptops but none of these were as quiet as a MacBook Air and pro those are dead silent for similar tasks and unfortunately these Qualcomm laptops do get warm but let so than other laptops with Intel or AMD now since these are based on a new architecture that uses a new instruction set even for casual users we needed to verify that everything works we tested Chrome Edge Firefox Microsoft Office and Google meets all worked the desktop versions of slack Discord zoom and teams worked perfectly too if you work from home using Citrix though it does work but the app protection module does not so check with your company's it Department if that is required on the peripheral front our Mouse webcam wireless printer and airpods worked our Razer keyboard did too however by default it downloads the wrong version of Razer synap software that version did not detect our keyboard and mouse so we couldn't customize their settings this issue was a theme with these new laptops we found that many companies haven't updated their websites yet so if they have a working version of their software they often send you to the wrong version instead in this case you need to download Razor's beta software only then did the the devices properly detect even qualcom themselves is not immune to this our Samsung Galaxy book 4 did not have a working graphics driver we were unable to raise or lower the display's brightness we tried downloading the driver listed on qualcomm's website but from what we could tell and our viewers told us in our live stream it kept downloading the wrong one in fact even a factory reset didn't work and we ended up having to return and Reby the laptop our second unit did not have this problem anyway our Samsung Galaxy for Edge wasn't the only one with issues our service laptop 7 would not always charge with our USBC Chargers on occasion when we plugged one in it said it was charging but soon after said it was not so at this stage we have to use its included one and during a Web Conference via slack the surface randomly turned off it didn't even shut down just click black screen so for casual uses these are a solid step forward from current Intel or AMD laptops but right now there are instabil ities all right now we're going to turn it up a notch let's say that you are using your laptop for professional tasks or you're starting a discipline that requires specialist software just like verun in this case performance and application compatibility matters a lot with that said let's start with a deeper dive on performance there are several different models of these new Snapdragon processors this is supposed to determine their Max CPU and integrated GPU speeds in cinebench which tests how the processor performs when maxed out you can you can see that all these Snapdragon laptops perform better than similar laptops with Intel or AMD several of them perform substantially better again even eclipsing the performance of a MacBook Pro 14 with the M3 Pro 11 core chip and FYI to make these comparisons as Apples to Apples as possible excuse the pun we were very careful as to which laptops we compared them with we chose to include the yoga slim 7 with AMD as it uses an identical chassis as the slim 7x with the Snapdragon X Elite and we included the Samsung Galaxy book 416 with Intel as it uses a similar chassis to the galaxy book 416 Edge now over a 10-minute torture test several of these new laptops were able to sustain their full performance which is great to see one thing that you will notice from these graphs is that the processor model is not the determining factor in these laptops performance just like all modern laptops it's the power that the manufacturer chooses to feed to it and that the chassis's calling solution can dissipate that is why our yoga slim 7x with its supposed slower X Elite 781 100 chip beats laptops with the 8100 as Hardware info just like many other applications does not yet work on these new laptops we measure their power drawer from the wall instead to do a somewhat fair comparison we then subtracted 7 wats of power for the needs of the rest of the laptop with that in mind when we look at Power draw you can see how deceiving these benchmarks can be the qualcon laptops that compete with the MacBook Pro 14 draw around twice as much power since power efficiency is the most important factor for for a laptop's processor we created a scatter plot so you can see how efficient these are versus the competition compared to Intel these new processors offer more performance for the same power but when you divide their cinebench scores by power draw you can see that there are diminishing marginal returns when these qualcom processors are fed a lot of power in fact at higher power draws they offer similar efficiency to Intel and a way behind Apple to double check this we ran cinch on a loop for 30 minutes while the laptops were on battery after normalizing for the size of the batteries you can see that the highest wattage Snapdragon laptops last the same as Intel so their efficiency tapers off but just at a higher wattage the battery life as a whole these laptops are better than Intel as I said and AMD but not as good as Apple this is if you take out the omnibook result by the way that laptop is an exception because its performance is dropped by a ludicrous amount when on battery and on that note we notice significantly more inconsistencies in performance with these new laptops when compared to those from Amed in apple when this occurred we did run the test multiple times and we've shown you the median also stating the obvious these results are not statistically significant we definitely need to do more testing but they're the best we've got for you right now at this early stage and I'd call them directionally correct moral of the story if you're a casual user or only doing burst performance tasks like many forms of programming these new laptops are a good step forward and they deliver more performance for the same power drawer as Intel however if you plan to do sustained very high performance tasks their power efficiency drops in this case these Snapdragon laptops are only incrementally better than those with Intel and are way behind Apple's M3 MacBooks let's now switch gears and go through application compatibility video editors if you're an adobe Premier Pro or after effects user there is no version available right now but one is Promised soon D Vinci resolve does have a compatible version but it is in beta for 3D modelers and Engineers blender and AutoCAD Works however for creators accessing large amounts of data our 10 GB OWC ethernet adapter did not we had to resort to 2.5 or 1 gig adapters for those using Cloud file sharing Dropbox works but Google drive desktop does not for designers good news for you figma works as does SketchUp Pro and Photoshop however in design and illustrator are not available yet similar to the other Adobe Creative apps they're supposedly coming in July audio folks we tested Ableton Native Instruments isotope and record box nothing works programmers we were able to install vs code connect to GitHub download a no. JS and react website and run it for Java users there is no official jdk available from Oracle so don't expect to use these laptops in a corporate environment open jdk did work and we were able to install intellig and run a very simple application however Android Studio did not work well at all emulation is not compatible and it took 50% longer to install packages in index the code than our comparable AMD laptop to round out programming mycu and Docker Works however Docker requires you to explicitly download the arm beta version cyber security folks neither VMware nor virtual box works and for data science ML and AI folks powerbi are pie torch all works however mat lab installs but the performance is about half of a comparable Intel or AMD laptop let's drill into this last one I am aware that Dave 2D stated a performance drop of only 10% for non-native applications ones that run through Microsoft's prism emulation layer our results in mat lab and Android Studio were far worse than his it really depends on what you are emulating finally Linux we spent more time trying to get Linux going than almost everything else combined nothing works outside of the windows Linux subsystem we tried Ubuntu 2204 arm Ubuntu Server 24.4 arm and Fedora 40 arm nothing booted given how capable the Linux Community is I'm certain this will be solved soon as application compatibility is likely to improve after this video goes live with published an article on our website so that we can keep you up to date finally for people like Taylor who want the most performance out of their laptop none of these come close to the CPU performance offered by larger ones with Intel AMD or apple that's with their highest end chips this is especially so for graphics in gaming or 3D rendering these laptops just aren't going to cut it fellow YouTuber Darwood has a great video out which shows how poorly these laptops currently perform in gaming go check that out link below now ai we're going to cover it in a completely separate video but since there is so much hype and marketing around the power of these laptops mpus and their teror operations per second I just want to give everyone a dose of reality here these laptops offer a fraction of the performance of nvidia's lowest end dedicated graphics so if any significant Edge Computing were to occur which is running AI tasks locally on your laptop it is probably going to be driven by Nvidia not Qualcomm with that said let's wrap since we used our own money to buy these laptops we can say what we truly think overall what Qualcomm have done here for the laptop industry is fantastic however these laptops are really being overhyped by influencers and the media and that is the biggest problem Believe It or Not these are not the next coming of Jesus yes for many applications they do give you better performance than competing laptops with Intel and AMD they also deliver longer battery life and have less fan noise but compared with Apple's M3 series they aren't as efficient and when it comes to their lead over Intel and AMD it is a gap that may be closed soon AMD is launching zen5 Late July and Luna lake is coming from Intel the risk of switching to Windows on arm may be redundant heck M4 laptops could blow these out of the water normally I wouldn't advise you to wait as something new is just always coming around the corner but in this case you may want to that being said if you're shopping right now for a casual user just like Jen these are great that is as long as you're patient with some of the software and Driver issues that clearly need to be ironed out our favorite so far is the surface laptop 7 compared to the MacBook Air the surfice feels just as premium it looks more stunning it has a more Modern Display and more comfortable keyboard it's also $100 cheaper for similar specs but it's not a pure win the MacBook Air is dead silent it is more powerful in graphical tasks it feels cooler to the touch and it doesn't come with bloatware like many of these Qualcomm laptops do or constant advertisements from Microsoft Plus right now more applications work on Mac OS I never thought I'd say that when talking about Mac verse Windows anyway for this use case I personally would buy the surface make sure to get subscribed with the notification Bell on as we have a full video coming comparing the MacBook Air to the surface laptop 7 for users like verod who depend on special applications it really depends on what you're doing right now some work some don't and some don't work as well I would only buy now if you're sure that your applications work or you're purchasing it as a secondary laptop or from a store with a decent return policy as we continue our testing and comparisons of these new laptops you'll find the ones that we like best on our website as well as where to go to get the best deals on them so definitely check that out plus we just launched a new feature rather than have you wait for full reviews to be published on these new devices you can now read our test results as we test them finally big thanks to our viewers and the Reddit Community for helping us to find working versions of several of these applications till next time go to something awesome with your day and we will catch you later

Channel: Just Josh

Views: 153,991

Keywords: AI Laptop, Laptop, Best, Best Laptop 2024, Best Laptop, Best Laptop for Students, Best Student Laptop, Best Student Laptop 2024, Microsoft Surface Laptop, Surface Laptop 7 Review, Surface Laptop 7, Slim 7x, Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, Apple, MacBook, MacBook Air, Gamers, Gaming, Best Laptop for Gaming, Best Laptop for School, Best School Laptop, Best Work From Home Laptop, 2024, Best Tech, Microsoft, Best Laptop for Programming, Best Laptop for Computer Science, Budget Laptop

Id: elpeaSO0MtY

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2024