Another chip rivalry is brewing, and this time, Qualcomm's Snapdragon Series X CPUs are taking the gloves off to show how Intel chips can't keep up — and it's pretty ruthless.
In a set of three new ads, Qualcomm targets Intel by stating that Snapdragon PCs run at max performance when it's unplugged, while an Intel-based laptop "drops to as little as 55%." Plus, the company ridicules its competition's battery life, with Snapdragon Series X offering "the fastest PCs with multi-day battery life" compared to Intel PCs getting "left behind."
There's a lot of spice being thrown around, with two of the ads, "The Max Performance You Deserve" and "Office Tripped," being more comical in the way they bash Intel with its 55% unplugged power. As for "What's the Intel," it outright dishes out the heat with a sly "here's a little intel on what's really inside."
The next ad focuses even more on that 55% performance, playing up different scenarios where people "give 55%." That includes a sports coach motivating their team, a company offering a bonus, an officiant asking wedding vows, and a commander inspiring soldiers to fight for their country.
It's a funny take, with a office worker at the end stating "PCs powered by Intel can cut performance by up to 55% when unplugged, but with Snapdragon X series, max performance when unplugged.
The final ad sees office workers in different scenarios where everything only works in half, like cutting paper with one blade of a scissors, an elevator being halfway up a level, a man's suit being cut in half and more. The main statement is "when PC's powered by Intel perform at 55% when unplugged, it's like your whole team does."
It's clear that Qualcomm wants buyers to know that Snapdragon-powered laptops can deliver better performance for those who often use their PCs unplugged. After all, the point of a laptop is for it to be portable, and the tech giant is hammering in that point by throwing shade at Intel.
Can Qualcomm back up these big claims? A look at the small print shows that it's done the benchmarking, but it may leave out other key details.
A closer look
Qualcomm states these tests were based on Geekbench 6.2 single-core scores on WIindows 11 in October 2024, running a Dell XPS 13 with a Snapdragon X Elite and a Dell XPS 13 with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU — two laptops we've compared.
For the most part, Qualcomm is on point with the type of performance it states. The XPS 13 with Snapdragon X Elite achieved 2,797 in our Geekbench test, while the Intel-based XPS 13 reached 2,772. What's more, multi-score performance saw 14,635 and 11,033, respectively.
As for battery, the Snapdragon-equipped laptop reached 20 hours and 51 minutes, while the Intel-based PC held out for 17 hours and 29 minutes. So, the Snapdragon X Elite does shine in these results.
All that said, laptops come in all sorts of different configurations from different brands, and Qualcomm doesn't mention if the performance of an Intel-based laptop is still better than one with a Snapdragon X Elite one, despite the unplugged performance.
In our benchmark tests compared Intel Lunar Lake chips with Snapdragon X series and Apple M3 chips, we saw various results and Intel laptops came out on top in certain scenarios.
Earlier this year, I saw how Snapdragon X series chips outperform Intel CPUs during a tech demo, with Qualcomm stating its Elite chips offer a 90% performance increase over Intel Core Ultra 7 Series 2 chips when unplugged.
Still, when it comes to other areas of computing, as you'll find in the best gaming laptops and best laptops for video editing, Qualcomm still has some work to do. For now, it's witty ads make a point.
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