Following the announcement last September, Qualcomm is now bringing its new Snapdragon X2 series SoCs, including the Elite line and the Plus line, to new Windows-on-Arm laptops for the Malaysian market.
Snapdragon X2 Laptops Now Available
Building upon the original Snapdragon X lineup, the Snapdragon X2 series uses Qualcomm’s in-house third-generation Oryon CPU – the same ones in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC powering flagship smartphones of 2026 – which is 39% faster in single-core and 50% faster in multi-core than the second-gen Oryon found in the original Snapdragon X series. There’s also up to 18 CPU cores offered in the Elite Extreme variant (12X+6P cores), which is pretty much on the same level as Apple M5 Max in this regard.
However, it shall be said that Windows-on-Arm chipsets do still have to deal with certain limitations. While most mainstream software are now Arm-compatible, some legacy software might not work; to that end, Microsoft is already working on a new Prism emulation layer (a la Apple’s Rosetta) that allows some x86-native apps to work on Arm-powered devices, such as Snapdragon SoCs.
Similarly, gaming on Snapdragon is still a hit-or-miss, though Qualcomm claims they currently managed to get over 2,400 games to work on its silicon so far. That said, 1080p 30FPS at medium settings is the general target for its Adreno GPUs, despite its claimed 2.3x improvement over the original Snapdragon X series (which was severely underpowered the last time we tested it).
Either way, devices powered by the Snapdragon X2 series scheduled for the Malaysian market include the ASUS Zenbook A16, Lenovo IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 and Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, and they are available through local retailers including Harvey Norman, Thunder Match and PC Image.
Pokdepinion: The more the merrier.