Qualcomm took the world by storm this June with its Copilot+ PCs powered by Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors, yielding a staggering balance between performance and battery life at an affordable cost.
However, it seems Qualcomm isn't quite done raising the bar for how competitive it can get with pricing, as the company's Q3 2024 earnings call (via The Verge) revealed that it will take things to the next level with Copilot+ PCs boasting a far lower starting price point: $700.
Currently, the cheapest Copilot+ PC is the 14-inch Microsoft Surface Laptop for $999 at Best Buy, but by 2025, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon claims it will "address PCs with retail prices as low as $700."
Apparently, this will be done "Without compromising NPU performance," which is a pretty shocking statement for a machine that will essentially be $300 cheaper than anything already available.
But is that really so surprising? Let's find out.
What will a $700 Snapdragon X PC look like?
Qualcomm's statement specifically references PCs, not laptops, so there's a chance that this isn't going to end up being a Copilot+ laptop at all. If so, it's easy to imagine how Qualcomm plans to make it so affordable, as without a display, the company could launch a mini PC.
However, we will continue theorizing with the assumption that this won't happen, as it would be a rather unexciting conclusion to an otherwise bold statement. Instead, let us imagine how Qualcomm could get a laptop this affordable into the market.
The answer might not be as complex as you think, as in the world of tech, a year is a long time and many things can change. If we imagine these $700 PCs are launched around the summer (similarly to when Copilot+ PCs launched this year) that gives these laptops a long time for prices to decrease.
We already see laptops get hundreds of dollars cheaper after a year through discounts and as new models emerge. So, if Qualcomm were to launch a new round of devices, time itself is a significant enough reason to imagine why these laptops would be lower in price.
However, the reasons behind such a drop in price could be more complex, with certain aspects of the most affordable laptops cutting back in hardware avenues to achieve a more reasonable price.
Things like a smaller battery, cheaper materials, or a lower-quality display could absolutely get it lower, but Qualcomm needs to hit $700 without sacrificing all of its positive qualities.
All that Qualcomm promises is that it will hit this price "Without compromising NPU performance," beyond this, nothing is off the table for the company to achieve such low prices.
However, if Copilot+ PCs do go on to hit a $700 price point while maintaining their NPU performance, we can't help but wonder how severely crushed Apple's MacBook Air will be.
Is Apple toast in the face of Qualcomm?
Apple silicon chips changed the game back in 2020, introducing the world to what it could achieve by manufacturing its own processors. The result is battery life greater than any other laptop maker can dream of, alongside impressive performance to boot.
Intel has done well in the last few years too, and its latest Meteor Lake processors are undeniably impressive. However, it's hard to deny how much further ahead MacBooks are in performance and longevity when compared to Intel CPUs.
Copilot+ PCs drummed up a similar level of hype from Qualcomm, with the company bluntly promising up to 22 hours of battery life. Our tests so far have been nowhere near as good as this, but some laptops got close — like the Dell XPS 13 9345 hitting 19 hours of uptime.
The longest-lasting MacBook we've tested is the MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Max, 2023) at 18 hours and 5 minutes. In Apple's defense, not all Qualcomm laptops last quite this long, but most of them do pretty well. The Asus Vivobook S15 S5507 (12:53), HP EliteBook Ultra (16:01), Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x (14:01), Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition (15:44), and Microsoft Surface Pro 11th Edition (12:11) all have great battery life.
Under normal circumstances (and particularly with Intel or AMD laptops), anything averaging around 10 hours of battery life is considered good. Each Snapdragon X laptop we've tested thus far has crushed this without issue.
But it's not just battery life, as performance itself is vitally important also.
Assuming Qualcomm's chips stay the same next year, the most affordable of Qualcomm's processors is the Snapdragon X Plus, thus it will almost certainly be what's available in the $700 version of its laptops.
Our sister website, Tom's Guide, pitted a Snapdragon X Plus laptop against the M3 MacBook Air, and on the Geekbench 6 benchmark, the former achieved a multi-core score of 13,015, while the latter was a bit behind at 12,087.
If we can expect similar performance from 2025's Copilot+ PC which is only $700, versus MacBook Air's starting price of $1,099, that's an incredibly competitive price point that could absolutely bring people over to Qualcomm's side. And if we see similarly fantastic battery life as shown above, there's even more reason to be excited about the future of Windows PCs.
However, all of this theorizing is being done without knowing what Apple has up its sleeve. Who knows how Qualcomm will fare against the inevitable MacBook Air M4? Regardless, it's looking like it will be an interesting battle.
