My laptop experiences and why I stuck with two Snapdragon laptops:
I wrote this as a reply to a previous subreddit post, and I wrote so much that I thought I'd make it a main post. I updated our office to all new computers. Bought many laptops.
My Laptop Experiences: Snapdragon Wins, Others Mostly Fail
Asus X2 Elite A14 (X2 Elite)
The most flawless laptop I’ve used. Three issues:
- External video output hard-capped at 144 Hz (fix this, please) and internal screen is 60hz.
- Limited ports.
- CPU performance drops badly under emulation layers (feels like a 10-year-old chip when the emulator interferes—mainly noticeable in gaming).
Not really a hardware fault on the last point. I’ll buy the A16 when the price drops. ARM + NVIDIA should be excellent (no 144 Hz limit, better GPU headroom), though CPU emulation might still suffer. Qualcomm needs to prioritize GPU performance. Give us a motherboard combo with unlocked frequencies and voltages too. Support DIY.
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We bought the ideal port layout for the next laptop: 2× USB-C, 2× USB-A, HDMI, and a headphone jack. Thanks Lenovo:
Lenovo Slim 5x !(custom OLED + battery)! (X2 Plus)
Even better Snapdragon machine—best laptop you can get for ~$900. Perfect for my mother; only real complaint is limited GPU performance. Wish the A14 offered the same customization. Sad it only ships with the 6-core Plus instead of the 10-core option. Fan pitch is a bit high and can squeal. Drop the Extreme chip in and quiet the fans and it would be the best laptop of all time.
The rest were plagued with problems
- MacBook Air M5: MacOS is garbage (enough said, would take too many words). I love classic Macs from the 1990s and iPhones, but after the awful AI, locked-down features (tethering, external monitors, USB-C), and price hikes, my iPhone 17 Air might be my last Apple product. Unsubscribed from all Apple YouTubers. Apple's greatest remaining advantage is a smooth update process thanks to limited hardware SKUs.
- Lenovo Legion 5i (RTX 5050): Great OLED 165 Hz panel, but fans spin >2000 rpm constantly. Windows update bricked the NVIDIA drivers on a brand-new machine—had to run DDU and reinstall twice. Hate Legion/Vantage software almost as much as Asus Armoury Crate.
- Lenovo Slim 7i AURA Intel Ultra 7 Series 3 (355): Almost no ports (just USB-C), and those ports were buggy. Ran poorly until I manually pulled drivers via Intel Support Assistant that Lenovo/Windows never installed. DisplayPort and charging were also flaky. Returned. Might have kept an X7 version.
- Asus Vivobook: HDMI port limited to HDMI 1.4—thirteen years after HDMI 2.0 launched. Same lame restriction as the Snapdragon 144 Hz video-out cap. Single channel ram out of the box slowed it way down. Returned.