Qualcomm has announced its budget-friendly Snapdragon C chips designed for entry-level laptops starting at just $300.
Snapdragon C Series Laptops Come At An Attractive Price Point Starting at Just $300, But The Specs Remain Unknown For Now
As part of its pre-Computex announcements, Qualcomm has shared its new Snapdragon C platform for entry-tier laptops. This new tier is designed for laptops that will be attractively priced towards students, families, and small businesses.
While the Snapdragon X2 and X2 Elite platform cover the high-end and premium lines, the Snapdragon C series platform will be designed to offer a robust solution for everyday performance needs in a cool, quiet, and cost-effective design.
The company isn't sharing any details or specs, but it does state that the Snapdragon C series chips will pack an integrated NPU for entry-tier AI capabilities. The NPU on the X2 series offers up to 80 TOPS, but we can expect something that conforms to the Microsoft Copilot standard. Other features will include an all-day battery life and power-efficient everyday computing.
“As costs rise and customer expectations evolve, Snapdragon C brings together value oriented computing, all-day battery life, AI capabilities and responsive performance in cool-quiet devices for expanded platform choice,” said Kedar Kondap, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Compute and Gaming, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “We’re delivering modern computing experiences that help our ecosystem reach new audiences and expanding access to reliable, efficient technology for students, families, customer-facing small businesses, and beyond.”
What we know so far is that the X2 Elite offers up to 18 CPU cores and an Adreno X2-90 GPU. Based on the $300 starting price, we don't expect these laptops to retain these specs and come with significantly cut-down configurations. One important thing would be the memory, storage, and display.
As per some reports, the chip should pack a 6nm SoC codenamed "Kenai" with an Adreno iGPU clocked at up to 900 MHz, and a single 32-bit LPDDR5 memory channel.
Apple's MacBook Neo offers 8 GB of memory and the A18 Pro chip at a $599 price point. A $300 price point would likely be configured with 8 GB of memory, and higher-tier options could carry 16 GB of memory. Storage should also be 256-512 GB. The display on the Neo and its build quality are great for its price point, so at $300, it will be quite hard to tackle both of those.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon C laptops are announced at a time when x86 manufacturers are also feeling the heat from the Neo, with options like the Intel Core Series 3 SoCs rolling out at price points of $449, while offering better specs than the Neo.
The Acer Aspire Go 15 laptop is powered by the new Snapdragon C processor, offering long-lasting battery life and responsive performance in a cool, quiet design for the entry-tier price point.
The first Snapdragon C laptops are expected to hit shelves later this year, with companies such as Acer already unveiling their latest designs. The Acer Aspire Go 15 comes packed with 8 GB of memory, 512 GB of storage, and a 15.6" display with narrow bezels. The laptop also comes with dual USB Type-C ports, an HDMI port, and Wi-Fi 6E. Expect more information during Computex.
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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