Laptops with the best battery life just got "legendary" power upgrade

The best laptops have undergone a fascinating transformation in recent years, with Qualcomm's once questionable impact in the market – largely due to compatibility issues with apps – then revolutionised by its X Elite product.

As I explain in this article – by highlighting Snapdragon Elite's pros and cons compared to rivals, such as Intel and AMD – the advent of that chip was able to bypass most compatibility issues, whilst bringing epic battery life to the fore.

Now, Qualcomm has just revealed its Snapdragon X2 Elite – which comes in two flavours, X2 Elite and the even more X2 Elite Extreme – promising a "legendary leap in performance" for models due to feature the hardware.

I think it's an important upgrade, because people want laptops with sensational battery life – which many X Elite machines offer, such as the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch (2025) – but without skimping on the power factor.

Well, X2 Elite is here to do just that, featuring Qualcomm's latest Oryon CPU with an epic clock speed, up to 5GHz frequency. It will boost performance factor – for day-to-day tasks, but also graphics and AI, thanks to the latest Adreno GPU and Hexagon NPU – by a significant margin.

But the key to X2 Elite's delivery is the promise of "multi-day battery life", which is one of X Elite's original big selling points. That doesn't go away here – meaning the laptops of the future will be long-lasting and of considerable power, too.

There's still plenty of competition, of course, from Intel's latest Series 2 chips, and many other options. But Qualcomm is doubling down after a slow start in the laptop market. And X2 Elite looks as though it'll give its key competition plenty to worry about – and customers, like you and I, plenty to look forward to.

Exactly which devices will feature Snapdragon X2 Elite is yet to be revealed, however, with the news only coming to light as part of Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Summit, which I'm attending of behalf of T3 to learn about the latest innovations coming to market.