Qualcomm has officially taken the wraps off its next-generation laptop processors with the launch of the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. As the second wave of its X-series chips designed for Windows PCs, these processors represent the company’s most ambitious attempt yet to challenge established rivals in performance, gaming, and AI.

The star of the announcement is the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which is being touted as Qualcomm’s most powerful laptop chip to date. Built using a cutting-edge 3nm process, the Extreme edition harnesses Qualcomm’s latest Oryon CPU architecture and offers an impressive 18 cores. While most cores clock speeds up to 4.4GHz, two of them can reach 5GHz, making this the first Arm-based CPU to achieve such frequencies. According to Qualcomm, this innovation enables the Extreme chip to deliver up to 75 percent higher CPU performance than competitors at similar power levels.

Graphics capabilities have also been given a substantial boost. The updated Adreno GPU now runs at 1.85GHz and boasts more than double the performance-per-watt compared to the previous Snapdragon X Elite. In addition, Qualcomm has introduced 18MB of Adreno High Performance Memory cache, designed to optimize gaming on Windows laptops. While the company admits the gaming ecosystem on Arm laptops is still evolving, it claims these improvements will translate into smoother performance for supported titles.

Artificial intelligence remains a central focus for Qualcomm’s strategy. The Snapdragon X2 series integrates a new Hexagon NPU capable of 80 TOPS (trillions of operations per second), which Qualcomm says is the highest rating for NPUs in laptops today. This delivers a 37 percent uplift in AI performance while reducing power consumption by 16 percent. The company highlights real-world benefits such as quicker edits in Adobe Photoshop and faster exports in Lightroom, underlining how these gains could transform creative workflows.

Power efficiency continues to be one of Qualcomm’s strongest selling points. The company says laptops equipped with Snapdragon X2 processors will offer multi-day battery life, even on systems with power demands exceeding 50W. Last year’s Snapdragon X Elite models delivered between 14 to 18 hours of battery life, but the new design is expected to extend endurance even further. This suggests Qualcomm is expanding its reach beyond thin-and-light notebooks into more robust laptop categories.

Connectivity also remains central to the Snapdragon vision. Both the Elite and Elite Extreme variants will feature Wi-Fi 7 and 5G support, continuing Qualcomm’s push for always-connected PCs.

The ecosystem around Windows on Snapdragon is also strengthening. At the launch, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan confirmed that the company’s Synapse software will support Snapdragon-powered PCs, although he stopped short of confirming a gaming laptop with the new processors.

For consumers, there’s still a wait. Qualcomm has confirmed that the first laptops powered by the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme will begin shipping in the first half of 2026.