Qualcomm’s new 8-core Snapdragon X Plus makes these Windows laptops cheaper

Qualcomm launched its first big wave of Windows laptops this summer at $999 and up — but a new, somewhat weaker chip could soon shave off at least $100. Today, the company’s announcing its first 8-core Snapdragon X Plus chips, which will feature in a new Asus Zenbook S 15 and Dell Inspiron 14 that’ll retail for $899 each.

While the new Qualcomm chips have all the same features as the 10-core and 12-core models, they’re decidedly weaker in some ways — especially graphics. On average, they’ve got less than half the GPU power for games and other graphical apps. And while they all feature the same 45 TOPS of AI performance from their NPU, they’ve also got 12MB less CPU cache.

According to Qualcomm’s own internal benchmarks for the new 8-core chips (take with grain of salt), all that means they’re roughly 80 percent as capable as the company’s 12-core chips in the CPU realm, and on-par with the 10-core chips for productivity. But with the 8-core, those graphics scores are predictably cut in half.

Would you want to save money this way? I could definitely see it for entry-level laptop buyers — particularly if you’re actually saving $400, as the case might be for the Asus Vivobook S 15. That laptop originally cost $1,300 with the 12-core chip, but it’s just $900 with the 8-core, despite featuring the same big 70 watt-hour battery and 3K 120Hz OLED screen. The only other obvious sacrifice is half the storage, as you’ll get 512GB instead of 1TB.

But sales might make the pricing gap smaller than it appears: The 12-core Asus Vivobook S 15 is already on sale for $1,100 or lower, and Dell is already selling the a 12-core model of its Inspiron 14 Plus for $899.

Asus is also announcing a Qualcomm-based creator laptop today, the $1,099 ProArt PZ13, which also has the same 3K OLED touchscreen and 70-watt hour battery, but with a detachable keyboard and stylus support, and both Asus machines should be available today. Dell also has an Latitude 5455 with the new chip and very similar specs to the Inspiron, but no pricing.