Dell XPS or Samsung new Qualcomm Snapdragon

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Have been seeing a lot of chatter around the new snapdragon being faster and cooler than the Mac M3 but no real world comparisons yet

I am sure we will see these soon. Anyone else looking at these or other snapdragon equivalents ?

 
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Samsung have been in and out of the UK laptop market, which doesn't inspire me in terms of support, so for that reason, I would go with Dell instead, who have been dependable for me.
 
The first M1 based macs were a bit of a revelation in terms of actual performance, real world battery life and backwards compatibility (though obviously there were some issues). I'd love to think PC manufacturers / Microsoft could pull something similar off with windows but I fear it'll be similar to when Microsoft attempted to do Apple-style experience stores :eek:
 
I'm intrigued by the new ARM chips for a laptop; wonder how expensive they'll end up being when there's a bit more competition; £1,399 is still pretty spendy compared to the x86 competition!
 
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I've had a Surface Pro 11 with the Snapdragon Elite X CPU since launch day (so roughly a month now) - and it would take a lot to swap this device now.
Admittedly I'm not new to ARM having used Surface Pro X and the Surface Pro 9 with the SQ3 CPU in it but this thing is just a new level completely.

Battery life is incredible; I'm easily getting 10-11 hours of productivity out of it meaning I don't need to worry about charging at all through the day, thats mainly admin/office type stuff, a few Teams meetings, some Power BI, etc - not video editing or anything but that's not really what this is for yet,
I managed to get just over 14 hours when playing video/streaming sport over the weekend with it on my desk so it easily surpasses my expectations here and its certainly more battery life that I've seen out of almost any tablet.

The performance is excellent, its so much quicker than the old ARM devices; everything is snappy and fast, there's no slowdown, there's very few things I've come across that don't work and even the odd non-ARM thing I need to use works great.

I love the new OLED screen, not that I really had much if any issue with the already excellent LCD screen on the Surface Pro anyway; I know some people have complained about graininess but I can't say its bothered me at all (its also a complaint I've seen about other OLED's like the iPad).

The only thing that really bothered me was the lack of a 5G option at launch, all my previous ARM Surface devices had a SIM slot, but I picked up a 5G mobile router instead and actually I suspect I'm getting better battery life with the Wifi Only device anyway as its not constantly using a modem.

I have considered swapping over to a Surface Laptop 7 with ARM but I think I prefer keeping the Tablet form factor even though I'd get even better battery out of the laptop (as its a larger battery).

I expect we'll see lower end Snapdragon X CPU's in fact I'm sure there's already one in the range but its not been released yet, I'd love to see an ARM Surface Go tablet.
 
chrismscotland said:
I expect we'll see lower end Snapdragon X CPU's in fact I'm sure there's already one in the range but its not been released yet, I'd love to see an ARM Surface Go tablet.
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Yes, an ARM Surface Go seems like a combination that would really lift the wee beastie. A little more RAM at the same time would help too.
I was about to buy a Surface Go 4 to replace my 2 but MS is out-of-stock. However Mrs S finally decided she's not likely to be well enough for our holiday in September (osteoarthritic hips) so I can relax and hope the SG 5 turns up....
 
[HB]Rugrat said:
The first M1 based macs were a bit of a revelation in terms of actual performance, real world battery life and backwards compatibility (though obviously there were some issues). I'd love to think PC manufacturers / Microsoft could pull something similar off with windows but I fear it'll be similar to when Microsoft attempted to do Apple-style experience stores :eek:
Click to expand...

Apple has better track record for support than Microsoft does for its less mainstream products. That would worry me.
 
OspreyO said:
Apple has better track record for support than Microsoft does for its less mainstream products. That would worry me.
Click to expand...

Its not just Microsoft now though with ARM, by the end of the year there will be devices from all major OEM's like Dell, Lenovo, Asus, HP, etc - there are already Snapdragon versions of some of the most popular PC ultrabooks like the Dell XPS 13 / 14.

The new chips seems to be very capable of matching Apple's M3 chips with raw power and battery life; but they are still losing out GPU wise - that's somewhere that Apple have made a lot more progress; I guess in the long run though most PC graphics support will come from external GPU support for Laptops and Desktops rather than via the built in chip anyway.
 
The issue won't be with the other manufacturers it will be how long MS supports it.

Dell Pocket PC anyone, HP Windows Phone. Windows on ARM has been around in one form or another since 2011. Samsung has had Snapdragon laptops for a while..

I will say I like the idea behind ARM servers etc. It might be a little different this time around. The worry is it's a Cinderella project.

I've a gaming laptop. I've a M1 laptop. I think that's a better compromise. The hardware looks good though. If I had money to burn I'd buy one to play with.
 
chrismscotland said:
I've had a Surface Pro 11 with the Snapdragon Elite X CPU since launch day (so roughly a month now) - and it would take a lot to swap this device now.
Admittedly I'm not new to ARM having used Surface Pro X and the Surface Pro 9 with the SQ3 CPU in it but this thing is just a new level completely.

Battery life is incredible; I'm easily getting 10-11 hours of productivity out of it meaning I don't need to worry about charging at all through the day, thats mainly admin/office type stuff, a few Teams meetings, some Power BI, etc - not video editing or anything but that's not really what this is for yet,
I managed to get just over 14 hours when playing video/streaming sport over the weekend with it on my desk so it easily surpasses my expectations here and its certainly more battery life that I've seen out of almost any tablet.

The performance is excellent, its so much quicker than the old ARM devices; everything is snappy and fast, there's no slowdown, there's very few things I've come across that don't work and even the odd non-ARM thing I need to use works great.

I love the new OLED screen, not that I really had much if any issue with the already excellent LCD screen on the Surface Pro anyway; I know some people have complained about graininess but I can't say its bothered me at all (its also a complaint I've seen about other OLED's like the iPad).

The only thing that really bothered me was the lack of a 5G option at launch, all my previous ARM Surface devices had a SIM slot, but I picked up a 5G mobile router instead and actually I suspect I'm getting better battery life with the Wifi Only device anyway as its not constantly using a modem.

I have considered swapping over to a Surface Laptop 7 with ARM but I think I prefer keeping the Tablet form factor even though I'd get even better battery out of the laptop (as its a larger battery).

I expect we'll see lower end Snapdragon X CPU's in fact I'm sure there's already one in the range but its not been released yet, I'd love to see an ARM Surface Go tablet.
Click to expand...
Have you ran into any compatibility issues so far with the productivity software you use, or anything else?
I'm intrigued by these devices.
 
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