Snapdragon Review

The Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge is a fabulous laptop, but rivals hold a slight advantage when it comes to value and battery life

I recently walked into a local JB Hi-Fi (mainstream high street store for international readers) and found that Snapdragon laptops were in the most prominent position of all. The staff had recently completed their most recent training and were saying how these laptops lasted 40 per cent longer (for battery life) than all Intel equivalents and that only casual users would have issues with software compatibility.

We haven’t given an award for a Snapdragon laptop yet and I still think almost all ultraportable laptop buyers would be better off with either a Lunar Lake laptop or something like the MSI Prestige 14 AI Evo with its Core Ultra (first Series) processor, amazing battery and matte screen. However, if you absolutely need the most portable laptop on the market, and only need to do Office, web and occasional photo-editing work, then the numbers show that this is technically the best on the market, even if there are plenty of rivals nipping at its toes.

In short… probably not. It’s not that the laptop is bad per se, but I still see little reason to buy a Windows laptop with such limited software compatibility when there are so many (mainly) Intel alternatives that offer similar portability and none of the compromises. If you don’t mind Windows software compatibility issues and want an ARM-based processor, you should also consider Apple’s MacBooks which have a far more mature software ecosystem and similar portability chops. Still, this is the cheapest Snapdragon laptop that we’ve seen, so it is likely to attract some buyers regardless.

The ASUS Zenbook A14 laptop is the best laptop we've reviewed this year, with truly all-day (and even multi-day battery life) and an incredible thin and light design... it's an impressive laptop, to say the least.

While the Asus Zenbook A14 is an interesting chassis evolution within the Zenbook lineup, with a lightweight design and excellent ergonomics, I find the overall positioning of this series rather questionable, especially in this top-specced and expensive Snapdragon X1 Elite UX3407RA configuration. E expect better value in the mid-specced X1 and X1 Plus variants once available, as those are a better fit for a portable daily-use laptop with a much more affordable price tag.